WebProNews

Tag: museums

  • Elon Musk Gives $1M to Nikola Tesla Museum

    Elon Musk Gives $1M to Nikola Tesla Museum

    In 2012, popular internet comic Matthew Inman, better known as The Oatmeal, published his most-viral comic to date – an ode to Nikola Tesla, who he called “the greatest geek who ever lived.” In it, he argued that the only thing Edison ever pioneered was douchebaggery, and that Tesla was the real hero who should be championed.

    Shortly after, Inman announced that he was spearheading an effort to buy back Tesla’s old laboratory and repurpose it as a museum. The lab, located in Shoreham, New York, is known as Wardenclyffe Tower and had recently gone up for sale. Inman felt that it was his duty to preserve this final workplace of the unsung hero who “drop-kicked humanity into a second industrial revolution.”

    He started an Indiegogo campaign, seeking $850,000 to outbid the current buyer and help a non-profit organization erect the Nikola Tesla Science Center.

    The campaign garnered over $1.3 million.

    Here’s the thing – that money raised via crowdfunding is amazing, but it’s only enough to save the location. To build the museum and fully realize the Tesla Science Center, it’s going to take millions.

    Naturally, Inman thought to ask the decidedly not poor founder of Tesla Motors, Elon Musk, for help.

    And today, on Nikola Tesla’s 158th birthday, Musk delivered.

    From a blog post on The Oatmeal:

    Earlier this week I got to speak to the man directly, and he promised two things. 1. He’s going to build a Tesla Supercharger station in the parking lot of the museum. 2. He’s donating $1 million dollars to the museum itself. Elon Musk: from the deepest wells of my geeky little heart: thank you. This is amazing news. And it’s Nikola Tesla’s 158th birthday.

    That’s awesome. What else can we say?

    Images via Wikimedia Commons, (2)

  • NASA Space Shuttle Carrier Being Reassembled in Houston

    NASA Space Shuttle Carrier Being Reassembled in Houston

    For decades the space shuttle program was the crown jewel of NASA’s space initiative. Dozens of astronauts were launched into orbit inside the reusable space shuttles, returning weeks later inside the shuttles, which were designed to glide in for a plane-like landing. After landing, the space shuttles were carried back to Kennedy Space Center on one of two specially-modified Boeing 747s.

    With the remaining space shuttles now retired in favor of private space contractors, these planes no longer serve a purpose. Like the space shuttles they carried, the 747s will now be put on display for visitors to space museums.

    One of these carriers, the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft 905, is currently in the process of being reassembled after being transported to Space Center Houston in pieces. All 318,000 pounds of the carrier were transported 8 miles from Houston’s Ellington Airport last week with the help of 30 different public and private agencies. The move was a success and the craft is now being reassembled live on Space Center Houston’s Ustream channel.



    Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

    The shuttle carrier is centerpiece of a new $12 million exhibit planned for Space Center Houston. The carrier will be joined by Space Shuttle Independence, a scale replica of the original space shuttles, which will be strapped to the top of the carrier the same way real shuttles were for transportation in years past. According to Space Center Houston the attraction, an international landmark, will include interactive exhibits and allow visitors to tour the inside of both the carrier and the space shuttle. The eight-story tall exhibit is expected to open in 2015.

    “We’re so excited to work with Space Center Houston and have this unique display available for everybody to see,” said Ellen Ochoa, director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center. “It will help tell the story of the whole shuttle program and of course the part that the shuttle carrier aircraft played. It will bring people all over the world to Space Center Houston.”

    Image via Space Center Houston

  • The British Museum Honored With A Google Doodle On 255th Anniversary

    Google is celebrating the 255th anniversary of the British Museum with a doodle on its homepage in the UK.

    The museum, established in 1753, opened to the public in 1759, and currently holds a collection of about 8 million objects. Here’s a 20-minute look, showing some of the stuff it has on display:

    The Museum announced a record number of visitors for 2013. It saw 6.7 million visitors throughout the year. This beat the previous record of 6 million visits in 2008 and was a 20% increase over 2012.

    Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, said “I am delighted that so many people have visited the world collection at the British Museum in the last year. Displays onsite, loans and touring exhibitions nationally and internationally, big screen viewings and online access mean this is truly a dynamic collection that belongs to and is used by a global citizenship”.

    Image via Google

  • Egyptian Museum Looted Amid Political Unrest

    As the Egyptian army begins to take back control of Egypt, the fallout from the country’s latest unrest is coming into focus. In addition to the lost lives and unsure political situation, the cultural heritage of Egypt is, unfortunately, another victim of the situation.

    UNESCO today announced that experts sent to Egypt to investigate the country’s Malawi National Museum in Minya have returned some bad news. Nearly all of the collections at the Malawi museum were looted during August. Of the museum’s 1080 artifacts, around 600 of them are now missing. One bright spot of news from the investigation is that the Malawi museum itself is “not badly damaged.”

    The UNESCO antiquities experts also combed other sites that were damaged in the recent clashes. The group, which included Pierre-André Lablaude, France’s chief architect of historical monuments, also visited three historical churches (Evangelical Church in Minya, Amir Tadros Monastery in Fayoum, and Franciscan Sisters School in Beni Suef) that were looted and set on fire. The experts also visited several sites at the request of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, including the Villa Casdagli, which UNESCO described as “sound despite superficial damage.”

    One month ago, when news of the Malawi museum looting became known, UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova condemned the acts. She also called on Egyptian authorities to protect historical sites and prevent the sale of artifacts stolen from the museum.

    “Egypt’s exceptional cultural heritage is not only an inheritance of the past, reflecting its rich and diverse history; it is also a legacy for future generations and its destruction seriously weakens the foundations of Egyptian society,” said Bokova.

    (Image courtesy UNESCO)

  • Google Launches Online Exhibits Looking At Hiroshima, Nagasaki Bombings

    Google announced on Monday that it has collaborated with the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum on a group of online exhibits for the Google Cultural Institute.

    This month marks the 68th anniversary of the atomic bombings in Japan.

    Four exhibits are from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. These, as Google explains, “illustrate the bombing from different perspectives: a pocketwatch stopped at the exact time of the detonation, diaries of young women cut off abruptly on August 6, and panoramic photos of the hauntingly barren city center days after.”

    Three are from the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum.

    “The Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum meanwhile curated photos, videos, and drawings in three exhibitions,” says Toru Kawamura, New Business Development Senior Manager, Google Japan. “One collection focuses on the famed Urakami Cathedral—the largest cathedral in East Asia where 15,000 Japanese Catholics once worshipped. The church completely collapsed after the bombing, but thanks to a post-war reconstruction effort, the Urakami Cathedral now stands triumphant as a symbol of the city’s rebirth.”

    The addition of these exhibits follow a recent partnership of Google’s with the Eiffel Tower Operating Company to create other exhibits enabling users to learn more about the Paris landmark.

    You can see it all at the Google Cultural Institute here.

  • Amy Winehouse Exhibit Opens at London Jewish Museum

    The Jewish Museum in London this week opened an exhibit on the life of singer Amy Winehouse, who died in 2011 from alcohol poisoning (though an eating disorder may have also contributed).

    The exhibit, called Amy Winehouse: A Family Portrait, will feature many of Winehouse’s personal belongings, including her guitar, record collection, and wardrobe. Family pictures from Winehouse’s younger days will also be on display in the exhibit. The exhibit was created with the help of Winehouse’s brother, Alex.

    “Amy was someone who was incredibly proud of her Jewish‐London roots,” said Alex Winehouse. “Whereas other families would go to the seaside on a sunny day, we’d always go down to the East End. That was who we were, and what we were. We weren’t religious, but we were traditional. I hope, in this most fitting of places, that the world gets to see this other side not just to Amy, but to our typical Jewish family.”

    Amy Winehouse: A Family Portrait will run from this week until September 15 at the Jewish Museum in London.

    (Image courtesy Jonwood2/Wikimedia Commons)

  • Harvard’s Semitic Museum Is Using 3D Printers To Restore An Ancient Statue

    Harvard’s Semitic Museum Is Using 3D Printers To Restore An Ancient Statue

    Much of our shared ancient history is told through art. Researchers study statues, carvings and other artwork to piece together the lives of these ancient peoples. Unfortunately, many of these ancient statues were lost to time, or were destroyed by those who have little appreciation for them. Now archaeologists are hoping to undo this damage with the use of everybody’s favorite modern technology – 3D printing.

    Harvard’s Semitic Museum recently shared a story of how it’s now attempting to reconstruct a 2-foot-long ceramic lion that was used in the worship of Ishtar in the city of Nuzi. The statue was destroyed when Assyrians attacked the city and ransacked the temple. Now the museum is only left with the front paws and a piece of the rump and back legs of a once majestic statue.

    Thankfully, the University of Pennsylvania has a completely intact lion. Harvard’s Semitic Museum has borrowed that lion and contracted Learning Sites Inc. to take high quality 3D scans of the statue. The scans will allow them to reconstruct the missing pieces of Harvard’s lion and restore it to its original form.

    The reconstruction process will make us of a 3D printer that sculpts high-density foam into the shapes needed. It might not be the original ceramic material that the lion was made from, but it will allow the museum to display an object that looks similar to the one that was destroyed so many years ago.

    It seems that the lion is just the start in applying modern technologies like 3D printing to the world of archaeology. The museum’s assistant director Joseph Greene says that these new techniques will be invaluable in learning new information from artifacts.

    “It’s important to devote our time and attention to objects we have in our collection and to apply the latest techniques, techniques not dreamed of when [the artifacts] were dug up. There’s a continual curiosity: What more can we learn? What hasn’t been tried so far? Can we wring new data from objects that have been in our basement for 80 years?”

    It just further proves that 3D printing is still evolving into a technology that can serve multiple purposes for different people. We may think printing a giant wrench is pretty cool, but reconstructing thousand-year-old artifacts is on another plain of awesomeness.

    [Image]

  • Google Helps Bring More History Online

    Google Helps Bring More History Online

    Today, Google announced that it has helped to bring 42 new historical exhibitions online as part of the Google Cultural Institute. This includes stories put together from seventeen partners including museums and cultural foundations, who have compiled letters, manuscripts, video testimonials and more from their own archives. There are projects related to Apartheid, D-Day and the Holocaust, among other things.

    Here’s more about the effort:

    “As with the other archives that we’ve helped bring onto the Internet, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, you can zoom in to see photos in great detail and search through millions of items for a specific country, person, event or date,” explains Google Cultural Institute product manager Mark Yoshitake.

    Here’s more on the Dead Sea Scrolls project.

    Here’s a video Google put together to help you use the site:

    “The historical collections are the latest chapter in the work of the Google Cultural Institute, following the Art Project, World Wonders and the Nelson Mandela archives,” adds Yoshitake. “We’re working closely with museums, foundations and other archives around the world to make more cultural and historical material accessible online and by doing so preserve it for future generations.”

    Google will be expanding its Cultural Institute further, and is calling on other potential partners to apply here.

  • Now You Can Walk Through Museums Just By Using Google Maps

    Google announced that it has added indoor maps and walking directions for 20 museums in the U.S. to Google Maps for Android on phones and tablets.

    “In the past, navigating through museums could be an art form in and of itself. But Google Maps for Android has got wayfinding inside your favorite museums down to a science,” says Google’s Cedric Dupont. “With indoor maps and walking directions for U.S. museums now available on your Android phone or tablet, you can plan your route from exhibit to exhibit, identifying points of interest along the way, including between floors.”

    Museum maps

    The new inclusions are:

    • American Museum of Natural History
    • Anacostia Community Museum
    • Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
    • Cincinnati Museum Center
    • Freer Gallery of Art
    • Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
    • Indianapolis Museum of Art
    • National Air and Space Museum, National Mall Building
    • National Air and Space Museum, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center
    • National Museum of African Art
    • National Museum of American History
    • National Museum of the American Indian
    • National Museum of the American Indian, George Gustav Heye Center
    • National Museum of Natural History
    • National Portrait Gallery
    • National Postal Museum
    • National Zoological Park
    • Renwick Gallery
    • S. Dillon Ripley Center
    • Smithsonian American Art Museum
    • Smithsonian Institution Building (“The Castle”)
    • The deYoung Museum

    Users can access the maps by opening Google Maps on your device, and zooming in on the museum.

    Google says more museums will get indoor maps soon, including: including the SFMOMA, The Phillips Collection, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the National WWII Museum in New Orleans.

  • Google Art Project Hopes To Add Mona Lisa, The Louvre With Next Phase

    Make no mistake, Google Art Project has partnered with some amazing museums and cultural centers around the world in order to bring people greater access to some of the world’s most important and valuable works of art. Not only has Google Art Project assembled virtual galleries that users can peruse, but it also offers Street View for 51 museums that partnered up in the project.

    Still, the project is lacking perhaps the most recognizable work of art in history: Leonardo’s Mona Lisa.

    According to Bloomberg News, however, that could soon be changing now that Google has begun talking with the Louvre, home of the Mona Lisa and the most visited museum in the world, in order to work out a deal where Google may be granted access to the Louvre’s 400,000-plus collection of art.

    “Everyone asks me if we have Leonardo’s Mona Lisa,” Amit Sood, who heads the project, said at a news briefing in Paris. “We’re talking to people from the Louvre. Maybe they’ll be part of the next phase.”

    When contacted by telephone by Bloomberg News, a spokeswoman at the Louvre press office declined to comment and wouldn’t give her name.

    Amassing virtual tours that features the likes of Bosch, Van Gogh, and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., La Gioconda will undoubtedly be the elusive jewel missing from Art Project’s crown.

    To sample what Art Project has been doing with Google Street view, check out the Tokyo National Museum below.


    View Larger Map

    [Via Bloomberg.]

  • Google Street View Goes Inside Museums, Wins At Technology Forever

    Google Maps has demonstrated that one of the best uses for Street View has been when the feature has in fact gone off the street. The latest unique Street View offering comes by way of a collaborative effort with another Google service, Google Art Project, that has yielded a wildly fascinating Street View-style tour of 51 different museums and art-containing locations throughout the world.

    According to the Lat Long Blog,

    A wide range of institutions, large and small, traditional art museums as well as less traditional settings for great art, are represented in the expanded Art Project. Click here and take a look at the White House in Washington D.C. Explore the collection of the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar. Continue the journey in India, exploring the Santiniketan Triptych in the halls of the National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi.

    The images you’ll come across in Street View are in a high resolution (some at a stupidly high quality) that contain the 360° panning imagery that most other indoor Street View endeavors have included. Over 30,000 different works of art are featured in Google Maps’ venture inside these museums and other cultural centers.

    Here’s an example of what you’ll see if you decide to check out the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The funny (and surprising) thing about this feature is that you can toggle between the first and second floors anytime, but the map appears to just drop you right through the floor/ceiling to your exact coordinates on either floor, Shadowcat-style. It’s been so long since I’ve been to the Met so I don’t really know where I was navigating before I came across this, but here’s a display of an insanely ornate piano/organ-looking instrument next to a harp and other antique instruments (I can already hear the internet comments filing their nails and readying to dig into me for misnaming these instruments).


    View Larger Map

    Also, if you’re not familiar with what Art Project is working on, check out the introduction video below that came out a few days ago.

    You can check out the full gallery of all 51 locations over at the Google Street View Gallery for Art Project.

  • IBM Upgrades The Louvre, Makes It Europe’s First ‘Smarter Museum’

    IBM Upgrades The Louvre, Makes It Europe’s First ‘Smarter Museum’

    Thanks to IBM, the Louvre received a major upgrade that will help the museum protect and preserve the countless pieces of art currently in its care. The Louvre, which is the Parisian home to some of the most famous art our world has ever produced, covers more than 650,000 square feet, making it one of the largest museums in the world.

    Understandably, turning the Louvre into a Europe’s first “smarter museum” was a hefty overhaul for IBM to undertake. As Europe’s most visited museum, with a record breaking 8.8 million visitors in 2011, one of The Louvre’s goals is to keep the majority of its galleries open daily. To meet that goal while managing more than 65,000 repairs and maintenance visits, the museum needed to make its corrective and preventative maintenance more streamlined and efficient. Prior to working with IBM, the staff managed its facility-related repairs and maintenance work by paper, involving hundreds of vendors. In order to keep the majority of its galleries open daily, the museum recognized that it needed a computerized maintenance management tool to make its corrective and preventative maintenance more streamlined and efficient.

    Through the use of IBM Maximo Asset Management software, the museum’s staff has been able to streamline their maintenance processes to improve customer service as well as the efficiency, real-time operation and management of the museum.

    The software solution’s integrated database helps the museum visualize processes including the initial planning, cleaning, maintenance and disposal of the rooms and facilities systems such as the air-conditioning system, heating system, elevators, lights for each room or gallery, and the locking system for more than 2,500 doors.

    “Managing thousands of repairs, cleaning and maintenance visits per year to preserve the facilities and artwork while keeping the galleries available and accessible to visitors is a daunting undertaking,” said Metin Pelit, department manager of computerized maintenance management system, The Louvre Museum. “Thanks to IBM software, we’re able to visualize our entire infrastructure and make better, more informed decisions about when and how to respond to problems — and about when to proactively address a potential problem that we otherwise wouldn’t have seen coming.”

    The Louvre’s management system can now aggregate data from individual systems within the museum, providing the museum staff and its vendors, coherent and real-time information on each asset. Additionally, the software provides a predictive view into the performance and reliability of the facility equipment and systems, allowing museum staff to better determine which assets need to be repaired or replaced.

    “Buildings are massive systems of systems, and these systems need to talk to each other for a building to become smarter,” added Pelit. “In The Louvre’s case, there’s the added challenge of being home to thousands of irreplaceable pieces of art which must be carefully preserved while trying to accommodate millions of visitors annually. By using Maximo software to monitor the condition of assets across the museum’s facilities in one single database, these systems begin to talk to one another, allowing staff to preserve artwork and facilities with more ease and efficiency. As a result The Louvre is now able to keep the majority of their galleries open to customers on a daily basis while simultaneously reducing costs and energy consumption.”