13 ms·
The Art Institute of Chicago Has Put 50k High-Res Images Online
- hiei 8y agoTruly my favorite museum in America.
- stochastic_monk 8y agoIt’s the best art museum outside of Paris I’ve been to.
- fermienrico 8y agoHow does it compare with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York?
- tptacek 8y agoIt's a great museum, among the best museums (full stop) in the country, but it's less than 1/4 of the size of the Met.
- forapurpose 8y agoTrue, but after a certain point size doesn't matter for the visitor. I can see only a small fraction of the Met in any visit; IIRC a prior director said he couldn't see the entire collection, including the majority which is not on display at any one time, in his lifetime. If the Met grows, it doesn't change the size from my perspective. If you are interested in specific individual collections then size might matter; if you are interested in Polynesian art, then possibly you could exhaust the Met's or Chicago's collections (I don't know). But in some respects the two museums are the same size. And to go off on a tangent, I now find that I gain much more by spending a long time, maybe 30 minutes each, with a few works of art, rather than spending a few minutes each with 100 works. So for me, a museum with 10 great (IMHO) works would be plenty big, and better than a museum with 100,000 works that I have to sort through or walk past to find the ones I'm interested in. (Though the odds that the 10-piece museum would have what I want are a bit longer.)
- kasey_junk 8y agoFor the record both the Met & the Art Institute have enough great pieces to last your whole life if you are into contemplation. For that matter I spent an hour with the Art Institutes paper weight collection one time and felt I learned something.
- tsumnia 8y agoIs there a link to downloading copies of the images?
- phkahler 8y agoA full archive would be nice if there's some kind of index.
- matthberg 8y agoHere's the link, it's basically their collection page filtered by the ones they released, each artwork page has links to download the image. https://www.artic.edu/collection?is_public_domain=1 https://www.artic.edu/collection?is_public_domain=1
- slig 8y agoIt's basically impossible to browse most of the pictures sequentially because the UI keeps loading new images on the bottom of the page after clicking "Load more" and the browser will crash after loading so many images on the same tab. It's a shame, because it obvious that a lot of work and care was put on this project.
- adtac 8y agoIs this down for anybody else?
- jandrese 8y agoA torrent would be nice.
- nerdponx 8y agoThis is wonderful news. Thank you to whoever made this possible!
- malshe 8y agoThe link to the Art Institute of Chicago: https://www.artic.edu/articles/713/behind-the-scenes-of-the-website-redesign https://www.artic.edu/articles/713/behind-the-scenes-of-the-... From the link: Students, educators, and just regular art lovers might be interested to learn that we’ve released thousands of images in the public domain on the new website in an open-access format (52,438 to be exact, and growing regularly). Made available under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, these images can be downloaded for free on the artwork pages. We’ve also enhanced the image viewing capabilities on object pages, which means that you can see much greater detail on objects than before. Check out the paint strokes in Van Gogh’s The Bedroom, the charcoal details on Charles White’s Harvest Talk, or the synaesthetic richness of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Blue and Green Music. If you are doing research, you’ll appreciate how our collections search tool makes it easier to drill down and find exactly what you’re looking for.
- sgc 8y agoHow is it possible to release public domain images using a CC0 license? That sounds completely unenforceable to me.
- yarrel 8y agoIf it isn't it doesn't matter. If it is, it has the same effect as if it isn't.
- freddie_mercury 8y agoWhy would it be in the public domain? If I take a photograph of something, don't I own the copyright to that photo? Even if it is a photo of the Mona Lisa or the Parthenon?
- kps 8y agoIn the US, no. A photograph of a 2D artwork is just a copy of that artwork, and not a copyrightable original work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel....
- adriand 8y agoThis is pretty incredible. There was once a time when the only way for the average person to see a beautiful painting was to go to church. Later on this role was taken up by art galleries. Now anyone can see this stuff from the comfort of their own home. What do you think this means for the future of art galleries? What are they for? Different ones are answering this question in different ways. Some are reinventing themselves successfully, others not so much. I am particularly interested in the destiny of galleries in smaller markets. They are easier to sustain in large cities. In cities with fewer than a million people, the struggle for relevance makes for a challenging environment. (My questions aren’t rhetorical - I sit on the board of directors for a Canadian gallery in a city of 500k people - we have one of Canada’s largest collections and an incredible program, but nothing is easy...)
- faitswulff 8y agoI feel like reducing historical art pieces to "beautiful images" doesn't really capture what it means when something is art. For instance, you can view reproduced images of famous artwork whenever you want online, so what makes it valuable, therefore, is not just the imagery.
- ZenPsycho 8y agoSalvador Dalí is a notorious troll in this regard. Many of his works are extremely well known by their reproductions. but he plays with scale- the originals are often absurdly smaller or larger than you imagine from the reproductions.
- jmkd 8y agoNo one ever complained of flickr "Oh it's okay but you need to see the real thing", so it's interesting how this viewpoint is absolutely medium-specific. I would argue plenty of paintings are better viewed online, sculptures far less so. Is it better to have a restricted view at the back of a live performance or see a perfectly edited video later? It's hard to be moved shuffling through queues at the Louvre.
- 8y ago
- veridies 8y agoIs there any sort of organized, searchable index of artwork online? It's sort of a massive undertaking, but it's the kind of thing that a wiki would be good for, and there have been a handful of different museums which have made these kinds of sets available.
- forapurpose 8y agohttp://www.artcyclopedia.com/ http://www.artcyclopedia.com/ I don't know how up-to-date it is.
- jmkd 8y agoGoogle Arts & Culture [1] aspires to this, and does a great job to a certain extent, however not at scale or in the long tail. For their own reasons institutions have resisted mass uploads to Google - despite the theoretical marriage of CC licences and G A&C non-profit contractual agreements. Art Institute Chicago has been a partner with Google since 2012 yet today we see only ~1% of their artworks on G A&C. [1] https://artsandculture.google.com/ https://artsandculture.google.com/
- exodust 8y agoUnfortunately the images cannot be downloaded from Google Art Project (original name). It's irritating having to jump over complicated hurdles to get a seamless hi-res image capture from Google Arts. It requires some messing about, but I previously managed to grab about 100 high res images, but it took ages and was not easy. They printed out nicely in the end though, so was worth it. A simple download link as seen on artic.edu would be appreciated but sadly I don't see Google providing this because they want people to remain on Google, logged in, while they view art.
- veridies 8y agoI've noticed a couple cases where Wikimedia contributors have done that legwork and extracted the original tiles; I don't know if there's any systematic effort to do so, though.
- 8y ago
- an4rchy 8y agoIt's great to see museums working towards spreading the reach of their collections and reaching new audiences. Also for folks interested: SF MoMA was doing something similar where if you texted them a word they would send you a picture related to it (from their collection) https://www.sfmoma.org/send-me-sfmoma/ https://www.sfmoma.org/send-me-sfmoma/ The museums could also start selling prints online as well, perhaps create new means of funding for the museums
- werber 8y agoWhen I was a kid my parents would take me to Chicago once a year or so and the art institute was always the highlight. This makes me really happy
- ApolloRising 8y agoSite stopped loading many images due to hackernews effect.
- mmmBacon 8y agoThe Art Institute has always been very forward looking when it comes to technology. In the mid 90s I was offered a job there creating a new collection tool for curators that would allow them to view ALL of the Art Institute’s collection and help them create new exhibits. I think only 10% of their collection at that time was on display. They were going to build the tool in C. They were also very progressive to hiring as I didn’t know C and the team was willing to teach me. It was a very cool job but I didn’t end up taking it.
- ohnonotyouagain 8y agoOn a technical note, the Art Institute of Chicago images are being served using an API called IIIF, which allows you to scale, extract regions of interest, etc. [1]. There are about 1-2B images worldwide being served from museums and libraries using the API [2] and viewers that can work with the content from multiple institutions at the same time, for instance to compare two van Gogh self-portraits from different museums: http://projectmirador.org/demo/ http://projectmirador.org/demo/ [1] https://iiif.io/api/image/2.1/#image-request-uri-syntax https://iiif.io/api/image/2.1/#image-request-uri-syntax [2] https://iiif.io/community/#participating-institutions https://iiif.io/community/#participating-institutions
- TekMol 8y agoInteresting. There seams to be no way to get a list of available images or a search though. How would one us this API without info about available images? Or am I missing something?
- raawa001 8y agoHere's the link for the search API: https://iiif.io/api/search/1.0/ https://iiif.io/api/search/1.0/
- mejackreed 8y agoThis Search API is focused on searching within IIIF content (think full text search of a book). There is currently a Discovery Working Group[1] looking at broader discovery of IIIF resources. [1]https://iiif.io/community/groups/discovery/ https://iiif.io/community/groups/discovery/
- ldarby 8y agoI think using IIIF is why this site is so broken. Trying to load an image sends 50 separate requests, when the entire image is less than 400kb. This is the exact opposite of what web optimizers try to do, which is combine lots of small images into 1 large one and use clever CSS to show small parts of the image in the right places on the webpage..
- bickfordb 8y agoIn a case like this, would the public domain license be revocable if the copyrightable painting were transferred?
- freyir 8y agoThe Art Institute of Chicago is where I appreciated art for the first time. It has an amazing collection, and it's not an overcrowded zoo, especially on weekdays.
- jordache 8y agowebsite is horribly slow.
- tonto 8y agoCloudfront 504 error to https://www.artic.edu/collection?is_public_domain=1 https://www.artic.edu/collection?is_public_domain=1 ?
- modzu 8y agotook a dump for me too when trying to search the gallery. its awesome and i love they are doing it!! now get your IT together ARTIC!!!
- modzu 8y agodownvoted because...? seriously try the search it just returns some json lol: https://www.artic.edu/collection https://www.artic.edu/collection (in other words there aren't "50,000 high res works online" if nobody can actually see them...)
- Gabriel_Martin 8y agoStill down an hour later, hug of death perhaps?
- eptgrant 8y agoDownloaded an image, it was only 3.6MB. Is this what I should expect? Seems rather small...
- shmerl 8y agoIt gives me server errors. Example: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/181616/self-portrait-etching-at-a-window?q=Rembrandt https://www.artic.edu/artworks/181616/self-portrait-etching-...
- jon_richards 8y agoI found an even less pretty error: https://www.artic.edu/artists/36351/pierre-auguste-renoir https://www.artic.edu/artists/36351/pierre-auguste-renoir
- shmerl 8y agoYeah, I got a bunch of JSON errors as well.
- virtualritz 8y agoWhat does high-res mean? I downloaded Hokusai's 'Great Wave' and I got a 6.2MP JPG (3k pixels horizon.). That's not high-res at all when considering the original's size. Am I missing something?
- envoked 8y agoA little bit of a shameless plug but for anyone interested in the intersection of art and tech, Arthena (YC W17) is hiring software engineers and data scientists. https://angel.co/arthena/jobs/ https://angel.co/arthena/jobs/
- dgarceran 8y agoWhen I change time filter from present to 1930 it returns this: https://www.artic.edu/collection?is_public_domain=1&department_ids=Photography&date-start=1800&date-end=1930 https://www.artic.edu/collection?is_public_domain=1&departme...
- Zeebrommer 8y agoErrr.. `date-start=1800&date-end=1930`
- dgarceran 8y agoYes? What's the problem? It's a normal search in a page like that
- dgarceran 8y agoI see it is fixed, but now when I enter a photography from that search it returns again the same "server error". Example: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/66427/georgia-o-keeffe-hand?is_public_domain=1&department_ids=Photography&date-start=1800&date-end=1930 https://www.artic.edu/artworks/66427/georgia-o-keeffe-hand?i... I guess it is because it keeps the filters on the URL?
- TheOtherHobbes 8y agoLove the images. But this does the not-unusual thing of not saving your place if you scroll down a few pages, click through to an entry, and then click back to the catalog.
- Confiks 8y agoI'm glad they state on their website that the images are in the public domain. In a similar thread on HN some time ago, I was very surprised to learn some museums (and commenters) think that they own the copyright to high-resolution digital reproductions of their (pre-1923) collection: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17500312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17500312
- gpvos 8y agoDifferent countries, different laws.
- Confiks 8y agoIndeed, but for that specific case of the Van Gogh Museum in The Netherlands, the same principle from Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. was reached in the Van Dale/Romme arrest [1] and has been upheld in other cases. [1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrest_Van_Dale/Romme https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrest_Van_Dale/Romme
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cambaceres 8y agoSearched for Monet, the first three paintings result in internalservererror: https://www.artic.edu/collection?q=monet https://www.artic.edu/collection?q=monet
- ConceptJunkie 8y agoYeah, I found about 10% of the links of the random sampling of paintings I looked at (about 30) gave 404 errors. The images are nice, and definitely suitable for desktop wallpaper, which is what I'm interested in, but they're not all that high-resolution. They seem to vary between 2k and 3k pixel resolution.
- internet555 8y agoThat’s so cool! I really miss Chicago some days.
- mushufasa 8y agowhoever makes artpip, can you please include these? I was disappointed from the switch to photography only.
- Noos 8y agoI'm not sure what to think. It's a form of accidental post-modernism. The translation and simulation of the art ends up being very post-modern in its implementation. There really is no one experience to viewing this collection; some of us may view it on our phones while at work, some people on a gorgeous hi-res screen to see every brushstroke, some on a washed-out $199 laptop screen, some on a $50 Kindle Fire as a homework project, and some secondhand, like the pictures on the blog that links to it. It's very much anti-modernist in that it denies the physical presence of art and is arguing a little for the death of the artist (i do not mean literally) by severing viewing his art from viewing the actual piece; that the meaning can be adequately shown by a simulation designed to be accessible to all, and that is reductionist to boot. The weird thing is that this is accidental-the postmodern presentation is not done specifically for effect, but it's a byproduct of a very modernist idea about the importance of viewing great art. The simulation is created and is given weight and importance, but there is no commentary or reflection on it; the format is simply there because postmodernism is the only way to simulate in this media. To render physical artwork on the net will always be a simulated, reductionist project in some manner. The person who goes to a museum, somehow records his experience on video, and narrates his thoughts is making in his own way an equal simulation yet superior. He is also reducing the art into a simulation, because its attributes cannot be fully transmitted to another medium without reducing it, but he enriches it in a sense by the depiction. There is the post-modern interplay between viewer and viewed, between work and audience, on display and then reflected again by the person watching his video on youtube. Here there is still these elements, but in an odd situation. Maybe it would be like those old VHS tapes that tried to faithfully reproduce a Broadway show performance, or records that did opera. The goal is fidelity but the medium transforms it just by the simulation. It may be valuable in the sense simulations are, but it's also transformative due to the medium used. It creates a weird thing divorced from itself, but with no commentary or reasoning that acknowledges it. So mixed feelings. Maybe its just my mountains of sketchbooks filled with amateurish art talking, but i'd prefer even an art book to this, I guess.
- Fuzzwah 8y agoI'd be interested in reading your thoughts on a virtual museum experienced via a VR headset and room scale tracking?