Pictures For the American People

Photo of family taking part in this year's U.S. Naturalization
Ceremony, held at Norman Rockwell Museum. Photo by Jeremy Clowe
for Norman Rockwell Museum. All rights reserved.

So we continue into our next busy season at Norman Rockwell Museum. I have to say, the Fall is really a glorious time to visit the Berkshires— the colorful foliage is an artistic display in itself.

This past weekend I helped out with another U.S. citizenship naturalization ceremony at the Museum. This was our second time hosting (in partnership with the Berkshire Immigrant Center), and I'm really proud that we have gotten involved with such a significant event. It's hard to beat Norman Rockwell's artwork (in this case, The Four Freedoms) as an appropriate backdrop to welcome new American citizens; it's also inspiring to meet these individuals who have traveled so far (Pakistan, Ghana, Colombia, etc.) and worked so hard to become part of our country. With all the recent uncertainty about the U.S. economy and foreign relations (i.e. Syria), it is a reminder of how much the world still admires our country. And what joy on these new citizens' faces... I filmed and took photos of the event— you can view some of the latter on the Museum's Facebook page.

Visitors interact with the exhibition, "Norman Rockwell: Happily
Ever After." Photo by Jeremy Clowe for Norman Rockwell
Museum. All rights reserved.

This morning I'm helping to run our first live Google Art Talk. The online chat, which begins at 11 a.m. ET, will focus on Norman Rockwell's artistic influences— two of our curators will lead the discussion and I will be running their visuals for them. It looks really interesting, and I urge you to sit in or catch the recorded lecture, which will be archived on YouTube. I have spent the past couple months coordinating our involvement in this event; I learned about these new online art talks being held in Google Plus' Hangouts, and had approached the company about taking part. It's a live event, so hopefully it will go off without a hitch... similar to our involvement in the Google Art Project— read more about that initiative, which I also helped coordinate, here.

And speaking of technology, we had another nice article about our current initiatives, including today's Art Talk and our recent foray into QR code-enhanced exhibitions; I am quoted in this Berkshire Eagle article written by my friend/journalist Jenn Smith— I appreciated the mention of my video interviews, which are included in the exhibit.

Photo by Ben Garver for "The Berkshire Eagle."
All rights reserved.

Looking ahead, I'm getting ready to tackle my next exhibition video (Wendell Minor's America) and expand on some of our video production capabilities. In the meantime, I continue to play the part of spokesman— this week I conducted a tour and some interviews with travel writers visiting from Austria, and I have a short, live interview about the Museum scheduled for WSBS Radio this Friday, September 13, at 8:15 a.m. 

As if that wasn't enough, here is a link to a recent interview I gave to O Globo, a popular newspaper in Brazil. The article looks at the increasing popularity of Norman Rockwell, and the Museum's efforts to continue to spread the word about his art with an international audience. It's fun to see my words translated into Portuguese... heck, I'd be happy to travel to South America to take this global outreach one step further!...

Related Links:

Google Art Talk

2013 U.S.Citizenship Naturalization Ceremony (photos by JC), Norman Rockwell Museum Facebook page

"Culture a Click Away," Berkshire Eagle, September 6, 2013

"Retrato Do Século XX," Globo a Mais, August 16, 2013


"Pintura de ilustrador de revistas é a mais cara do acervo da Amazon Art," O Globo, August 18, 2013

Virtual Insanity

Saturday morning. Glad the weekend has arrived. 


The last week was a hectic one at work, busy handling press about Norman Rockwell Museum's involvement in Google Art Project. I conducted a long interview yesterday with WFCR-FM, New England Public Radio, about the Art Project; and I will be doing a live interview about the Museum on Monday, April 7, with WKNY Radio in Kingston, New York. Here are links to listen to both stations on Monday−the WKNY interview will be starting around 9:15 a.m., and WFCR will air later that day:



www.wkny.blogspot.com
http://nepr.net


Today is bright and sunny out here in the Northeast−a perfect day to get away from the computer screen, and take in some fresh air and exercise... but look at Google's latest state of the art endeavor−soon, the virtual and everyday may be even further entwined... arrrgh!




I have mixed feelings about these augmented-reality glasses−social interaction already seems to be deteriorating in some ways, and do these computer-enabled programs help make us smarter or more dumbed-down and dependent? 


Hmm... well, enough virtual world for now. Sarah and I are going to head out, maybe stop at a bookstore, and try and get "off the grid"...


Related Links:


"Google Begins Testing Its Augmented-Reality Glasses," New York Times, April 4, 2012

Getting My Google On

I had quite a surprise this morning as I drove into the Berkshires... I stopped to pick up a copy of The Berkshire Eagle, only to find my smiling face on the front cover--above the fold!

Photo by Ben Garver, The Berkshire Eagle. All rights reserved.

That's me and my colleague Thomas Mesquita, who helped bring Norman Rockwell Museum from the physical galleries to the online Google Art Project. The Museum's section of the high-resolution art database went live on Tuesday, and it came out really nice. Here you can see a selection of some of Rockwell's earliest work from our collection, with the opportunity to get incredibly close to the artwork online (our docents can relax!). The site actually allows you to zoom in and maneuver around each artwork featured, which offers the chance to view incredible detail that you most likely would not have the opportunity to see. Other sites have uploaded extremely large gigapixel images, and it is just amazing to be able to get that close to the works of such artists as Vincent Van Gogh or Georges Seurat.

The Berkshire Eagle article includes an interview with Norman Rockwell Museum Director/CEO Laurie Norton Moffatt, who attended the global launch of Google Art Project at Paris' Musée d'Orsay (one of my favorite museums!)  earlier this week . From the article, she states: "As popular and visited as our museum is, we know not everyone will be able to visit or even know who Rockwell is. This brings us great exposure and allows many more people to know his work."

We have a few other high-profile press requests coming in, but for the moment I am basking in the glow of making the cover of the almighty Eagle... although the article laid out right next to the photo announced "Major drug suspect caught"-- unrelated... I assure you!

Links:

"Rockwell goes high-tech with Google Art Project," Berkshire Eagle, April 5, 2012

www.googleartproject.com/collection/norman-rockwell-museum

"The Art of Google"

The Art of Google

Today Google launched the second phase of The Google Art Project, the company's online art database. Norman Rockwell Museum is one of 134 new participants with the project, which features high-resolution images and, in some cases, "street views" of art galleries worldwide. 

I first learned about Google Art Project back in February 2011, at the time of its initial launch. It sounded like a great idea, especially with the technology that allowed viewers to look at galleries in the same manner as the company's street maps. Our Museum was in a perfect position, having just digitized our entire collection and shared on our own website. I sent an initial inquiry for the Museum, and that was that (I figured we would be competing with a lot of other interested venues). Initially there were only 17 different partners, including such high-profile sites such as Museum of Modern Art, The Van Gogh Museum, and The Hermitage Museum. What is great is about the site is that it offers visitors a chance to view rare collections and take a virtual tour of many spots around the world that they might otherwise have a challenging time visiting.

Today's expanded list includes such sites as The White House, which is a such a fantastic idea (great for students):

  

So, last fall Google Art Project got back in contact with Norman Rockwell Museum about getting involved. I think we really owe a great deal of thanks to Risa Schwartz, the daughter of Berkshire artist Sol Schwartz, who we had exhibited over the summer. Risa works at Google, and it was through her suggestion that Google gave us a look at being included in its new phase of the project. 

I served as a project coordinator for the endeavor, as we began looking at artwork from our permanent collections that could be included. One obstacle was the fact that we do not own the copyrights to Rockwell's work, since it was originally created for periodicals and advertisers. We did, however, own quite a few works that would fall under the public domain--earlier works, which showcase the artist's formative years. We thought that was worth moving ahead with, along with a selection of works in our collection from other American illustrators.

Norman Rockwell Museum's collections page on Google Art Project. 
Photo courtesy of Google.

The unique thing about Google Art Project is the high-quality images that are included-- you literally can view the detail on some works more closely than you would be able to in a gallery. I have to hand it to my colleague Thomas Mesquita, who took time to scan, photograph and upload many of the images included. At the same time, I worked hard to find appropriate text, links, edit and enter all of that information into the project's dashboard. A week or so before Christmas, we had completed the uploading, and Google's team worked at integrating it all into their database. 

I notice that we're in pretty good company, with such new venues as London's National Gallery, and The J. Paul Getty Museum also added today. I hope that this is just the starting point for us, and we will eventually be able to include some of Rockwell's more iconic later works, and make use of Google's Street View technology (Rockwell's original studio, which is on our grounds, would be perfect for that). But for now, it's great to see an initial idea become a reality, and I'm happy that I was able to contribute.

Related Links:

http://www.googleartproject.com

"A New Way To Tour The White House," YouTube clip

"Norman Rockwell Museum Joins Google Art Project" press release (written by yours truly)