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Renaissance Art Hits The Internet

Renaissance Painting Online

Another New York museum visit took me to the Frick Collection where I saw some cool things happening with art and technology. They were able to use an infrared imaging technique to help reveal the “underdrawing” beneath Giovanni Bellini’s St Francis in the Desert. And they were also able to use modern digital technology to put the presentation based on their work streaming on the Internet for all the world to see:

The internet is often discussed as a kind of lowbrowing, people are spending their time with lolcats instead of great art. And of course to an extent they are. But improved communications technology is a powerful lever for any kind of cultural pursuit. Lots of people around the world aren’t able to travel to New York to see the artwork on display there, and there are lots of other cities with major art collections. People who want to seriously study painting have always had to rely on books and slideshows, extremely expensive media that really only suggest themselves to specialists. Now wide vistas are being opened to the world.

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