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Attractions jobs & news AM2.jobs Met provides free digital access to art collection


New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in the US has made 394,000 iconic works of art available to the public for free download. Visitors to the Met’s website can sort


images by artist, medium, location and era. The images are generally at least 10 megapixels in size. Dozens of paintings by the likes of Monet, Van Gogh and Degas have been uploaded, while more than 500 of Picasso’s works are available for download. The collection not only includes paint-


ings, but also photos of Aztec stonework, Greek sculpture and Chinese calligraphy. The digital portfolio, in high resolution,


represents the first online art gallery of its size. Museums have been traditionally hes- itant to reproduce works, citing concerns over forgery, loss of revenue and decreasing the value of original pieces through cheap, unlicensed merchandising. The Smithsonian has an online collection


of around 1.2 million images, videos and au- dio clips available for public consumption, but many are low resolution copies, in an


Monet’s ‘Houses on the Achterzaan’ is just one of thousands available on the Met’s database


attempt to prevent commercial use. The Met says the images are intended for


use by students, educators, researchers and non-commercial content creators. Those


wanting use of the images beyond that still have to seek out the Met’s permission for licensing any of its works. More: http://lei.sr?a=X0g0M


Chinese museum forced to close after thousands of objects declared fakes


Fiske’s new dome includes an 8K theatre


Planetariums lack brand recognition with public


Douglas Duncan, director of the recently renovated Fiske Planetarium in Boulder Colorado, US, has said that Planetari- ums suffer from branding challenges. Speaking to Attractions Manage-


ment magazine, Duncan said “Num- bers have grown mostly through word of mouth. There’s a branding challenge with Planetariums in general. “If your dome is called a planetarium rather than a digital video theatre, then people will only associate it with the stars and planets.” More: http://lei.sr?a=o1n6u


6 Read AM2 online: AM2.jobs/digital


A museum in China has been ordered to close after it was discovered that near- ly a third of its exhibits were actually counterfeit. The Xi Feng Xian Lu Cheng Museum, located in China’s Liaoning Province, was closed down by police, who said that almost a third of the museum’s 8,000 exhibits were replicas. One exhibit – a large or-


namental sword – was put through the books at a value of US$19m (€14m, £11.3m) and is the ‘most valuable’ fake in the collection, while in reality, the sword was in fact a replica. Forgery in China is a se- rious problem and in 2012,


Twitter: @AM2jobs Historical forgeries are becoming a huge problem for China


a study by the China-based Artron data company estimated that as many as 250,000 people in 20 Chi- nese cities may be involved on a day-to-day basis in the production and sale of fake


art, with estimates from some saying that up to 80 per cent of works that go through Chinese auction houses are replicas sold as the real deal. More: http://lei.sr?a=E1l0X


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