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Louvre makes its entire collection available online
- kaminar 6y agoDid Bill Gates buy the digital/electronic rights to the Louvre collections in the 90s? I seem to recall an article about it, but cannot find it.
- sn_master 6y agoHe bought the DaVinci Codex and made them free as a Windows 98 screensaver :D https://news.softpedia.com/news/did-you-know-bill-gates-bought-da-vinci-s-codex-to-create-a-windows-screensaver-529114.shtml https://news.softpedia.com/news/did-you-know-bill-gates-boug... Rant: I have much more respect to that than the modern NFT craze. He didn't have any obligation to make them free to the public.
- throwawaysea 6y agoI’m confused who this is for. It’s not the same experience seeing art online. Part of what makes the Louvre or other museums special is being in a beautiful and decorated historically important space. It puts you in a different mindset where you can wander, ponder, and appreciate. I’m no Luddite but a digital experience simply can’t recreate that, at least not today.
- itisit 6y agoShort of booking a ticket to Paris and taxiing to the museum, this is a fine way to explore the collection.
- arvinsim 6y agoI guess that's why they did it? Because people who want the real experience will still go in person. As such, they aren't really losing any customers.
- occamrazor 6y agoThe Louvre is a state owned museum. It’s purpose is not to sell tickets, but to disseminate culture. The purpose of the tickets is limiting the visitors to a number that can fit in the building. If many people opt to look at the works online and not in person, the Louvre can reduce the ticket prices without increasing the number of visitors and this would be considered a _success_.
- dmje 6y agoHmm, sorta. Depending on the country, museums are usually financially supported by both private individuals and the state. Many museums rely on physical visitors to pay ticket prices either for entry or for temporary exhibitions. Also visitor numbers are quite often the metric of success by which funding can then be sought. So yeh, there's some limiting because of space / damage to artworks etc but on the whole museums want more visitors both physical and online.
- dmje 6y agoYeh. I've spent years working with museums online and encouraging them to be more open about what they do - digital experiences enhance their standing in many ways. Partly it's access, partly marketing, partly education. And yes, the more people know about thing X online, the more likely that will "convert" to real physical visits to the organisation, which is normally the primary metric by which they guage success.
- kgeist 6y agoI don't plan to go to Paris in the near future due to lack of time but being able to view it online allows me to "wander, ponder, and appreciate" at least to some extent
- sn_master 6y agoI don't plan to go to Paris because I don't want to become another victim of the Paris Syndrome. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome
- yesenadam 6y agoI think Stendhal syndrome is more likely. If you appreciate art and architecture, anyway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stendhal_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stendhal_syndrome
- sn_master 6y agoI do, but I don't appreciate people snickering at me because I don't know their language, or illegal sketchy figures trying to scam me because I am a tourist.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoI was having a good laugh at your link and then I was like.. Uh this is Wikipedia, they don't do jokes. So this is an actual thing. Lol. And yeah Paris has its nice areas but like most cities in the world it's also overcrowded (try the RER A at rush hour - pre corona), dirty, has its dark sides, and is suffering greatly from mass-tourism. Most Parisians I know are not very happy. I go there a lot. Really I think there's much better places to visit, like Barcelona. Which is suffering from the same flaws but I find it a bit more accessible. But visiting Paris for the first time was not a culture shock for me at all. However I grew up 800km from Paris. I suppose someone from a totally different culture on the other side of the world might have an idealised view. Especially if they paid a relative fortune to visit it. Still... It sounds a bit overblown :P There's many movies that show Paris quite realistically, I don't think anyone truly interested would not pick up on that.
- julienreszka 6y agoThat's exactly their point. Even a digital collection doesn't replace the experience of visiting the museum.
- irrational 6y agoI will never go to Paris, so this is the only way I could ever experience it.
- misterkrabs 6y agoI think I kind of understand the Truth that you're getting at - from a similar point of view, aren't artists usually particular about the medium that their art is presented in? because the medium can cause the work of art to have a different effect on the audience. [1] In any case, it's certainly no substitute for the real thing (but I'm sure everyone kind of understands that). [1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosophy-of-art/The-mediums-of-art https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosophy-of-art/The-mediu...
- ramraj07 6y agoYou literally satisfy the definition of a Luddite to a T, perhaps not in the most negative way, but some way nonetheless.
- dang 6y agoYou can't do this here. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules.
- cambalache 6y ago> Part of what makes the Louvre or other museums special is being in a beautiful and decorated historically important space. This is true in theory, in practice you will meet arrogant and unhelpful museum guides, tons upon tons of people not respecting all the basic rules (no flash, be relatively quite, etc) and a labyrinthine place which can give you anxiety if you are just visiting one day and want to see as much as possible. I went there like 8 years ago in very low season I cannot imagine how it would be today in a post-covid summer with all the instagramers and tik-tokers. So in the meantime I would enjoy all those marvels a my leisure pace in my computer. There are million of things we cannot experience directly and they are still worthwhile to see in original or imagined illustrations, from celestial bodies to ancient civilizations.
- ezequiel-garzon 6y agoWell said; awesome username!
- cambalache 6y ago"Que el mundo fue y sera una porqueria..."
- sn_master 6y agoI know what you're saying. I used to think digital was everything until my first museum visit (Dublin museum), and it changed my mind when I could lean in and look at each individual brush stroke, and the related paintings next to one another, and even the chatter of people around me. The chatter and humming of people around, by itself was worth going to the museum, seeing how fathers describe the items to their children, and how sophisticated-looking folks talk and such. It was a magnificent experience that nothing compares to it in the digital world (yet).
- dmje 6y agoThere are multiple audiences for museum collections in the flesh, and multiple audiences for online collections, too. It's not and never has been "real" Vs "virtual". Well, to be fair this was a concern in the very early days when museums thought a virtual visit would jeopardise a real one - but not for years now... So yes, nothing makes up for the visceral experience of seeing real art and heritage face to face but if you can't get there or are a researcher or school teacher or artist looking at historical techniques or...[insert many other use cases here], online collections play a hugely valuable role. Plus of course, art like this is often paid for by the state and so the public "owns" it and should get the widest possible access to it.
- chevill 6y agoIts an amazing resource for people studying art or people teaching art. Its a different experience than seeing it in person. However, there are benefits to both. I've seen gigapixel scans of some of the greatest paintings in history that let you zoom in on the tiniest details and see the brush strokes, the texture of the dried paint, the cracks and aging, etc. For some of the same pictures if I saw it in person I'd be a dozen feet or so away from it because its too valuable to let people get close. Entire objects are virtually invisible viewing some paintings in person. One of the ways that budding artists rapidly improve is by copying the works of master artists as a study. It should be pretty clear how this tool might be useful to them. >Part of what makes the Louvre or other museums special is being in a beautiful and decorated historically important space. Architecture is great, but what makes the Louvre special is the caliber of their art collection. Some people will never be able to afford to see it in person. Why not let those people appreciate the art from afar? Even if a person can afford to go on an expensive vacation, there's a million breathtaking places to visit in the world. One can't visit them all.
- specialist 6y agoExactly. Putting these collections is a boon. My partner does fine art painting (portraits, still life), and has created many a master copy. Many times actually working in a museum every day with all the gear for weeks. (Patrons love this novelty.) We've ordered many a high quality print selected from online collections for further study.
- njacobs5074 6y agoSeems to be struggling under the load...of HN art lovers? :)
- noblethrasher 6y agoWhich, if true, would be hugely ironic.
- Qahlel 6y agoThis museum became so full of art, the only thing it was afraid of was losing access to this art...which, eventually of course, it did. Unfortunately, it had many visitors who saw everything it had, then this visitors tried to visit its web site all at once and killed it in combined DOS attack. Ironic. It could enlighten others from ignorance... but not itself.
- noblethrasher 6y agoI was just making reference to the fact that the guy that started HN originally planned to get rich by putting art galleries online.
- hkt 6y agoThere is hope for us yet!
- robin_reala 6y agoI know this potentially sounds ungrateful, but it’s a shame they didn’t follow the example of Paris Musées and place their collection under CC0. [1] As it is it’s really useful for attribution and generalised research, but it doesn’t give you many options for reuse. [1] https://creativecommons.org/2020/01/10/paris-musees-releases-100000-works-into-the-public-domain/ https://creativecommons.org/2020/01/10/paris-musees-releases...
- mytailorisrich 6y agoThe works themselves are all in the public domain, apart perhaps from rare exceptions. So my understanding is that it is the photographs of those works that are copyrighted. In my view it goes against the spirit of public domain to use this in order to restrict the use of the collections put online.
- WORLD_ENDS_SOON 6y agoIn the United States a photograph of a public domain 2D image is still also public domain if the photograph is considered a faithful reproduction of the public domain 2D image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel.... However, I think the laws for this vary quite a bit across countries, and in many countries the photograph is considered a new copyright work. In general it's pretty frustrating how many legal barriers there are to accessing and reusing old works of art. Thankfully a growing number of museums have made things easy with clear copyright releases (Rijksmuseum, Paris Musées, the MET), but others seem more interested in preserving their ability to sell prints.
- jimhefferon 6y agoThs is their license: The downloading and re-use of medium-format photographs published on the collections website representing works that are not protected by copyright (hereinafter called the “Photographs”) are permitted, free of charge, for any non-collective use within a strictly private context and for the following exhaustively-listed museographic, scientific and educational purposes: - projection and distribution for the purpose of museographic, pedagogic and scientific activities, such as their reproduction on labels and exhibition signs, the presentation of guided tours, the running of educational workshops, the delivery of teaching and training sessions and the holding of symposia and seminars; - publication of exhibition and permanent collection catalogues, scientific papers and Ph.D. theses for publishers whose registered office is in the European Union, within a limit of one thousand five hundred (1500) copies, republication included: - digital scientific and educational publications. It is more permisive than I expected it would be, frankly.
- vaillant 6y agoDang, this is going to crash the NFT market for digital images of Lourve paintings.
- 0xmohit 6y agoNot sure what it'd do to the NFT market, but it has crashed their servers for sure. > Server error. Continue to search the Louvre collections
- coldcode 6y agoEven when it's not crashing, the performance is terribly slow. Also the translations for English are mostly missing.
- BurningFrog 6y agoThe plot of the Louvre IT Department to get more resources is working as planned.
- heckerhut 6y agoI know you’re joking but lots of people still struggle with the reason why NFTs exist, including Apple’s unofficial PR department John Gruber. But it seems he finally understood it now thanks to this article: https://jackrusher.com/journal/what-does-it-mean-to-buy-a-gif.html https://jackrusher.com/journal/what-does-it-mean-to-buy-a-gi... [0] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/03/26/rusher-nfts https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/03/26/rusher-nfts
- Barrin92 6y agoThat explains why original signed artworks are valuable, not really why NFTs are valuable after all if I wanted to buy a Jack Dorsey signature tweet for two million dollars or a Beeple collage for 70 million I'm sure Beeple would have gladly put it on a usb stick, signed me a card, printed it billboard sized and driven it to my house while taking me out for a steak dinner It's absolutely nebulous what the 'digital' part adds.
- Jerry2 6y agoIn the past year, quite a few collections went online. I remember seeing that Van Gogh collection from Dutch museums was digitized and released recently. Does anyone know if there's a list of various online art collections? I'd really like to go through some. Edit: Van Gogh collection: https://vangoghworldwide.org https://vangoghworldwide.org
- abbe98 6y agoNot limited to art but for cultural heritage collections in general. There is the OpenGLAM Survey, a list of Galleres, Libraries, Archives, and Museum sharing their collections under open licenses: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yc8z0z7XdhVKvhTbD2_zEju4FyfSpMVeEKI99zgVj3M/edit#gid=1216556120 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yc8z0z7XdhVKvhTbD2_z... Then there are also aggregators like dp.la, cultural.jp, digitalnz.org, europeana.eu etc that might also be of interest.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sn_master 6y agoThe Peterson Museum (basically the Louvre of automobiles) did the same -or very close- with wonderful video tours of areas that only paying 150$ would get you to see (The Vault). https://www.youtube.com/user/PetersenMuseum/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/PetersenMuseum/videos The Seattle flight museum also started a series where the main curator would talk about individual planes in long format, way better experience than looking at photos online. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCda1wjNf7JaYgx9ukXRqgIQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCda1wjNf7JaYgx9ukXRqgIQ Those are just the ones I noticed as an Aviation and Automobile enthusiast. If anyone knows others please share ;_;
- Arech 6y agoThanks for the links, absolutely great channels. I wonder if there exist something like curated "awesome list" of museums online? Because I don't even think it's possible to find these gems just doing a search on Google/YouTube which returns mostly low quality to spam results.
- sn_master 6y agoMaybe we can start an HN or Reddit thread and then link it from AwesomeMuseamsOnline.(whatever cheap tld)
- faheel 6y agoOr an "Awesome list" on GitHub. https://github.com/topics/awesome https://github.com/topics/awesome
- sofixa 6y agoThought of the same, if no one else beats me i'll get started on this in a few hours
- sofixa 6y agoTo everyone, the list has been created, the rest is easy :D https://github.com/sofixa/awesome-museums-online https://github.com/sofixa/awesome-museums-online Tomorrow/early next week I'll throw in the boilerplate ( contributing.md, PR template, and see about organisation/generation/TOC/etc.) and then i'll start adding the mentions from this thread and others i know of. Once it's decent and ready for wide contributions, i'll post on HN, Reddit and co.
- oldman77 6y agoGive us back our bloody Gioconda!
- 29athrowaway 6y agoI am getting HTTP 500 errors when I try to see a collection.
- sn_master 6y agoI am getting 500 even when doing a search.
- stefanvdw1 6y agoRecently the Amsterdam Rijks Museum made their collection available via API, which I used to create website which will show you a random artwork on each button press: https://randomrijks.com https://randomrijks.com
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- notanote 6y agoHere’s the searchable collection of the Rijks: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio
- vor0nwe 6y agoOoh, that sounds like a fantastic ‘new tab’ page. Thanks!
- barry27 6y agothis is great. I'd love to be able to navigate to previous results though.
- aristofun 6y agoLike everyone really cares about old dead art these days :)
- mattlondon 6y agoI was kinda hoping for "gigapixel" scans so I can zoom right right right in to a painting or sculpture etc, and see the details. Am I missing something or is it just a bunch of medium-res photos?
- anoncow 6y agoThe website seems to have been slashdotted.
- ahnick 6y agoIt's the HN hug of death now. :)
- gozzoo 6y ago> Error 503 Backend fetch failed
- Black101 6y agoThe Met Museum did something similar a while back: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection ... A list of (all?) images https://github.com/gregsadetsky/open-access-is-great-but-where-are-the-images https://github.com/gregsadetsky/open-access-is-great-but-whe... .
- dt3ft 6y agoGetting a 503: "Backend fetch failed"
- ever1 6y agoAs a French I feel (somehow) ashamed and absolutely not surprised XD.
- mlthoughts2018 6y agoI’m only getting 503 varnish cache errors when I try to actually visit any artworks through this.
- pletnes 6y agoIs there an API or a way to do «polite scraping»? Could be a fun AI dataset.
- bibinou 6y agoHere's Mona Lisa: https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl010066723 https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl010066723
- santiagobasulto 6y agoThe date of creation seems wrong, right? Shouldn't it be ~1500?
- hnarn 6y agoMaybe it's one of those things where someone mixed up the centuries. The page states "XVIIe siècle" (17th century), if someone somewhere mixed up "16th century" (which is correct) with "the 1600s", that could explain the error. Personally I'm really not a fan of using the "century" notation, and in my native language it's never used.
- bibinou 6y agoas spotted by sl956, I mistakenly linked to a copy.
- shakow 6y ago> and in my native language it's never used. So how do you handle fuzzy dates? What language is it, if I may ask?
- hnarn 6y agoSwedish. It's exactly like English except we only use exact dates or "the X-hundreds" or "the X-ies", never the "off by one" count of centuries. Just for the record, I'm not saying this is a feature of Swedish specifically. I'm sure there are other languages that do the same.
- sl956 6y agoThe correct link to the actual Mona Lisa is this one: https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl010062370 https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl010062370
- cool-RR 6y agoLOL, it's finally time for Paul Graham's first startup to shine.
- specialist 6y agoWhy don't these photos to have color calibration targets? https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/163309-REG/Kodak_1907914_Q_60R2_Target_5x7_Endura.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/163309-REG/Kodak_1907... And maybe some meta data about the camera and settings. I don't recall any online collections using targets. Surely these curation and archivist domain experts record this stuff. I've casually asked a few times, but no leads. -- My partner likes to create master copies. Portrait, still life. I've ordered fine art prints of dozens of originals. Always frustrating. I just get one of every option (matte, gloss, each type of medium). And let my partner pick the one that seems to match most closely. (Then I give away the extras as 'just because' gifts, which people seem to like.)
- brm 6y agoI think you answered your own question.
- tafda 6y agoYou can request color calibrated TIFFs from the Rijksmuseum collection: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/research/image-requests https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/research/image-requests
- specialist 6y ago> FOR PROFESSIONAL USE You can also request free high-res TIFF files with colour reference for professional use. To order TIFF files, please fill in the form below. Nice. Hopefully this becomes the norm. Just one anecdote: During a VIP tour of a museum, eg browsing the warehouse of stuff not on display, I asked about digital archiving. Blank looks. I'm guessing it's just not part of the curriculum for minting new archivists, curators, historians. I hope I'm wrong. Surely the younger cohorts know this stuff...?
- Palomides 6y agoif you look at the terms and conditions for downloading, as with most museums, it's clear that they want to still sell prints and "licensing" images of any art they own they definitely have color-calibrated images, but not for the public edit: for those unaware, in the US, reproductions/photos of public domain 2D art are themselves public domain and not subject to copyright
- eternalban 6y agoDelighted to see a Persian Miniature grace the portal.
- sunsetSamurai 6y agoit's nice they're doing this, but I wonder when they're gonna start returning all the stolen pieces to their rightful owners, like Egypt for example.
- malwarebytess 6y ago>Stolen Dubious opinion >Rightful owners All long dead
- anoncake 6y agoIf property can be rightfully inherited, either the descendants of whatever Pharaoh/other ancient Egyptian or the successor state of ancient Egypt are the rightful owners of what was taken from them. If your property may end up in a foreign museum millennia after you die, why even bother working?
- malwarebytess 6y agoYour argument relies on a number of premises that are not necessarily true. First of all "Rightful inheritance" is a matter of human law not natural law. Whatever state or laws existed surrounding inheritance clearly do not exist anymore for artifacts more than a few hundred years old. It is absurd to say property rights of states existing thousands of years ago apply today. You won't find any courts arguing that. Absurd. Second, descendants of millennia old property owners are both impossible, and too easy to find. Because of the way human genetics works you yourself may be a descendant. I'm a descendant of 13th century nobility, does that mean I and the millions of others with this ancestry inherit their various artifacts such as a cup or textile? Absurd. >If your property may end up in a foreign museum millennia after you die, why even bother working? I don't know. You'd have to decide that for yourself. To me the question is absurd. When I die I may will what is left of my estate, but I don't absurdly believe that thousands of years later my will be respected. Totally ridiculous. These artifacts belong to the world. Any attempts by states to force other states or organizations to "return stolen items" is a mealy mouthed way of saying they want the value they perceive they have lost. This is absurd greed. Just like conquering land, the losers have no right to their lost land. That is never the case. And you will never see these same states trying to return the land they have "stolen" to the descendants thousands of years later, now spread myriad around the world, because it's fucking absurd. When people die and a lot of time passes things become just things. Some novel state that has no true connection to, and in fact had no knowledge of, some past state has no right to property of millennia-dead people of that state. It's ridiculous. If this was about doing the right thing then one would recognize that these are artifacts of our shared human heritage, and as such they should be kept in trust for the benefit for all humanity unbound to any particular regime cultural or legal. Of course it isn't about doing the right thing it's about stupid politics.
- microtherion 6y agoFeaturing everybody's favorite piece of Asterix fan art: https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010059199 https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010059199
- andybak 6y agoSorry to ask but can you explain the joke?
- nmc 6y agoSee the first item in this post: https://auntymuriel.com/2012/12/23/asterix-in-translation-the-genius-of-anthea-bell-and-derek-hockridge/ https://auntymuriel.com/2012/12/23/asterix-in-translation-th... Was: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22678816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22678816
- puddingnomeat 6y agoThey're referring to https://auntymuriel.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/medusa.jpg?w=431&h=784 https://auntymuriel.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/medusa.jpg?w... This is the part where we all laugh and the credits roll out Someone not knowing the two can't make the connection. Can AI?
- pbhjpbhj 6y agoFunnily enough, https://americaexplained.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/running-joke/ https://americaexplained.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/running-jo..., claims to explain a joke based on the Asterix simulacrum of "Le radeau [...]" but it is an entirely different joke and no mention made of the inspiration for that image. Someone calls the situation out in a comment. That just tickled me.
- microtherion 6y agoBoth are true. The pirate ship being sunk is absolutely a running gag in the Asterix series, and in fact I had a vague recollection that the raft scene also appeared more than once, but once I took a closer look, that appeared to be wrong. So, lots of ships of this particular band of pirates being sunk, and once they are posing on this raft in a classical way.
- acomjean 6y agoThis is cool. Though a lot of it was. When I went to the Lourve I bought the guide app. After leaving one could browse through some of the collections and listen to the descriptions. I’m glad everyone can check these out now.
- tomkuk 6y agoIf you are looking for more art collections from France please check https://www.videomuseum.fr/en https://www.videomuseum.fr/en they encompasses 67 institutions (like Centre Pompidou - Musée national d'art moderne or Musée national Picasso) engaged to standardize the inventory of their collections and presently includes 36 000 artists, 390 000 works and 355 000 images. Very interesting! Nukomeet is the company which is developing the project. You can find their case study https://nukomeet.com/work/navigart/ https://nukomeet.com/work/navigart/
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- OliverGilan 6y agoWhen will these be available as NFT?
- chris_wot 6y agoMalcolm Gladwell has an episode of his podcast, Revisionist Histories, where he talks about how he considers museums are like Smaug’s horde. [1] I wonder if digitising collections like this might go some way towards resolving this sort of problem? 1. http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/42-dragon-psychology-101 http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/42-dragon-psychology-...
- ezequiel-garzon 6y agoI'm puzzled by this statement on the Mona Lisa entry [1]: "Artwork recovered after World War II, retrieved by the Office des Biens et Intérêts Privés; to be returned to its rightful owner once they have been identified. Online records of all MNR (‘National Museums Recovery’) works can be found on the French Ministry of Culture’s Rose Valland database." Does anybody know how World War II affected ownership in this case, considering by the time Louis XIV [edited, thanks julienchastang] died (1715) the painting was already in the Palace of Versailles? [2] [1] https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010066723 https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010066723 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa
- ridaj 6y agoIt's because that one is a copy of the original (still old, but ~100 years posterior to Da Vinci's). According to https://www.pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/mnr/MNR00265 https://www.pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/mnr/MNR00265 its last known owner was Friedrich Welz, an Austrian gallery owner, so the work must have come to Paris postwar to figure out whether it needed to be restituted to a previous owner. The original Joconde is https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010062370 https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010062370
- devchix 6y agoAnd here's a good accounting of the Mona Lisa's journey in hiding during WW2, and the existence of the other copies. https://www.artcuriouspodcast.com/artcuriouspodcast/1 https://www.artcuriouspodcast.com/artcuriouspodcast/1 It's underwhelming in real life, very small, dimly lit, under thick glass, teeming with tourists. Online art is a great endeavor but there's no context for art without the space in which it lives, and in this I think the Musée d'Orsay is the better space.
- musicale 6y ago> there's no context for art without the space in which it lives Interesting - I tend to think of context in terms of things like social, cultural, or historical context rather than the physical space. Potentially online museums and galleries can provide a lot more historical context than a physical museums could, not only by providing supporting information but also by including many works that would not necessarily be located in the same physical museums. But I'm intrigued by the physical space issue - perhaps using 3D graphics, VR, and AR could help virtual gallery attendees to gain a better spacial understanding of the work as well as how it is displayed in the physical museum. In terms of current social, cultural, and historical context, I think virtual galleries can certainly present works in the context of current culture and recent history, and I also wonder if there are effective ways to provide a shared experience of visiting a gallery with other people, including people that you know as well as random members of the public, much as you might have in a physical gallery or museum.
- mromanuk 6y agoIs there an API to consume it?
- rapjr9 6y agoWould be nice if they had a web app that would cycle through the entire collection randomly. I have an old purchased Windows app somewhere that has several hundred images of the Louvre collection that I used to view that way on a projection screen. They say search results can be exported as a CSV file, so maybe a search that returns everything would produce a file that be used with a simple script to display all the images. I tried exporting all the paintings and got a file with about 10,000 lines of this kind of content: cl010055411;"Une Négresse portée par deux maures";"Desportes, Alexandre-François ; France";"1600 / 1700 (XVIIe siècle)";"INV 3891; B 1739";"Département des Peintures" cl010052671;"Sainte Famille";"Girolamo del Pacchia ; Italie";"1500 / 1600 (XVIe siècle)";"MNR 827; D 55-7-2";"Département des Peintures" cl010052673;Cavalier;"Anonyme ; Italie";"1400 / 1500 (XVe siècle)";"MNR 761";"Département des Peintures" That first number is the catalog number which can dropped into a URL: https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010055411 https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010055411 Some photos don't seem to exist (like the one above). Should be fairly easy to use curl and a script to pull a copy of the photos and display them though. Possibly they would get upset about someone using a bot to copy/view their entire photo collection, though maybe not if it only downloaded one photo every 5-30 minutes. If lots of people started doing this and didn't save the files locally their bandwidth use could go through the roof. A tag on the end will make the photo fullscreen in a web browser: https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010208581#fullscreen https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010208581#full... So a Javascript app might work well, though it would be nice to fill the computer screen rather than the browser window frame. Maybe I'll write an app and send it to them if I get inspired. Not high on my priority list, but doesn't seem too difficult.
- ppod 6y agoThis is a tangential point, but I've recently noticed that I discover a lot of art through wikipedia. Many pages that deal with abstract concepts are illustrated with wonderful and varied selections of art, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love
- kzrdude 6y agoThat is indeed beautiful but also a sad reminder that current copyright systems have frozen this situation in time - we can only ever use antique art freely in this way, and all recent art is locked behind pseudo-immortal copyright terms.
- kirubakaran 6y agoI hope to explore via VR soon. That's the only way I can spend as much time as I'd like to spend in the Louvre (besides packing up and moving to Paris and getting a job as a guard in the museum)
- jamiek88 6y agoYeah I look forward to hyper resolution from tours if these places. Or better just open world where i can wander. Imagine being the only person in the louvre, slipper and sweats with a bottle of wine standing inches from unprotected works.
- dade_ 6y agoParis was my last destination before COVID hit and the Louvre was worth every moment, but impossible to cover in a day. It is great to be able to revisit a museum from the web. Besides the food, the other highlight was https://www.centrepompidou.fr/ https://www.centrepompidou.fr/ Easily my favourite hideous building, somehow I love it. Fascinating works and a great view from the rooftop patio.
- DenisM 6y agoThe resolution of (some) images is vary disappointing, especially the downloads versions which seem even worse... https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl020579933 https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl020579933 MOMA on the other hand has very high quality imagery of Durer.
- afterburner 6y agoAt least Tineye works well in this case.
- neartheplain 6y agoAre 3D scans available for the Louvre’s, or any other museum’s, collections of sculpture and artifacts? I would love to import them into Unity and set up more museum worlds in apps like VRChat. A few such worlds already exist, and are among my most favorite VR experiences.
- zokier 6y agoDon't know about Louvre, but some museums definitely publish 3D models online. Europeana[1] in principle should be the one-stop place to find those from European museums, but still finding those is bit difficult now imho. Sketchfab has a recent blog-post on their part: https://sketchfab.com/blogs/community/1-year-of-public-domain-3d-on-sketchfab/ https://sketchfab.com/blogs/community/1-year-of-public-domai... [1] https://www.europeana.eu/ https://www.europeana.eu/
- inflorescer 6y agoVery cool, I like that! I went there once, it's overwhelming how large it is. I was frustrated only EU folks could get a student discount, when here in the states I don't think anyone's threat model is someone faking a student ID to get a discount on entry to a museum.
- geniium 6y agoThe company that is behind their digitalization is Zetcom. They have thousands of museum around the world and some are accessible online. You can check their web site https://www.zetcom.com https://www.zetcom.com.
- torstenvl 6y ago"More options" doesn't do anything on the first click, and on the second click it expands the menu and selects whichever artist is now where "More options" was. This is very frustrating. EDIT: And apparently selecting an artist from the filter list doesn't do anything but refresh the page. This is the worst. website. ever.
- iamleppert 6y agoI want the point clouds.
- anigbrowl 6y agoGreat to have the whole collection but the realizations are very disappointing, barely better than Wikipedia if that. The zoom is a joke. I looked up Napoleon at Eylau which is gigantic painting, about 5 metres by 7. The download version is only 126kb - GTFOH. https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010066486 https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010066486
- GekkePrutser 6y agoThat is indeed very disappointing. I suppose a lot of these works have been digitised a long time ago, maybe the technology wasn't up to it yet? Or perhaps they are just worried about forgeries or unauthorised replicas?
- tomaskafka 6y agoBrb, minting some NFTs (that's how it's done, right?)
- sloshnmosh 6y agoI think I found an error with one of the photos of amulets. I believe this amulet is upside down and represents a cat curled up. See if you can spot it. https://collections.louvre.fr/en/recherche?typology%5B0%5D=5 https://collections.louvre.fr/en/recherche?typology%5B0%5D=5
- GekkePrutser 6y ago"You wouldn't download a Mona Lisa" :D