{"id":4849,"date":"2018-11-01T18:30:46","date_gmt":"2018-11-01T18:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/?p=4849"},"modified":"2018-11-01T18:30:46","modified_gmt":"2018-11-01T18:30:46","slug":"masterworks-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/masterworks-online\/","title":{"rendered":"Masterworks Online"},"content":{"rendered":"

After our trip to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts a couple of weekends ago, I can’t help but wish the museum wasn’t three hours south of here. I would love to go more regularly. I\u00a0 always get museum envy after visiting any city — it’s such a luxury to see so many masterworks under one roof.<\/p>\n

\"Nectarines

As the piece begins, I stitch the image with silk thread<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Nectarines

Adding definition and texture with stitch variation<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Nectarines

Image complete, ready for dye<\/p><\/div>\n

So I was interested to read on Hyperallergic<\/a> last weekend that The Art Institute of Chicago<\/a> has revamped their website and now provides free and unrestricted access to over 44,000 masterpieces from their digital archives. While it may not be quite as good as seeing the work in person, the sophistication of high-resolution images is a darn good substitute, furnishing those of us who live far afield with better access than ever before.<\/p>\n

\"Nectarines

Folded and marked, ready for resist stitching<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Nectarines

Resist stitching complete, threads drawn tightly for best results<\/p><\/div>\n

Reading that article reminded me that several years ago The Metropolitan Museum of Art<\/a> in New York put 400,000 high-resolution images online. Looking further, I discovered The Yale University Art Gallery<\/a> also offers free downloads of work within their collection, as does The National Gallery of Art<\/a> and The British Museum<\/a>. I’m sure many more institutions are jumping onboard as well.<\/p>\n

\"Nectarines

Still wet from the dye process<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Nectarines

Dyes and eyedroppers<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Nectarines

Dyeing complete, ready to remove resist stitching<\/p><\/div>\n

I know it’s not quite the same as sitting before the real thing, but it’s pretty remarkable that we can get so close to art virtually, don’t you think? What a gift it is that modern technology allows us to study masterpieces in collections far from home, in incredible detail, from the comfort of our studios.<\/p>\n

\"Nectarines

Unpicking the stitches is a delicate process, especially when doing my best to keep my ripper away from the embroidered image.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Nectarines

The dyed piece unfolded. I may be in a bit of a pickle with this one as the dye took more readily to the embroidered area than it has in the two previous pieces I’ve made with this process. You can only barely see that there is an image hidden in the center.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a92018 Elizabeth Fram<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Nectarines

By angling the piece in the light, you can at least see there is something there. Now the detailed work of bringing it out begins. This is going to be a challenge.<\/p><\/div>\n

While looking into all of the above, I discovered Open Culture<\/a>, which seems to be a gold mine of free cultural and educational media. You will want to add it to your bookmarks.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After our trip to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts a couple of weekends ago, I can’t help but wish the museum wasn’t three hours south of here. I would love to go more regularly. I\u00a0 always get museum envy after visiting any city — it’s such a luxury to see so many masterworks under one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[854],"tags":[855,851,858,229,391,857,859,856],"class_list":["post-4849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-art-institute-of-chicago","tag-boston-museum-of-fine-arts","tag-british-museum","tag-hyperallergic","tag-metropolitan-museum-of-art","tag-national-gallery","tag-open-culture","tag-yale-university-art-gallery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5kO5z-1gd","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4849"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4877,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4849\/revisions\/4877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}