Introducing Art Talks on Google+

Posted by Unknown in , , on Monday, March 4, 2013

An excellent guide often best brings an art gallery or museum’s collections to life. Starting this week, we’re hoping to bring this experience online with “Art Talks,” a series of Hangouts on Air on our Google Art Project Google+ page. Each month, curators, museum directors, historians and educators from some of the world’s most renowned cultural institutions will reveal the hidden stories behind particular works, examine the curation process and provide insights into particular masterpieces or artists.

The first guided visit will be held this Wednesday, March 6 at 8pm ET from The Museum of Modern Art. Deborah Howes, Director of Digital Learning, along with a panel of artists and students, will discuss how to teach art online. To post a question, visit the event page. If this talk falls too late for you to tune in live, you can watch afterward on our Google Art Project YouTube channel.

The next talk is from London. On March 20, Caroline Campbell and Arnika Schmidt from the National Gallery will discuss depictions of the female nude. Details are available on the Art Project’s event page. In April we’ll host a panel examining one of the Google Art Project’s popular gigapixel works, Bruegel’s “Tower of Babel,” featuring Peter Parshall, curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.



Additional talks are planned by curators from high-profile institutions such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Museo Nacional de Arte in Mexico and the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar.

Google Art Project aims to make art more accessible to all. We hope that Art Talks is the next step in bringing art to your armchair, wherever you are in the world, with just a click of a button. Stay tuned to the Art Project and Cultural Institute Google+ pages for more information on dates and times of these online lectures.

Posted by Lucy Schwartz, Google Cultural Institute

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Story of a flag...

Posted by Unknown in , , on Friday, March 1, 2013


by guest blogger Jeff Adamson

It's not unusual to see Old Glory flying in front of public buildings. One isn't surprised to see one even on a bridge, but there's sometimes a fascinating story behind some of those flags.  

Take the case of the flag atop the SR 285 Senator George Sellar  Bridge over the Columbia River in Wenatchee.  A bright new flag was installed this week by two of North Central Region's Electrical crew (Tim Hein and Josh Winn), in advance of the Washington State Apple Blossom Festival coming in April.

The Sellar flag is unique in that when a local Desert Storm support group got FAA authorization to put up the flag back in '92, it had to be permanently illuminated because it actually replaced the FAA's red flashing aircraft warning beacon on the top of the bridge. (It's the only flag we know of that cannot be moved, so it cannot legally be lowered to half-staff). That group replaced the flags until it disbanded in the late 90's.  We then took to replacing them until the state auditor told us we had no statutory authority to expend tax dollars for the flags.  We went looking for a partner and since '99, Wenatchee's RiverView Kiwanis club has been paying for them.

The 10x15' light polyester flags we are now using cost about $250.00 each and need to be replaced about every 8 mo. to a year, depending on weather.
It is a much appreciated community service.

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