Displaying items by tag: internet

In most exhibitions, especially in mainstream museums, the curator is an elusive and scholarly figure, applying his or her knowledge and ever refined tastes to meticulously craft a show that will engage and enlighten. #SocialMedium does things a bit differently.

For this hyper-contemporary exhibition, the Frye Art Museum in Seattle invited an unusual guest curator to organize the show -- the entire internet. Over a two week period in August, the Frye shared 232 of their collection's paintings on various social media sites including Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram. Internet enthusiasts from around the globe transformed into "citizen curators" simply by "liking" an image.

Billionaire Leon Black’s publishing company Phaidon acquired Artspace.com, an Internet startup that sells works by contemporary artists, as investors struggle to figure out how to make money from art online.

Phaidon, a publisher of art and design books, agreed to buy Artspace, the companies said today in a statement without disclosing the price. The deal is the latest in a wave of mergers and partnerships shaking up the Internet art market even as profit in the nascent industry remains elusive.

Like vodka and fun-house mirrors and trips to Japan, the Internet can make you feel bigger than you are.

It persuades vitamin D-starved shut-ins to try their hand as webcam stars. It tempts the rude to imagine their impertinence catching global fire through that perfectly worded comment. It seduces the artisanal cheese maker with visions of a worldwide market beyond the alley boutique.

And it can make even the oldest-school art museum wonder: Could our collection reach the villages of China and the universities of Peru and perhaps a prison or two? Could it touch those who have no chance of entering our physical doors? Could it spread to the whole world?

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the Internet entrepreneurs perhaps best known for their associations with Facebook and Bitcoin, are the latest techies to leap into the art world. This week, the twins’ Winklevoss Capital announced an investment round in Paddle8, a New York-based art auction house known for their high-profile charity events including a recent Faberge Egg auction. Paddle8 has flirted publicly with the use of Bitcoins for art transactions in the past and is one of the more tech-savvy of the online auction houses looking for a piece of the international market. Winklevoss Capital declined to discuss the specifics of the investment but said it was their first in the art or auction arenas.

Because of more restrictive U.S. visa requirements in the wake of 9/11 and a growing appetite for Western art in emerging markets in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere, online fine art auctions have turned into a bit of a boom industry.

Convinced that consumers are finally ready to shop online for Picassos and choice Persian rugs in addition to car parts and Pez dispensers, Sotheby’s, the blue-chip auction house, and eBay, the Internet shopping giant, plan to announce Monday that they have formed a partnership to stream Sotheby’s sales worldwide.

Starting this fall, most of Sotheby’s New York auctions will be broadcast live on a new section of eBay’s website. Eventually the auction house expects to extend the partnership, adding online-only sales and streamed auctions taking place anywhere from Hong Kong to Paris to London. The pairing would upend the rarefied world of art and antiques, giving eBay’s 145 million customers instant bidding access to a vast array of what Sotheby’s sells, from fine wines to watercolors by Cézanne.

It was announced on Monday, April 28, 2014, that The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Instagram account was selected as the Webby Award Winner in the Social: Arts & Culture category in the 18th Annual Webby Awards. The Webby Awards, presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS), is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. The IADAS, which nominates and selects The Webby Award winners, is comprised of web industry experts. With 12,000 entries from all 50 states and more than 60 countries, and two millions votes in the Webby People’s Voice Awards, the 18th Annual Webby Awards were bigger than ever before.

While many museums post photos of their illustrious collections online, the images are not for public use. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is about to change all of that. The institution, which focuses on the art and history of the Netherlands, is allowing visitors to download high-resolution images off of their website at no cost. They’re even going so far as to encourage patrons to copy, alter, and share the images.

The Rijksmuseum, whose collection includes works by Rembrandt (1606-1669), Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), and Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), has already made 125,000 images available through Rijksstudio, an interactive section of their website. Officials aim to add 40,000 images per year until the entire collection, which is comprised of 1 million artworks, is available to the public. The decision to make all of the museum’s images public stems from the notion that they are a public institution, making the art and objects in their collection communal property. The proliferation of the Internet has also made image policing extremely difficult and officials would rather the public use high-quality images instead of poor reproductions.

Rijkstudio has seen over 2.17 million visitors since going live in October 2012 and approximately 200,000 people have downloaded images.