Like most American cities of that size, Brooklyn has a world class art museum. Unlike most of those museums, however, the Brooklyn Museum has a unique problem in terms of its identity and public perception, in that it exists in the very large and imposing shadow of the more famous museums of nearby Manhattan. This leaves it unfairly relegated to a public perception of second class status, when in fact, The Brooklyn Museum is terrific and should be prominent on the list of major American art museums.

There was an article on the New York Times site a few days ago, Sketching a Future for the Brooklyn Museum, in which several members of the arts community give their take on the museum’s rather unique position and public relations dilemma.

I had the pleasure of visiting the Brooklyn Museum for the first time last summer, drawn by an exhibition of the works of French Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte (more here), and was surprised and delighted with how much I enjoyed the museum and the works then on display from the permanent collection.

I say “then on display” because, like every major museum, only a small portion of the museum’s holdings can be on display at any one time, and works are rotated into view periodically.

The Brooklyn Museum has a wonderful feature to make even more of its collection available, in that some of its extensive archives are open to the public in the “Visible Storage” center on the museum’s 5th floor (image above, bottom). Here you can get a behind the scenes glimpse of how museums catalog and store their collections, with great class cases on rolling tracks that are frequently rotated to display more of the works in the collections.

The collections are housed in the museum’s impressive Beaux-Arts building, one that would stand out as a prominent cultural center in any city — except New York. Like many major museums, non-flash personal photography is permitted in the permanent collections.

For those who can take the ride out to Brooklyn, the museum is right next to the beautiful Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. The combination is just right for a day’s outing.

For those who can’t get to the museum physically, the Brooklyn Museum website is arranged to encourage browsing through the collections, though it helps to have a starting point. I was personally impressed with the museum’s holdings of Claude Monet (image above, top) and other proponents of Impressionism, as well as American Impressionists, including one of my favorite paintings by William Merritt Chase, his Studio Interior (image above, third down and detail below; also see my post on William Merritt Chase.)

You can spin off of your search by clicking on tags for related topics, like Landscape or Venice, museum sections like the Beaux-Arts Court, or search for artists like John Singer Sargent (image above, second down). Note that the search box in the right column of the collections pages returns different results than the general search box at the top of the pages.

Unfortunately, the website’s pop-up code for the enlargements is a bit awkward, but the images are large enough to enjoy and the interesting mix of the collections can lead you off in search of fascinating artists and subjects.

As you browse through the collections, you’ll cross paths with a number major works that will whet your appetite for a visit, putting the Brooklyn Museum on your map the next time you’re in New York City.

One of the treasures on the Met’s website is the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Essentially a site of its own within the larger museum site, the Timeline is an ongoing project, sponsored by three foundations and created and maintained by the museum’s curatorial, conservation and education staff, that currently catalogues 6,000 works and places them within the contexts of time, place and thematic essays.

The Timeline’s features can be explored from any of these directions, as well by links to world religions, and directly searched via search box or index. You can search for artists or works of art, and many are featured in pages devoted specifically to the artist or work, as well as within the larger thematic essays.

Most of the articles have images that can be enlarged or zoomed, and are linked to further images and information within the museum’s larger object database.

From the Timeline’s front page you can flip through panels of works, timelines or thematic essays, or use the drop-down menus at top for access to dedicated pages for same, across geographic areas via world maps, or find works of art through a detailed search box.

Once drilled down to a topic, you can also follow the links in the “Related” section to any number of additional lines of browsing.

A major time sink as well as a tremendous resource.

Maintaining a physical space is often more difficult for small museums than large ones. Even though large museums have much higher expenses, they also have larger support and financial structures. There is a balancing point museums must reach in terms of support to make the operation of a physical museum viable. This is particularly difficult in places where real estate is at a premium, as in New York City.

Such has been the struggle for the Dahesh Museum of Art, which moved between several venues, and left its last one due to the high cost of renting the space. It is currently a museum without a physical home. But the good news is that the Museum has put some of its collection online in a virtual exhibition.

This is particularly nice because of the museum’s rather unique mission, as the only museum in the U.S. devoted to 18th and 19th Century European academic art.

This, as fans of the genre(s) will tell you, is important because this art often gets short shrift among the larger art establishment. It is seen as the stodgy, formulaic art that post-war 20th Century Modernism (the pinnacle of all artistic achievement) came along to save us from (as well as liberating us from the associated stifling conventions of draftsmanship, perspective, representation and such outmoded concepts as “beauty”, but I digress).

The Dahesh collection started with Lebanese writer and philosopher Saleem Moussa Ashi, whose pen name was Dr. Dahesh. His collection of more than 2,000 academic paintings, sculpture and works on paper form the core of the collection.

It is worth noting that the museum has also paid attention to illustration (an equally bankrupt form of making images, even more reviled among the modernist factions, and obviously “not art” – sigh).

Not having the museum in a physical space for the time being is unfortunate, but as they look for a new home for the collection, parts of it travel on loan; and the online presence gives those of us who love this misunderstood and neglected chapter of art history a source of inspiration.

Most of the images are zoomable, which, while not as satisfying as full high-resolution images, is still better than just small ones. The collection is a little awkward to browse, the only alternative to a search is alphabetical arrangement; and someone had the misbegotten idea to watermark some of the smaller images (please stop demonstrating your ignorance, whoever you are), but the zoomable images can be enjoyed.

The museum shop does currently has a physical presence, at 55 East 52nd St. in Manhattan. They have an interesting selection of books, prints, posters and exhibition catalogs.

(Images above: Edwin Long, José Tapiró Baró, Ernst Karl Eugen Koerner, Aguste Bonheur)

Art Babble, the tagline for which is “Play Art Loud”, aggregates art related videos from a variety of sources, most notably museums like the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Arts & Design, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Norman Rockwell Museum, Rubin Museum of Art, San Jose Museum of Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Van Gogh Museum, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; along with Public TV station KQED.

For the most part these seem to be high end, professionally made videos that delve into a variety of art subjects. I’ve only had chance to watch one full video so far, and perhaps I got lucky, but I found it fascinating, illuminating and nicely erudite without being stuffy or overly technical.

Research in progress: Van Gogh and contemporaries (images above), from the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, is a short in which a restorer from the museum examines a painting by Van Gogh and a painting by Monet side by side, utilizing a range of approaches, from naked eye to microscope to x-ray to ultraviolet, and explores similarities in their painting technique, the use of broken color and the choice to allow the ground to show through the brushstrokes to add to the color and texture of the painting.

if the other videos are of this quality, I’ll be looking for a lot of spare moments to return to the site.

You can view the list of videos by topic (”Channels”), by artist, by series or by the participating institution.

There are participating museums in 5 states in the Northeastern US, as well as in Tennessee, Texas, Hawaii and California, and in the UK at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.

According to Wikipedia:

“The project is coordinated by the Brooklyn Museum, with the participation of the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the Houston Museum of Natural Science, the Hunter Museum of American Art, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, The Jewish Museum (New York), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Historical Society, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Taft Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum. In all, there are 15 different museums and cultural institutions participating.”

Individuals or teams (up to ten people) register for participation at various museums and then shoot photographs (according to the rules of each individual museum, usually no flash, no tripods, and only from the permanent collection) of items that fit themes on a “Goal List”. These include themes suited to various galleries of the museum’s collections and a general topic of Valentine’s, the overall theme of the event.

Usually the photographer takes at least two photographs of an object, one to tag it with a note held up next to the object with the Goal List tag and object information, and another high quality image (or several) for potential use in the Wikipedia articles.

The contest takes place during the entire month of February, 2009 (hence the Valentine’s theme), and although the prizes are modest, such as tours of particular collections given by their curators, the contest sounds like a lot of fun for art lovers and photographers. You can go on your own or participate in a planned event with other photographers or groups.

The photographs get uploaded to the Wikipedia Loves Art Flickr Group, which also has notices of particular meet-ups (Brooklyn Museum today) and links to Goal Lists and registration.

The page also contains the shooting guidelines for each museum, the overall qualifications and the notice that eligible photographs must be released under the correct Creative Commons License. These guidelines are also on the main Wikipedia article along with links to individual Wikipedia pages about the participating institutions, which also often have their own pages devoted to the event.

Photographs will be selected from the entries and appropriate choices, judged for quality and appropriateness, will be used to illustrate Wikipedia articles, with credit to the photographer.

Even for those of us not participating, it should be interesting to watch the results at they are posted in the Flicker Group. Those currently posted are mostly from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and seem to be largely of sculpture and historic artifacts, but the event has just started.

They are also of mixed quality, some people are better photographers than others, and low light photography with a hand held camera is not that easy (having a camera with “Image Stabilzation” is helpful). The Smithsonian is probably the only museum that allows flash photographs of two dimensional artwork (though they really shouldn’t).

The event should yield some interesting results. I’m particularly looking forward to the posting of at least a few high-resolution photographs of paintings, like the Pissarro in the image above, top (larger version here, click “Original” at top for high-resolution version). I just can’t get enough of those.

The Wikipedia Loves Art combination photography contest and scavenger hunt runs through the end of February, 2009.

Even after that it should be worthwhile looking through the Wikipedia Loves Art Flickr Group.

[Via Eye Level]

Over 300 smaller, “regional” museums, most of them art museums or similar cultural institutions, have made agreements to offer reciprocal membership privileges to the members of other participating museums through the North American Reciprocal Museum Program (NARM).

If, like me, you’re an inveterate museum goer, and if, like me, you’ve discovered the treasures to be found in small regional art museums in the U.S., this can be a terrific deal, particularly if the museum you get your membership from does not ask for too high a membership level for access to the reciprocal agreement status.

There is a list of participating museums on the Greenville Museum site, that is linked to the sites of the other museums. You can find a museum you might be inclined to join and check out their membership pages for details on their required membership level for the “perk” of the NARM sticker on your membership card.

You don’t have to join a museum in your area, most museums will gladly accept members from other states (particularly these days), and the price of the membership level varies widely. Some ask over $300, others considerably less.

Each museum also usually has a brief description of the program and it’s benefits (and also usually offer additional membership benefits at the level required). Many of them offer a downloadable PDF of the participating museum list.

The best deal I’ve found is at the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pa, a museum I’m inclined to be a member of anyway. They only ask for a $100 “Donor Level” membership to get the NARM sticker added to your membership card.

You can look over the list of participating museums, calculate how often you’re likely to visit some of them, and see if the cost is worth it. For me it pays for itself a couple of times over, as there are a number of museums that I visit in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and New York that are on the list. If you’re in an area where travel to other regional museums is more difficult, it may not be as viable.

The reciprocal membership includes basic membership admission and gift shop discount privileges at the participating museums.

You may want to check the notes at the bottom of the list, however, as there are a few restrictions between certain museums (usually in the same area).

I like museum memberships anyway. They not only help support the museums and give you benefits like members’ previews and bookstore discounts, but they give you a sense of freedom about visiting frequently and dropping in on a whim, without reservations about spending enough time to make the cost of admission worthwhile.

Add to that the impetus to explore other museums on the list that are within reach or available when you travel, and you have a terrific bit of inspiration in your pocket in the form of the NARM sticker on your museum membership card.

(Image above, left to right: Brandywine River Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Sackler Gallery, Baltimore Art Museum, Montclair Museum, James A. Michener Art Museum, Newark Museum, Laguna Art Museum.)

The Phillips Collection is a museum collection in Washington, D.C. that has strengths in that time period in both modern and Impressionist works from Europe and America.

A selection of American Impressionist paintings from the collection has been arranged into a traveling exhibit, and is currently on view as the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.

The Oklahoma City Museum has an online feature that displays some of the paintings in the exhibit, with a voice over narration about the works and the artists.

The Phillips Collection site has a Timeline of American Art, and a list of American Art in the collection that you can view alphabetically with an image of each work.

In many cases, like Childe Hassam’s beautiful painting of Washington Arch, Spring (image above), there is a more extensive feature and a Zoomable version of the image (also see my post on Childe Hassam).

In addition to Hassam, the exhibit includes works by Theodore Robinson, John Henry Twatchman, Julian Alden Weir, Ernest Lawson, William Glackens, Helen Turner and Gifford Beal. I was pleased to see that some of the “Pennsylvania Impressionists” were included, like William Lathrop, John Folinsbee and Robert Spencer. There is also at least one piece by George Inness, though he was not an Impressionist painter.

American Impressionism from the Phillips Collection is on view at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art until January 18, 2009.

The exhibit will then travel to the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach Florida from March 13 to April 15, 2009; and the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe from June 5 to September 13, 2009.

There is a 192 page book accompanying the exhibit, American Impressionists: Painters of Light and the Modern Landscape by Susan Behrends Frank, though it doesn’t seem to be in stock from Amazon; it should be available at the exhibit in all of the locations.

[Via Art Knowledge News]

Quite to the contrary, many painters and illustrators found great subjects in winter’s different range of colors and subjects, and some took particular delight in images of winter; and illustrators of course have a long tradition of portraying the Christmas holiday.

For those in the area of southeastern Pennsylvania, there is a small but delightful show at the Brandywine River Museum of works from the permanent collection showcasing winter scenes and images of Christmas, that runs until january 11, 2009.

The show includes prints by cartoonist Thomas Nast, who was in many was responsible for the image of St. Nicholas as a bearded, pipe smoking fellow with a sack of toys over his shoulder; as well as N.C. Wyeth’s colorful take on Kris Kringle (above, left) which owes more to J.C. Leyendecker’s interpretation of the Jolly One (see my post on Illustrators Visions of Santa Claus).

N.C. Wyeth is nicely represented by several of his lesser known landscape paintings, and these are complimented by large, infrequently seen works in the Brandywine’s collection by Pennsylvania Impressionists Elmer Schofield and Edward Redfield.

The show’s mix of illustration and gallery art includes prints by Winslow Homer and paintings by Ashcan School painter Everett Shinn, as well as illustrations by F.O.C. Darley, Frank X. Leyendecker (J.C. Leyendecker’s underappreciated brother), Maxfield Parrish and Jessie Wilcox Smith.

Visitors to the museum can supplement their enjoyment of the show’s theme with other relevant pieces on view in other galleries, like Howard Pyle’s wintertime historical illustrations, N.C. Wyeth’s beautiful winter-themed illustrations for The Black Arrow (above, right) and son Andrew Wyeth’s winter scenes of the Brandywine Valley.

For those not in the area, you might follow some of the links above, as well as looking into paintings by American artists who loved to paint in winter, like Edward Redfield and Fern Coppage (see my post on Fern Coppedge and George Gardner Symons, as well as my recent post on John F. Carlson).

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to take in a new exhibition at The Newark Museum in New Jersey that showcases works in all three categories.

Paths to Impressionism, French and American Landscape Paintings from the Worcester Art Museum opens with one of Monet’s paintings of waterlillies and features paintings from Impressionist precursors in the Barbizon School and other early exponents of en plein air landscape painting, like Camile Corot, Charles-François Daubigny, Constant Troyon, Julien Dupre, Eugene Boudin (who was directly influential on Claude Monet) and Georges Michel, who was one of the first French landscape painters to make a regular practice of painting on location.

The show then moves into American painters influenced by the Barbizon school, like Joseph H. Greenwood, Jervis McEntee, John Francis Murphy and Dwight Williem Tyron. A highlight is a series of stunning small landscapes (and a few larger ones) by George Inness, who grew up in Newark and later settled in nearby Montclair, New Jersey.

As you progress through the exhibit it then presents you with a few paintings by French Impressionists, notably Alfred Sisley and Camille Pissarro (also here); and it moves into a gallery of American Impressionist painters for a grand finale that includes a number of striking paintings by Childe Hassam, a beautiful Sargent landscape and a small jewel by Luther Van Gorden.

It’s a beautiful show, and while not large by blockbuster museum exhibit standards, is complete enough within itself to give a very nice overview of the influences leading to and away from the nexus of artistic styles known as Impressionism.

The exhibit is nicely complimented by another exhibit at the Newark Museum called Small by Sublime: Intimate Views by Durand, Bierstadt and Inness, featuring works from the Hudson River School and Tonalist movement in the U.S; and for those like me who are visiting the Newark Museum for the first time, can be supplemented with a number of pieces to be found in the permanent collection, including landscapes by Childe Hassam and one of my favorites by Pennsylvania Impressionist Daniel Garber.

(When in the Newark Museum’s permanent collection, be prepared to be assaulted at least once by the museum’s poorly implemented proximity alarms, that hoot and screech long after you’ve removed your nose from the painting, giving you no indication of how close is too close, and leaving the poor guards to exasperatedly ask someone to move back every few minutes. Somebody at the museum needs to re-think this — mark the floor and/or set the alarms to cease as soon as the offending nose is back far enough from the painting. Fortunately, this only seems to be in place in the permanent collection, and doesn’t mar your enjoyment of the featured exhibit.)

Paths to Impressionism was organized by the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts in 2004, and traveled to The Allentown Art Museum in Pennsylvania and the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee, and possibly other regional museums, before it’s current run in Newark (the page devoted to the exhibition on the Worcester Art Museum site is not up-to-date with the exhibition’s schedule). I don’t know where, if anywhere, it goes from here.

Paths to Impressionism, French and American Landscape Paintings from the Worcester Art Museum is at the Newark Museum until January 4, 2009. There is a catalog accompanying the exhibiton.

(Image above: Julien Dupre, Luther Van Gorden, George Inness, John Singer Sargent, Camille Pissarro, Childe Hassam)

The school and museum share a web site, which has just been completely redesigned and rearranged, and it is now much easier to browse the museum’s extraordinary collection. The collection is particularly rich in beautiful 19th Century paintings.

You can search for individual artists, view their paintings, sculpture or works on paper separately, or view all works together. You can also simply browse the collection as a whole by the same criteria, a delightful exercise that will lead you to unexpected treasures. In addition you can browse by artist, medium or period.

My one complaint (as usual) is the size of the images. There are larger versions associated with most of the works, and though adequate for getting a feeling for the work, still much smaller than they need to be for real appreciation. Hopefully that will be supplemented with additional images or some kind of image zooming feature in the future.

In the meanwhile, once you find a piece you like, you can search the web for additional images or information on that artist (here’s a great new visual search engine, SearchMe, that has an interface like the Mac “Cover Flow” system used on their new OS and on the iPhone/iPod Touch, and makes visual browsing more efficient).

Even better, of course, if you have the option, is to visit the Academy here in Philadelphia, where they always have a superb selection form the permanent collection on display in the beautiful Furness building.

(Images above: Cecilia Beaux, George Inness, Thomas Eakins, Childe Hassam, John White Alexander, Charles Courtney Curran, John Sloan. Links are to my previous posts on those artists.)