Displaying items by tag: technology

The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that The Costume Institute's spring 2016 exhibition will be manus x machina: fashion in an age of technology, on view from May 5 through August 14, 2016 (preceded on May 2 by The Costume Institute Benefit). Presented in the Museum's Robert Lehman Wing and Anna Wintour Costume Center, the exhibition will explore the impact of new technology on fashion and how designers are reconciling the handmade and the machine-made in the creation of haute couture and avant-garde ready-to-wear.

It’s the beginning of a long-term relationship Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Hyundai. The Southern California institution and the Korean automaker announced a 10-year partnership today which is part of the larger Hyundai Project. The move marks LACMA’s longest commitment to a corporate sponsor and will enable myriad projects in the areas of art and technology and Korean art scholarship, specifically through acquisitions, exhibitions and publications until 2024.

“Art is a creative expression of human values that transcends age, gender, race and culture,” said Hyundai Motor Company Vice Chairman Euisun Chung in a release.

“Modern Alchemy,” a small gem of an exhibition at the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, is a good reminder that experimental photography did not begin in the age of the digital camera, although technology has certainly helped it evolve. A selection of diverse images, accompanied by thorough explanations of how various photographers worked, starting with Man Ray in the 1930s, supports this idea.

“Today, with digital photography and the iPhone, we’re inundated with images all day long,” said Lisa Chalif, curator of the Heckscher, who began putting the show together about 12 months ago after pondering it for several years. The process, she said, was fun but also quite a challenge. “There’s so much experimental photography,” she said. “How do you define the term?”

The work done at the Harvard Art Museums’ Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies has been extra visible these past few months: The center’s pioneering technology was behind the museums’ recent Rothko exhibition, which used digital projections to recreate hues that had faded since the paintings were made.

Now, the center will have a new director: Narayan Khandekar. The senior conservation scientist in the Straus Center’s analytical laboratory since 2001, Khandekar replaces Henry Lie, who retired from the post at the end of last year.

Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the Institute of Contemporary  Art/Boston (ICA), announced today the appointment of Eva Respini as Barbara Lee Chief Curator. Respini is currently Curator in the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, where she organized the critically acclaimed retrospectives Cindy Sherman and Robert Heinecken as well as exhibitions with artists Klara Liden, Anne Collier, Leslie Hewitt, and Akram Zaatari. She will assume her new position at the ICA in March 2015.

“Eva Respini brings a combination of scholarship and a 21st-century sensibility to image-making, technology, and the role of the museum of the future,” says Medvedow. “She offers a rich understanding of contemporary art and is a creative and intelligent leader in her field. We look forward to the contributions that she will bring to the museum.”

In our era of rapid prototyping and 3D printing, technologies that promise to transform the production of everything from medical devices to skyscrapers, it is easy to lose sight of how three-dimensional objects came into being in the predigital age. One way into this question is through drawing. What role did it play in the production of Renaissance sculpture, some of the most ambitious and technically accomplished ever produced? Or, as Columbia University art historian Michael Cole puts it, “Why did sculptors draw?”

his is the problem at the center of “Donatello, Michelangelo, Cellini: Sculptors’ Drawings from Renaissance Italy,” currently on view at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and co-curated by Mr. Cole and Oliver Tostmann, formerly of the Gardner and now Curator of European Art at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn.

For Laura Skandera Trombley, the Pitzer College president who was named Tuesday as the next president of the Huntington Library, Art Collection and Botanical Gardens, it won’t be just a new job but a more visible platform for pursuing the most important theme in her career and for the Huntington’s mission: persuading people living at a time when tech is king that the humanities remain indispensable.

Trombley, who’ll take over from longtime president Steven Koblik on July 1, 2015, said her portfolio will include not just overseeing what goes on at the Huntington, which occupies a 207-acre estate in San Marino.

While many San Francisco institutions have banned Google Glass over the course of 2014 — the fine art museums of San Francisco are embracing the face computers. According to a press release, the de Young and Legion of Honor are incorporating the Google Glass experience into their exhibits, and first up is the new Keith Haring show; GuidiGO will provide access to in-depth interviews, audio recordings, and videos via the face computers — because reading the plaques and listening to the audio tour is pretty much akin to walking around with a newspaper and a walkman. 

The press release goes on to state: 

“'Wearing Glass in the gallery is like embarking on a multimedia journey, with visual archives, contextual music and testimonials revealing the artworks’ hidden stories. Within minutes, visitors completely forget they are even wearing Glass, as the screen subtly turns on only when needed,' said David Lerman, CEO of GuidiGO."

The Guggenheim has named architect and scholar Troy Conrad Therrien as Curator, Architecture and Digital Initiatives. As the first person to hold this position, Therrien will contribute to the development of the museum’s engagement with architecture, design, technology, and urban studies, in addition to providing leadership on select new projects under the direction of the Chief Curator and the Director’s Office.

The Guggenheim's role in architecture has always been one of patronage, commissioning Frank Lloyd Wright to design its landmark building in New York City and Frank Gehry to design the celebrated Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, which extended the institution's global constellation of museums.

"The Last Rainforest.” “Silence = Death.” “Apartheid.”

Though many associate the late artist Keith Haring with his seemingly innocuous images of barking dogs, crawling babies, beating hearts and flying saucers, his work often tackled social justice issues – from nuclear proliferation to AIDS to the environment to racial and income inequality.

“The Political Line,” at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, is the first show to look at Haring’s art from a social justice perspective, grouping it by themes such as racism, capitalism and consumerism, the growing use of technology in everyday life, the treatment of those suffering from HIV/AIDS, the suppression of individual freedoms, and environmental devastation.