Since I wasn’t able to even go to one of my local museums this week due to a very busy schedule, I decided to go online museum visiting and check out some online exhibits and media that stood out to me the most. I’ve always been very interested in art, especially art from the Renaissance and I decided to go with that theme for this little research. I stumbled onto the Cleveland Museum of Art’s website which had some digital media copies of some Renaissance art such as the art print of “The Birth of Venus” (c. 1516) by Marco Dente. The reason why I chose this art piece was that I always found the Greek/Roman mythology story of Venus’ birth very interesting as a middle schooler when my literature class decided to read and study some Greek/Roman mythology. So, in some ways, I guess I had some nostalgia for my past studies and thought that I should dive into them.
Before I explain some of the effectiveness and issues, I’ll explain a bit about what the scene of the art piece looks like; The goddess Venus is depicted in the print standing on a scallop shell in the sea, surrounded by sea creatures and the gods Uranus and Saturn in the sky. Saturn is depicted in the print wielding a sword as he attacks his father, Uranus, while Venus emerges from her watery birth.
In terms of the effectiveness of the art piece, the print is a beautiful and skillful representation of the classical mythological theme of the birth of Venus, which was a popular subject in Renaissance art. Dente paid close attention to details, such as the intricate patterns on the sea creatures and the folds in Venus’s drapery. The print’s use of line and shading effectively conveys a sense of depth and texture. On how the museum presented the print as an online form of media, the site for “The Birth of Venus” looks great. Not only does the site has a description of its media piece, but it has the background of the artists and the exhibition history which is user-friendly for the public. The quality of the media is very high quality and the users can expand the picture to see in more detail.
As for potential issues surrounding the preservation and maintenance of the media file, prints like “The Birth of Venus” are vulnerable to damage from light, humidity, and other environmental factors. Additionally, the ink used in prints can deteriorate over time, leading to fading or discoloration. It’s very important to take proper precautions to ensure for artwork, like “The Birth of Venus”, is stored in a suitable environment and is handled carefully when being displayed or transported. Digital copies of the print are made for easier dissemination and preservation, but even digital files require careful management to ensure they remain accessible and usable over time.
Overall, I think this site is very well made and that the media that I saw is of high quality even though I listed some potential issues of preservation and maintenance of this media file, I believe that how the Cleveland Museum of Art’s website presented their media was very well put together.
Question: What was the last museum you visited online to view their media files, and what artwork or artifact caught your attention the most?
For my visit I used the British Museum’s virtual tour, the Rosetta Stone they had on display caught my attention the most.
For this assignment, I went to the website of the Museum of Flight, in Seattle Washington. They have a lot of collections that aren’t just aircraft, which where I found the document that I wrote about, the First International Space Docking Certificate. Mainly because I didn’t even know that was a thing, or why it would be a thing.
For a previous discussion I went looking through the museum of the Norths collection for board games, and one of them was a old school game called north to Alaska, which caught my attention since it looked like such a specific locally produced game, but was also clear fairly high quality for the time it was produced.
While searching for museum pieces for this assignment, I came across the Cup Noodles Museum in Osaka Ikeda Japan. I like ramen a lot and was surprised yet happy to see Cup of Noodle on display. It reminded me of being a child in Germany when my parents were stationed there while serving active duty military and for some reason always kept tons of Cup of Noodles. As artifacts, I get the idea that it doesn’t take much to preserve them because they are dehydrated foods thus keeping the container safe from being smashed or compromised is the most important thing to do. Never thought of Cup of Noodle as art but considering in so many Asian cultures, they are not just a staple but at treat they do make for great art pieces deserving of museum exhibitions.