Traditional Fine Arts Organization
Future Projects And Those In Process
(above: Joseph Kleitsch (1882-1931), Madonna of the apples,1927, oil on canvas, 27.9 x 36.2 in. Source: Bonhams. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Some projects listed below are suitable for volunteers to conduct additional research which may be beneficial to interested museums and foundations. Please submit findings to info@tfaoi.org. If we accept your research applicable to a project, we will publish your name and contact information, accompanied by a disclaimer notice.
1 Add video references for topics. Google video search for our topic Hudson River School retrieved many videos, some from museums. After the list of references to other online texts for major topics, create a general statement about online videos such as "A December, 2022 Google search using the phrase "Hudson River School" (and then by counting the videos found in the videos part of the search results) yielded "x" (number) related videos." If then appropriate, add the sentence "Some of the videos were created by notable sources such as private or public museums, universities or television networks." While doing this research, edit URL dry rot links but keep the references in gray color. Links are not made to individual videos because they are susceptible to rapid dry rot.
2. Edit "other online resources" exhibit citations for URL dryrot. Error 404 links will be removed and the text color changed from black to gray, indicating that the link no longer is active. Links to museum URLs will be kept active.
3. Redesign Art Museum, Gallery and Art Center pages based on Resource Library articles and essays for improved design and ease of access. Changes will include exhibit entry bullet list format to paragraph format; exhibit bold text to larger plain text; addition of our logo and modifications of font size. Note: as of
4. Add images of artworks, created by artists included in our Distinguished Artists catalog, sourced from Wikimedia Commons plus other sourcces, into pages of the catalog. Many artists listed in the catalog already have accompanying Wikimedia Commons images yet a larger portion do not. Click here to view an estimate of our total quantity of image and text files.
5. Publish references to Resource Library articles (excluding essays) by named authors. This will be a sister project to the first Online Encyclopedia American Art References Project.
6. Add counts of articles and essays for selected topics.
7. Subdivide other resources pages for selected topics as numbers of them increases. Also, reorganizie topics pages including:
8. Subdivide Distinguished Artists images for selected artists as the numbers of them increases so as to have no more more than one image on the artist reference page per artist.
9. Continue work on our online Museum of American Art. This museum exists in people's imagination. Perhaps some day a terrestrial one will be built.
10. Convert editing software to a more current format and enable remote editing of our website. In process.
11. Increase visitation of our website through increased awareness. In process through enriched content and grant activity.
12. Collaborate with The Art Story, an academic-curated online encyclopedia for worldwide art. It has a summary page that focuses on notable American artists, art movements and styles from early history through today. Topics include: Native American Art, Folk Art, American Architecture, Hudson River School (1826-70), Luminism (1850-75), Tonalism (1870-1915), American Impressionism (1880-1920), Ashcan School (1900-15), Photography: Pictorialism, Straight Photography, and Beyond (1902-Present), Synchromism (1912-24), Harlem Renaissance (1920 - early 1940s), Fourteenth Street School (1920-40), American Regionalism (1928-43), Social Realism (1929 - late 1950s), Abstract Expressionism, Color Field Painting, Post-Painterly and Hard-Edge Abstraction (1943-65), Neo-Dada (1952-70), Pop Art and Photorealism (mid 1950s-1970s), Minimalism and Post-Minimalism (1960 - Present), Earth Art and Environmental Art (1960s - Present), Postmodernism (1960s - Present). In this context pursue publication of references to Resource Library artist biographies by named authors. The Art Story says: "Though our content is written and edited by art historians with Doctorate degrees, our primary audience is the general public.
With our work, we hope to connect a much broader audience beyond the academy to the richness and depth of art history. While we summarize and analyze movements and artists, we do not use scholarly citations so as to simplify the reading experience, although all of our essays are checked for facts and content. For those looking for more academic sources, each of our pages has a "Further Resources" section to point the reader to both popular and more traditionally academic essays, articles, videos, and books." Resource Library provides a plethora of references to online articles, essays, videos and audio - plus references to thousands of paper-printed books and articles - concerning over 200 topics and over 3,000 deceased artists. It's over 1,300 published essays are penned by noted experts in their fields. We believe that the public will be well served by The Art Story publishing these references. Note: this project is on hold.
13. Create e-gallery touring exhibitions. This project, separate from the "Frame" project referenced below, contemplates touring exhibitions of artworks via life-size electronic simulation of gallery rooms in a physical museum. Multiple rooms containing interlinked "television" screen "tiles" in a micro-bezel grid pattern covering each wall, plus software and hardware support, will produce life-like simulations. The electronic content on the walls will simulate paintings placed on brick and mortar walls, complete with extended wall labels and reasonable space portrayed between paintings. Photographs of actual museum gallery walls may be also used. A more sophisticated application involves video and sound presentation of a curator touring guests through each room. A potential exhibition may be named "The (name of the collection) of (type) of art."
For instance, six 85" 43.375" x 75.25" 4K television screens with two screens stacked vertically and three screens horizontally per wall yield an overall dimension of 96.75" high by 225.75". This converts to 8' x 18.8'. Four walls per room times, say, five rooms requires 24 screens per room times five rooms for a total of 120 screens.
If the average width of the depicted paintings is 2.5' with a horizontal separation of 1.5', then four paintings may be shown per wall. This arrangement yields 16 paintings per room or 96 paintings per exhibition. Accompanying extended labels may be placed underneath or next to the paintings. Some screen surfaces would have wall panels in place of paintings. For instance, one 3' wide panel per room would leave 91 net paintings for the exhibition. Transportable demising walls may be made of floor-mounted modular frames.
In the case of a collection of paintings, if there are 240 paintings selected from the collection to be shown in an e-gallery of 10 rooms containing four six-screen matrixes per room with a capacity of sixteen paintings per room, an iteration of up to 160 paintings may be presented. If a casual viewer spent realistically eight seconds on average (1) viewing each painting, and viewing eight wall panels at one minute per panel, it would take around 40 minutes to view the entire collection. An initial iteration of 160 smaller paintings followed by another of 80 larger paintings presented back to back would allow the collection of 240 paintings to be experienced comfortably by 130 people, allowing an average of 13 people per room over the course of the two iterations.
A J. Paul Getty Museum study estimates that average adult spends less than 30 seconds per object. James Elkins, art critic and historian, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, says: "There have been a number of surveys of how visitors interact with paintings in museums. One found that an average viewer goes up to a painting, looks at it for less than two seconds, reads the wall text for another 10 seconds, glances at the painting to verify something in the text, and moves on. Another survey concluded people looked for a median time of 17 seconds. The Louvre found that people looked at the Mona Lisa an average of 15 seconds, which makes you wonder how long they spend on the other 35,000 works in the collection."
Our conservative average of eight seconds per painting for a set of 240 paintings is based on 130 viewers spending 15 seconds per painting and label of interest and glancing at about 110 paintings. This adds up totaling 32 minutes of viewing time. An additional eight minutes may be allocated to viewing eight wall panels. The viewing time for the entire 240 paintings would therefore be around 40 minutes.
When capital and production costs are spread over multiple closed schools rooms, surplus museum space, unleased office or retail space venues across the nation, the overall pilot project may serve audiences at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods. Exhibitions may be sponsored by institutional derivative means and site-specific support. And let's us face it, why not enjoy the pride of being first to travel, via the marvels of 21st century technology, soul stirring art depicting our nation's heritage?
We aren't able to facilitate this project on our own. Museums and foundations need to accomplish it internally or through consultants. We seek no compensation from any party involved in projects. Grants note: If guests would be admitted without charge or at a nominal charge , we are interested in providing funds to cover a portion of an e-gallery touring exhibition out of pocket expenses.
14. Create airport long term e-wall installations or rotating exhibits. In our travels via numerous American and international airports, we are aware of vast expanses of concourse wall space that is underutilized or vacant. Most airports lack long horizontal e-displays. Innovative and forward thinking museums may joint venture with airport authorities to install horizontally tiled, large (currently up to 85") low cost television displays widely available in big box stores. Integrated displays may cover tens to hundreds of lineal feet. If twenty 85" diagonal, 43.375" high x 75.25" wide OLED 4K television screens are tiled horizontally, the horizontal dimension of the display is 1,505 inches, which converts to 100 lineal feet. At 2024 retail prices the cost of each screen is about $3,500. Therefore, twenty screens would cost $70,000 plus taxes, mounting and wiring costs. Much larger screens are available at higher prices.
Horizontal displays can replicate portions of walls of current exhibitions. Alternately, they may feature highlighted treasures from permanent collections. The vertical band of space for typical groupings of artworks and labels on physical gallery walls is usually more than can be accommodated by the 43.375" height of 85" television displays. If so, the electronically replicated wall segments may be zoomed out by software to fit the horizontally tiled screens. If larger screens are purchased, zooming out may not be needed or be significantly reduced. The ideal situation is to have artwork labels be readable by passersby.
Ongoing cost per view is relatively attractive since large amounts of travelers pass by concourse walls daily. Airports maintain passenger logs, so counts are readily available for computations. Ongoing costs include screen cleaning, content input and equipment maintenance. Capital costs are low, since individual television sets and related hardware are inexpensive. Security expense for the hardware is negligible since airports already have security personnel. Off the shelf software is available for linkage of tiled displays. System software for remote control is also readily available. An example of a consultant providing full service solutions, referred to by a faculty member of UC Irvine, is Steve Woo of Hiperwall. We have no relationship with the firm, and provide his name only for reference purposes. Images on the linked displays may be remotely controlled by educational staff of museums at their main campuses or by a consultant. The presentations may be rotated in terms in terms of minutes, days or months.
From a marketing perspective, these installations will serve as a magnet for physical visitation. There may be few less expensive way to expose visitors to a local museum. Museums and other users may utilize the same display if an airport authority is the lead provider of hard costs and system control.
We aren't able to facilitate this project on our own. Museums and foundations need to accomplish it internally or through consultants. We seek no compensation from any party involved in projects.
15. Create "The Frame" touring exhibitions. Samsung's The Frame television products provide proprietary technology for consumers to be able to display self-curated collections of artworks. The company also owns an Art Store which is an online subscription service based on its library of images. The images are available in thematic sets. Alternatively, subscriptions may be based on sets of images drawn from collections of art museums.
In perusing Art Store museum collections, we sensed that collaborating museums are largely Eurocentric. Addition of artwork sets from American art museums, galleries and art centers will provide access to the works of many historic American artists.
UCI Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California, for which we have provided funds for exhibition grants, deploys cutting edge technologies to better educate ongoing visitors and reach new audiences. This institution is amenable to exploring collaborations with Samsung and off-campus venues such as large shopping malls.
We envision "pop up" exhibit spaces for short term exhibits. For instance, imagine an unrented retail space within a regional shopping mall. The space would be secured by the stakeholders and have temporary galleries with demising walls made of black curtains. The lighting in the galleries would be subdued. The Frame TV screens would be hung from a temporary ceiling lattice. The artwork images on the screens would be sourced from the permanent collection of a nearby participating museum.
Benefits accruing to a collaborating museum could include Art Store subscription royalties and favorable publicity. Samsung would receive publicity plus income attributable to television set and subscription sales. The venue would receive additional foot traffic, possible revenue and publicity. If guests would be admitted without charge, we are interested in providing funds to cover a portion of a museum's out of pocket expenses.
We aren't able to facilitate this project on our own. Museums and foundations need to accomplish it internally or through consultants. We seek no compensation from any party involved in projects.
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