Louvre makes its entire collection available online(collections.louvre.fr)
collections.louvre.fr
Louvre makes its entire collection available online
https://collections.louvre.fr/en/
214 comments
I’m confused who this is for. It’s not the same experience seeing art online. Part of what makes the Louvre or other museums special is being in a beautiful and decorated historically important space. It puts you in a different mindset where you can wander, ponder, and appreciate. I’m no Luddite but a digital experience simply can’t recreate that, at least not today.
You literally satisfy the definition of a Luddite to a T, perhaps not in the most negative way, but some way nonetheless.
You can't do this here. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules.
Short of booking a ticket to Paris and taxiing to the museum, this is a fine way to explore the collection.
I guess that's why they did it? Because people who want the real experience will still go in person. As such, they aren't really losing any customers.
The Louvre is a state owned museum. It’s purpose is not to sell tickets, but to disseminate culture. The purpose of the tickets is limiting the visitors to a number that can fit in the building.
If many people opt to look at the works online and not in person, the Louvre can reduce the ticket prices without increasing the number of visitors and this would be considered a _success_.
If many people opt to look at the works online and not in person, the Louvre can reduce the ticket prices without increasing the number of visitors and this would be considered a _success_.
Hmm, sorta. Depending on the country, museums are usually financially supported by both private individuals and the state. Many museums rely on physical visitors to pay ticket prices either for entry or for temporary exhibitions. Also visitor numbers are quite often the metric of success by which funding can then be sought. So yeh, there's some limiting because of space / damage to artworks etc but on the whole museums want more visitors both physical and online.
Yeh. I've spent years working with museums online and encouraging them to be more open about what they do - digital experiences enhance their standing in many ways. Partly it's access, partly marketing, partly education. And yes, the more people know about thing X online, the more likely that will "convert" to real physical visits to the organisation, which is normally the primary metric by which they guage success.
I don't plan to go to Paris in the near future due to lack of time but being able to view it online allows me to "wander, ponder, and appreciate" at least to some extent
I don't plan to go to Paris because I don't want to become another victim of the Paris Syndrome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome
I think Stendhal syndrome is more likely. If you appreciate art and architecture, anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stendhal_syndrome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stendhal_syndrome
I do, but I don't appreciate people snickering at me because I don't know their language, or illegal sketchy figures trying to scam me because I am a tourist.
I was having a good laugh at your link and then I was like.. Uh this is Wikipedia, they don't do jokes.
So this is an actual thing. Lol.
And yeah Paris has its nice areas but like most cities in the world it's also overcrowded (try the RER A at rush hour - pre corona), dirty, has its dark sides, and is suffering greatly from mass-tourism. Most Parisians I know are not very happy. I go there a lot.
Really I think there's much better places to visit, like Barcelona. Which is suffering from the same flaws but I find it a bit more accessible. But visiting Paris for the first time was not a culture shock for me at all. However I grew up 800km from Paris. I suppose someone from a totally different culture on the other side of the world might have an idealised view. Especially if they paid a relative fortune to visit it.
Still... It sounds a bit overblown :P There's many movies that show Paris quite realistically, I don't think anyone truly interested would not pick up on that.
So this is an actual thing. Lol.
And yeah Paris has its nice areas but like most cities in the world it's also overcrowded (try the RER A at rush hour - pre corona), dirty, has its dark sides, and is suffering greatly from mass-tourism. Most Parisians I know are not very happy. I go there a lot.
Really I think there's much better places to visit, like Barcelona. Which is suffering from the same flaws but I find it a bit more accessible. But visiting Paris for the first time was not a culture shock for me at all. However I grew up 800km from Paris. I suppose someone from a totally different culture on the other side of the world might have an idealised view. Especially if they paid a relative fortune to visit it.
Still... It sounds a bit overblown :P There's many movies that show Paris quite realistically, I don't think anyone truly interested would not pick up on that.
I will never go to Paris, so this is the only way I could ever experience it.
I think I kind of understand the Truth that you're getting at - from a similar point of view, aren't artists usually particular about the medium that their art is presented in? because the medium can cause the work of art to have a different effect on the audience. [1]
In any case, it's certainly no substitute for the real thing (but I'm sure everyone kind of understands that).
[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosophy-of-art/The-mediu...
In any case, it's certainly no substitute for the real thing (but I'm sure everyone kind of understands that).
[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosophy-of-art/The-mediu...
> Part of what makes the Louvre or other museums special is being in a beautiful and decorated historically important space.
This is true in theory, in practice you will meet arrogant and unhelpful museum guides, tons upon tons of people not respecting all the basic rules (no flash, be relatively quite, etc) and a labyrinthine place which can give you anxiety if you are just visiting one day and want to see as much as possible. I went there like 8 years ago in very low season I cannot imagine how it would be today in a post-covid summer with all the instagramers and tik-tokers. So in the meantime I would enjoy all those marvels a my leisure pace in my computer. There are million of things we cannot experience directly and they are still worthwhile to see in original or imagined illustrations, from celestial bodies to ancient civilizations.
This is true in theory, in practice you will meet arrogant and unhelpful museum guides, tons upon tons of people not respecting all the basic rules (no flash, be relatively quite, etc) and a labyrinthine place which can give you anxiety if you are just visiting one day and want to see as much as possible. I went there like 8 years ago in very low season I cannot imagine how it would be today in a post-covid summer with all the instagramers and tik-tokers. So in the meantime I would enjoy all those marvels a my leisure pace in my computer. There are million of things we cannot experience directly and they are still worthwhile to see in original or imagined illustrations, from celestial bodies to ancient civilizations.
I know what you're saying. I used to think digital was everything until my first museum visit (Dublin museum), and it changed my mind when I could lean in and look at each individual brush stroke, and the related paintings next to one another, and even the chatter of people around me.
The chatter and humming of people around, by itself was worth going to the museum, seeing how fathers describe the items to their children, and how sophisticated-looking folks talk and such.
It was a magnificent experience that nothing compares to it in the digital world (yet).
The chatter and humming of people around, by itself was worth going to the museum, seeing how fathers describe the items to their children, and how sophisticated-looking folks talk and such.
It was a magnificent experience that nothing compares to it in the digital world (yet).
There are multiple audiences for museum collections in the flesh, and multiple audiences for online collections, too. It's not and never has been "real" Vs "virtual". Well, to be fair this was a concern in the very early days when museums thought a virtual visit would jeopardise a real one - but not for years now...
So yes, nothing makes up for the visceral experience of seeing real art and heritage face to face but if you can't get there or are a researcher or school teacher or artist looking at historical techniques or...[insert many other use cases here], online collections play a hugely valuable role.
Plus of course, art like this is often paid for by the state and so the public "owns" it and should get the widest possible access to it.
So yes, nothing makes up for the visceral experience of seeing real art and heritage face to face but if you can't get there or are a researcher or school teacher or artist looking at historical techniques or...[insert many other use cases here], online collections play a hugely valuable role.
Plus of course, art like this is often paid for by the state and so the public "owns" it and should get the widest possible access to it.
Its an amazing resource for people studying art or people teaching art.
Its a different experience than seeing it in person. However, there are benefits to both. I've seen gigapixel scans of some of the greatest paintings in history that let you zoom in on the tiniest details and see the brush strokes, the texture of the dried paint, the cracks and aging, etc. For some of the same pictures if I saw it in person I'd be a dozen feet or so away from it because its too valuable to let people get close. Entire objects are virtually invisible viewing some paintings in person.
One of the ways that budding artists rapidly improve is by copying the works of master artists as a study. It should be pretty clear how this tool might be useful to them.
>Part of what makes the Louvre or other museums special is being in a beautiful and decorated historically important space.
Architecture is great, but what makes the Louvre special is the caliber of their art collection. Some people will never be able to afford to see it in person. Why not let those people appreciate the art from afar?
Even if a person can afford to go on an expensive vacation, there's a million breathtaking places to visit in the world. One can't visit them all.
Its a different experience than seeing it in person. However, there are benefits to both. I've seen gigapixel scans of some of the greatest paintings in history that let you zoom in on the tiniest details and see the brush strokes, the texture of the dried paint, the cracks and aging, etc. For some of the same pictures if I saw it in person I'd be a dozen feet or so away from it because its too valuable to let people get close. Entire objects are virtually invisible viewing some paintings in person.
One of the ways that budding artists rapidly improve is by copying the works of master artists as a study. It should be pretty clear how this tool might be useful to them.
>Part of what makes the Louvre or other museums special is being in a beautiful and decorated historically important space.
Architecture is great, but what makes the Louvre special is the caliber of their art collection. Some people will never be able to afford to see it in person. Why not let those people appreciate the art from afar?
Even if a person can afford to go on an expensive vacation, there's a million breathtaking places to visit in the world. One can't visit them all.
Exactly. Putting these collections is a boon.
My partner does fine art painting (portraits, still life), and has created many a master copy. Many times actually working in a museum every day with all the gear for weeks. (Patrons love this novelty.)
We've ordered many a high quality print selected from online collections for further study.
My partner does fine art painting (portraits, still life), and has created many a master copy. Many times actually working in a museum every day with all the gear for weeks. (Patrons love this novelty.)
We've ordered many a high quality print selected from online collections for further study.
Seems to be struggling under the load...of HN art lovers? :)
Which, if true, would be hugely ironic.
This museum became so full of art, the only thing it was afraid of was losing access to this art...which, eventually of course, it did. Unfortunately, it had many visitors who saw everything it had, then this visitors tried to visit its web site all at once and killed it in combined DOS attack. Ironic. It could enlighten others from ignorance... but not itself.
I was just making reference to the fact that the guy that started HN originally planned to get rich by putting art galleries online.
There is hope for us yet!
Did Bill Gates buy the digital/electronic rights to the Louvre collections in the 90s? I seem to recall an article about it, but cannot find it.
He bought the DaVinci Codex and made them free as a Windows 98 screensaver :D
https://news.softpedia.com/news/did-you-know-bill-gates-boug...
Rant: I have much more respect to that than the modern NFT craze. He didn't have any obligation to make them free to the public.
https://news.softpedia.com/news/did-you-know-bill-gates-boug...
Rant: I have much more respect to that than the modern NFT craze. He didn't have any obligation to make them free to the public.
I know this potentially sounds ungrateful, but it’s a shame they didn’t follow the example of Paris Musées and place their collection under CC0. [1] As it is it’s really useful for attribution and generalised research, but it doesn’t give you many options for reuse.
[1] https://creativecommons.org/2020/01/10/paris-musees-releases...
[1] https://creativecommons.org/2020/01/10/paris-musees-releases...
The works themselves are all in the public domain, apart perhaps from rare exceptions.
So my understanding is that it is the photographs of those works that are copyrighted. In my view it goes against the spirit of public domain to use this in order to restrict the use of the collections put online.
So my understanding is that it is the photographs of those works that are copyrighted. In my view it goes against the spirit of public domain to use this in order to restrict the use of the collections put online.
In the United States a photograph of a public domain 2D image is still also public domain if the photograph is considered a faithful reproduction of the public domain 2D image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel....
However, I think the laws for this vary quite a bit across countries, and in many countries the photograph is considered a new copyright work. In general it's pretty frustrating how many legal barriers there are to accessing and reusing old works of art. Thankfully a growing number of museums have made things easy with clear copyright releases (Rijksmuseum, Paris Musées, the MET), but others seem more interested in preserving their ability to sell prints.
However, I think the laws for this vary quite a bit across countries, and in many countries the photograph is considered a new copyright work. In general it's pretty frustrating how many legal barriers there are to accessing and reusing old works of art. Thankfully a growing number of museums have made things easy with clear copyright releases (Rijksmuseum, Paris Musées, the MET), but others seem more interested in preserving their ability to sell prints.
Ths is their license:
The downloading and re-use of medium-format photographs published on the collections website representing works that are not protected by copyright (hereinafter called the “Photographs”) are permitted, free of charge, for any non-collective use within a strictly private context and for the following exhaustively-listed museographic, scientific and educational purposes: - projection and distribution for the purpose of museographic, pedagogic and scientific activities, such as their reproduction on labels and exhibition signs, the presentation of guided tours, the running of educational workshops, the delivery of teaching and training sessions and the holding of symposia and seminars; - publication of exhibition and permanent collection catalogues, scientific papers and Ph.D. theses for publishers whose registered office is in the European Union, within a limit of one thousand five hundred (1500) copies, republication included: - digital scientific and educational publications.
It is more permisive than I expected it would be, frankly.
The downloading and re-use of medium-format photographs published on the collections website representing works that are not protected by copyright (hereinafter called the “Photographs”) are permitted, free of charge, for any non-collective use within a strictly private context and for the following exhaustively-listed museographic, scientific and educational purposes: - projection and distribution for the purpose of museographic, pedagogic and scientific activities, such as their reproduction on labels and exhibition signs, the presentation of guided tours, the running of educational workshops, the delivery of teaching and training sessions and the holding of symposia and seminars; - publication of exhibition and permanent collection catalogues, scientific papers and Ph.D. theses for publishers whose registered office is in the European Union, within a limit of one thousand five hundred (1500) copies, republication included: - digital scientific and educational publications.
It is more permisive than I expected it would be, frankly.
Dang, this is going to crash the NFT market for digital images of Lourve paintings.
Not sure what it'd do to the NFT market, but it has crashed their servers for sure.
> Server error. Continue to search the Louvre collections
> Server error. Continue to search the Louvre collections
Even when it's not crashing, the performance is terribly slow. Also the translations for English are mostly missing.
The plot of the Louvre IT Department to get more resources is working as planned.
I know you’re joking but lots of people still struggle with the reason why NFTs exist, including Apple’s unofficial PR department John Gruber. But it seems he finally understood it now thanks to this article: https://jackrusher.com/journal/what-does-it-mean-to-buy-a-gi...
[0] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/03/26/rusher-nfts
[0] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/03/26/rusher-nfts
> The most expensive autograph ever sold as of the writing of this essay is John Lennon’s signature on a copy of Double Fantasy that he signed the day he died. It fetched $900,000 at auction in 2010.
People imho buy the "uniqueness" of an item. This is why a poster of "the Kiss" by Klimt costs $10 and the original costs a $gazillion. The article mentions an autograph of Lennon. Not just any autograph, but one on the day he died. That means "no more after that". Maybe one will resurface, but
A friend who is a painter was telling me that one of the reasons painters become famous after death is because they don't dilute the value of their works by creating more. Imagine they paint one bridge, and it is great! Someone buys it for $10k. Then they go ahead and paint 50 more bridges. Now they will sell for 2k. So the $10k-buyer just got screwed. And we don't know if one day thay paint 50 more bridges, or that was it (dilution ends).
Now, she could be a bit bitter because she wasn't selling as high as she would wish, but she does make a good point.
People imho buy the "uniqueness" of an item. This is why a poster of "the Kiss" by Klimt costs $10 and the original costs a $gazillion. The article mentions an autograph of Lennon. Not just any autograph, but one on the day he died. That means "no more after that". Maybe one will resurface, but
A friend who is a painter was telling me that one of the reasons painters become famous after death is because they don't dilute the value of their works by creating more. Imagine they paint one bridge, and it is great! Someone buys it for $10k. Then they go ahead and paint 50 more bridges. Now they will sell for 2k. So the $10k-buyer just got screwed. And we don't know if one day thay paint 50 more bridges, or that was it (dilution ends).
Now, she could be a bit bitter because she wasn't selling as high as she would wish, but she does make a good point.
Uniqueness is only one part of the equation though. Hand made + beautiful + unique = amazing. Ugly pixelated jpeg generated by 300 lines of python + uniqueness = ???
It's kinda like playing all the notes from a Mozart piece in a random order, you could argue all the ingredients are there, but it won't be a masterpiece.
People are delusional, they want all the fame and rewards while putting less and less effort in their craft, if we can even call that a craft anymore, I mean, look at that shit: https://opensea.io/collection/the-anime-girls
It's kinda like playing all the notes from a Mozart piece in a random order, you could argue all the ingredients are there, but it won't be a masterpiece.
People are delusional, they want all the fame and rewards while putting less and less effort in their craft, if we can even call that a craft anymore, I mean, look at that shit: https://opensea.io/collection/the-anime-girls
That explains why original signed artworks are valuable, not really why NFTs are valuable
after all if I wanted to buy a Jack Dorsey signature tweet for two million dollars or a Beeple collage for 70 million I'm sure Beeple would have gladly put it on a usb stick, signed me a card, printed it billboard sized and driven it to my house while taking me out for a steak dinner
It's absolutely nebulous what the 'digital' part adds.
after all if I wanted to buy a Jack Dorsey signature tweet for two million dollars or a Beeple collage for 70 million I'm sure Beeple would have gladly put it on a usb stick, signed me a card, printed it billboard sized and driven it to my house while taking me out for a steak dinner
It's absolutely nebulous what the 'digital' part adds.
I tend to view the NFT craze as just that, a craze. It started as a massive and intriguing stunt that spread far and wide because of how absurd it all seems. It’s the perfect storm of “I don’t get this at all” combined with “you just don’t understand how revolutionary this is”. You also have the appeal of “why don’t I just make a few of these NFT things and make some money too?”
Additionally, I’ve read that the supposed $69 million dollars worth of ethereum used to purchase that famous NFT isn’t actually a transaction on the Ethereum blockchain. So there’s a good chance this whole thing was a farce to jumpstart interest in the NFT market itself.
Ultimately a few whales, famous people, and early adopters have already made out like bandits while the vast majority of people are barely going to make any money in the NFT market and it will sizzle out rapidly.
Additionally, I’ve read that the supposed $69 million dollars worth of ethereum used to purchase that famous NFT isn’t actually a transaction on the Ethereum blockchain. So there’s a good chance this whole thing was a farce to jumpstart interest in the NFT market itself.
Ultimately a few whales, famous people, and early adopters have already made out like bandits while the vast majority of people are barely going to make any money in the NFT market and it will sizzle out rapidly.
You're missing an important use case here: Money laundry. While regular cryptocurrency is quite useful for this, it comes with the drawback of having a well-defined market value at any given point in time, making it harder to cook the books since there is some "ground truth" to get audited against. NFTs don't have that limitation - the price at any moment can be as high or as low as you need it to be to shift any amount of money, instantly, from anywhere in the world to anywhere else in the world. Regular art has historically been used for this too, as has high-end real estate (basically anything where rich "eccentrics" can pay whatever they want for something), but these come with the hassle of needing to also move a physical good, sign deeds, set up companies - plus there is a limited supply of these, limiting the bandwidth with which you can shift money around. NFTs overcome all these limitations, it's an entirely digital, global, endless supply of goods with no fixed marked value and a plausible cover story of why it's worth millions. If you're in charge of bookkeeping at a cartel, NFTs are probably the most exciting thing that has happened this decade if not longer.
I have no problem believing this. Nonetheless, I'd like to see a good hypothetical example to really understand how it would work. Would the seller have to be in on the deal? Probably, or not?
One hypothetical where the seller _is_ in on the deal:
Let's say I want to send you money for something illegal. You, however, don't want the government getting suspicious about how you're spending $large_amount on $small_salary.
I could gift you the money, but if we don't have an existing relationship or reason to do so that looks mighty suspicious, and additionally gift tax can end up being more than income tax.
The next option is for me to "buy" something from you. This needs to be something you can obtain for a low price but sell for a high price. You could sell me a loaf of bread for $1million, but that's going to look equally (if not more) suspicious than the gift.
Enter art: Art can be produced for extremely low cost, but sold at massive markups (and often is so). The value of art is almost entirely subjective (i.e. "what is someone willing to pay for this"), so unlike with a piece of bread it's not obvious that I'm paying for something I consider near worthless. Each piece of original artwork is unique, so there's no market to prove that nobody else would be willing to pay such a sum for your art.
Therefore, with art you can receive the money, pay taxes on it, and claim to the government it's totally legit. NFTs have similar properties to art: they're unique, can be minted at very low cost, people are willing to pay large sums for them, and nobody really has any way of determining their "true" value.
Let's say I want to send you money for something illegal. You, however, don't want the government getting suspicious about how you're spending $large_amount on $small_salary.
I could gift you the money, but if we don't have an existing relationship or reason to do so that looks mighty suspicious, and additionally gift tax can end up being more than income tax.
The next option is for me to "buy" something from you. This needs to be something you can obtain for a low price but sell for a high price. You could sell me a loaf of bread for $1million, but that's going to look equally (if not more) suspicious than the gift.
Enter art: Art can be produced for extremely low cost, but sold at massive markups (and often is so). The value of art is almost entirely subjective (i.e. "what is someone willing to pay for this"), so unlike with a piece of bread it's not obvious that I'm paying for something I consider near worthless. Each piece of original artwork is unique, so there's no market to prove that nobody else would be willing to pay such a sum for your art.
Therefore, with art you can receive the money, pay taxes on it, and claim to the government it's totally legit. NFTs have similar properties to art: they're unique, can be minted at very low cost, people are willing to pay large sums for them, and nobody really has any way of determining their "true" value.
Yup, that's NFTs in a nutshell.
And there is almost certainly a large real world contingent salivating at the thought that they can soon launder huge amounts of money, based on infinite products, that are impossible to value and trivial to create.
And as usual there will be a handful of technology people afterwards standing around shocked, saying they had no idea they enabled the 21st century's money laundering platform, and
Just like the cliche "I just wanted to make an anarchist digital currency, I didn't think it would impact society in negative ways we can't control!"
And there is almost certainly a large real world contingent salivating at the thought that they can soon launder huge amounts of money, based on infinite products, that are impossible to value and trivial to create.
And as usual there will be a handful of technology people afterwards standing around shocked, saying they had no idea they enabled the 21st century's money laundering platform, and
Just like the cliche "I just wanted to make an anarchist digital currency, I didn't think it would impact society in negative ways we can't control!"
Kinda reminds me of steem (steemit.com), when it first caught on in the media, there were (still are?) some huge whales on the platform, and some people made some serious money doing not much.
But now a few years later, profits have leveled out allot.
If he did that, it would be hard to then sell it in the future because now you have to verify if the signature is real or fake. The frequency of art forgeries demonstrates the issue.
With an NFT, Jack just has to say that this one NFT is the original. Every subsequent transaction can verify the NFT's validity just using math.
With an NFT, Jack just has to say that this one NFT is the original. Every subsequent transaction can verify the NFT's validity just using math.
There's a basic problem with that argument. There is no telling whether you're actually buying an NFT from Jack himself. In fact the NFT world already seems to have a fake and forgery issue of people who claim to have rights or be authors of creations they aren't even affiliated with.[1] Crypto just shifts the goalpost of what's being faked. Which is why the Beeple NFT sale didn't happen somewhere in the nether of the internet, but through Christie's, a 300 year old seller of art, after buyer and seller had communicated personally. They buyer didn't just fork over millions to a pseudonymous wallet-address. The actual verification of the transaction happened in the real world.
Also as a sidenote, you have actually no idea whether this particular blockchain will still be around in the future. In fact given the volatility of tech that's not really that likely to be honest.
[1]https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/20/22334527/nft-scams-artist...
Also as a sidenote, you have actually no idea whether this particular blockchain will still be around in the future. In fact given the volatility of tech that's not really that likely to be honest.
[1]https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/20/22334527/nft-scams-artist...
> There is no telling whether you're actually buying an NFT from Jack himself
It's fairly easy to verify the origins of statements here, especially since Jack is on Twitter announcing his NFT on his timeline. What more than that do you need?
Same as you verify any celebrities selling movie props on ebay or whatever, if they haven't announced the sale via some other channel where they are already verified, don't trust that it's the real deal in the marketplace.
> Which is why the Beeple NFT sale didn't happen somewhere in the nether of the internet, but through Christie's, a 300 year old seller of art, after buyer and seller had communicated personally.
This is a feature, not a drawback. You can make the sale however you want, via bank transfer, cash in hand or actually transfer Eth to a wallet. What matters in the end is who stands as the owner in the blockchain, but how it gets there, is irrelevant.
> Also as a sidenote, you have actually no idea whether this particular blockchain will still be around in the future. In fact given the volatility of tech that's not really that likely to be honest.
This is a separate issue from NFTs and applies to the whole cryptocurrency space. For now, the $1.5 trillion market is disagreeing with you that it can disappear in the future, as otherwise people wouldn't put so much money into the ecosystem.
It's fairly easy to verify the origins of statements here, especially since Jack is on Twitter announcing his NFT on his timeline. What more than that do you need?
Same as you verify any celebrities selling movie props on ebay or whatever, if they haven't announced the sale via some other channel where they are already verified, don't trust that it's the real deal in the marketplace.
> Which is why the Beeple NFT sale didn't happen somewhere in the nether of the internet, but through Christie's, a 300 year old seller of art, after buyer and seller had communicated personally.
This is a feature, not a drawback. You can make the sale however you want, via bank transfer, cash in hand or actually transfer Eth to a wallet. What matters in the end is who stands as the owner in the blockchain, but how it gets there, is irrelevant.
> Also as a sidenote, you have actually no idea whether this particular blockchain will still be around in the future. In fact given the volatility of tech that's not really that likely to be honest.
This is a separate issue from NFTs and applies to the whole cryptocurrency space. For now, the $1.5 trillion market is disagreeing with you that it can disappear in the future, as otherwise people wouldn't put so much money into the ecosystem.
> It's fairly easy to verify the origins of statements here, especially since Jack is on Twitter announcing his NFT on his timeline. What more than that do you need?
Now you rely on a tweet being durable. The entire blockchain history is based on something not on the blockchain that can be edited by people with root at Twitter.
Now you rely on a tweet being durable. The entire blockchain history is based on something not on the blockchain that can be edited by people with root at Twitter.
Easy to solve by storing inter-chain links, signatures, immutable data structures and content addressing
And if Jack doesn't want to bother with that? Clearly he didn't do any of that this time.
Is not needed for him to do anything, most of mainstream internet is already archived via Archive.org and similar efforts
Doesn't that mean that in the future Jack can just mint a new NFT and say that the new one is in fact the canonical NFT for his first tweet? The only way to do it would be for NFTs to support non-repudation, but they don't.
The trust layer is in the physical world either based on hearsay or a physical contract with two parties. In any case, it's off-chain.
The trust layer is in the physical world either based on hearsay or a physical contract with two parties. In any case, it's off-chain.
I can sell Jack's tweet right now.
That's a bigger issue than Jack being able to sell it multiple times.
That's a bigger issue than Jack being able to sell it multiple times.
You can. Is it the same? No.
Just as it's not the same if a random person tries to sell movie props from famous movies, compared to if the person actually being in that production in the first place.
Just as it's not the same if a random person tries to sell movie props from famous movies, compared to if the person actually being in that production in the first place.
What? If they sell verifiably the same physical prop, then what's the difference?
Jack's tweet doesn't become counterfeit if Hjfrf sells it, it's non-figuratively and verifiably the same exact tweet.
Jack's tweet doesn't become counterfeit if Hjfrf sells it, it's non-figuratively and verifiably the same exact tweet.
The NFT representing Jack's tweet is a pointer to the tweet. It's possible to create an unlimited number of pointers to the same thing.
It’s the creator certifying that this file is the definitive copy, and having an instance of it to get paid for.
In an age of trivial copying, editing, recompressing, and other alterations, “original” can get lost. This gives means to identify, transfer, and prove originality.
In an age of trivial copying, editing, recompressing, and other alterations, “original” can get lost. This gives means to identify, transfer, and prove originality.
>but lots of people still struggle with the reason why NFTs exist
Huh? Isn't it obvious? They exist because some people have more money than sense.
>including Apple’s unofficial PR department John Gruber
Edgy. Do you also spell that Seattle-based OS company with a dollar sign for the S?
Huh? Isn't it obvious? They exist because some people have more money than sense.
>including Apple’s unofficial PR department John Gruber
Edgy. Do you also spell that Seattle-based OS company with a dollar sign for the S?
> the reason why NFTs exist
Money laundering.
Money laundering.
Not really. NFTs give 'ownership' to things that were already online and widely shared, sometimes for decades (first tweet, nayan cat gif).
The Louvre can still NFT all the images as they please at millions for each one. If anything, it makes it easier now that people can start valuing the items before deciding to make a 'purchase' vs the museum starting auctions immediately.
The Louvre can still NFT all the images as they please at millions for each one. If anything, it makes it easier now that people can start valuing the items before deciding to make a 'purchase' vs the museum starting auctions immediately.
NFTs are a sign that we really need to do something about wealth inequality.
Aka "people should spend money on what I want them to instead of what they want to, because I'm morally superior to them"
Buying NFTs is the public equivalent of wiping your -ss with money. Not sure how to feel morally neutral about it.
How many poor people were harmed because of NFTs? In fact, it seemed to transfer a great deal of wealth to an artist who was formerly of modest means.
It can costs upwards of 200 dollars to mint an NFT, and it's quite common to see artists who have minted several NFTs but not sold anything yet. I'd say the likelihood that poor people are being harmed is quite high.
So you are saying there are "poor people" who are harming themselves (going without food, shelter, medical treatment) because they spent money on minting NFTs?
If that's true, I will be more than happy to retract my statement. But I think I have little to worry about.
If that's true, I will be more than happy to retract my statement. But I think I have little to worry about.
Sounds like I won't be able to produce any evidence that will satisfy your criteria. I personally consider "tricking people into thinking they'll make lots of money if they spend hundreds of dollars minting NFTs" to be a harmful activity.
Those are temporary growing pains as demand for Ethereum block space exceeds supply, and will be solved with the ImmutableX NFT-focused zkRollup, which will increase Ethereum's maximum throughput from 15 NFT transactions per second to 8,000:
https://www.immutable.com/
https://www.immutable.com/
How temporary? I can't find a timeline on their website.
They say this month:
https://www.immutable.com/blog/design-architecture
https://www.immutable.com/blog/design-architecture
Oh, it seems like it's only for their card-trading game? So they're essentially saving themselves money on gas fees? I'm more interested in the fees affecting individual artists.
> We’re sprinting towards March 2021. Immutable X alpha release is still expected in March 2021 for Gods Unchained, and coming to other partner games and marketplaces soon after.
> We’re sprinting towards March 2021. Immutable X alpha release is still expected in March 2021 for Gods Unchained, and coming to other partner games and marketplaces soon after.
Their alpha release only works with one card game, yes. Their platform is going to be open for every one eventually, though I don't know when that is expected to happen.
Seems mostly to transfer wealth to already famous or rich people. The rich buying stuff from each other. Perhaps even laundering money as they do so.
I will concur that the art market in general seems like a way to store, hide, and transfer wealth.
You think the NFT money goes to the artist? What are you basing that belief on?
Profiles of "Beeple". For example:
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a35500985/who-is-beepl...
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a35500985/who-is-beepl...
>Buying NFTs is the public equivalent of wiping your -ss with money.
If the money goes to some random person who has managed to with the largess of the rich person lottery, instead of down the drain... it's different.
If the money goes to some random person who has managed to with the largess of the rich person lottery, instead of down the drain... it's different.
If someone destroys their own money, that is a pure gift to the rest of society.
If that doesn't make sense to you, you have not understood what money is!
If that doesn't make sense to you, you have not understood what money is!
A gift in the form of an insult.
There are more productive ways to deal with wealth inequality.
There are more productive ways to deal with wealth inequality.
Maybe you get your feelings of rage and envy get in the way of clear thinking.
In my experience, that doesn't serve one well.
In my experience, that doesn't serve one well.
You can't be emotionless about money. If this were false, then rich people could make you do anything they want, which I hope for you is not the case.
Not letting envy/rage override logic != emotionless.
When someone wipes their ass with money they remove the bill from circulation making the rest of the money worth a little bit more.
No, it's a sign that some people have way more money than they need. Which is a waste as long as other people have to worry about getting food on the table.
Wealth is not zero sum. People having more than they need doesn't harm others, and redistributing their 'excess' wealth will undermine the private property rights that incentivize and sustain effective investment.
Generally interfering with social processes through top-down cookie cutter measures leads to negative unintended consequences, because the rationale behind said intervention is based on an overly simplistic understanding of a highly complex system.
Generally interfering with social processes through top-down cookie cutter measures leads to negative unintended consequences, because the rationale behind said intervention is based on an overly simplistic understanding of a highly complex system.
There is no evidence for that. Markets don't randomly stop working because you tax people – they would be quite useless tools if they were that fragile.
> Generally interfering with social processes through top-down cookie cutter measures leads to negative unintended consequences, because the rationale behind said intervention is based on an overly simplistic understanding of a highly complex system.
If my understanding of the system seems highly simplistic, it may be because I wrote an HN comment two sentences long as opposed to a book.
> Generally interfering with social processes through top-down cookie cutter measures leads to negative unintended consequences, because the rationale behind said intervention is based on an overly simplistic understanding of a highly complex system.
If my understanding of the system seems highly simplistic, it may be because I wrote an HN comment two sentences long as opposed to a book.
There is plenty of evidence for that, that economists have documented for nearly a century.
For example, there is a very strong negative correlation between government spending, as a percentage of GDP, and economic growth:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170821004405/http://ime.bg/upl...
And no markets will not "stop working". They'll work less effectively.
>>If my understanding of the system seems highly simplistic, it may be because I wrote an HN comment two sentences long as opposed to a book.
Every one's understanding of nation/global scale systems is overly simplistic, which is why it's impossible to predict what the market will do. In the absence of near-perfect knowedge, it's better to not interfere with spontaneously emergent bottom-up phenomena, like prices, or the market, via far-reaching cookie cutter rules.
EDIT:
With respect to below, I can't respond with a new comment due to comment rate-limiting, so I'll respond here:
It's not an opinion. They show the data, from 81 countries, over a span of decades, and show a pervasive correlation. The evidence speaks for itself.
This liberal think tank was instituted in a country that experienced 50 years of central economic planning, based on economically illiterate left-wing conspiracy-theories/economic-fallacies, so maybe they have legitimate cause to promote markets.
But go ahead and look down on them with your snarky derision.
>>Not really? There are other countries than the US which have had a significantly larger government (as well as higher taxes), or so called mixed-economies, that did just fine or even great?
Which countries? The data shows a strong negative correlation between government size and economic growth, within a dataset of 81 countries.
Look at Europe: the rise of social welfare spending as a percentage of GDP since the mid 1960s corresponded with stagnation in productivity and wage growth, just like occurred in the US.
>>As a side point, there's a discussion to be had regarding economic growth and GDP.
Per capita GDP growth, i.e. rising productivity, is the primary cause of improvements in quality of life. If ever you've lived in a country with low per capita GDP, and seen how ordinary people have to struggle so much more to afford to meet basic needs, you'd see why.
It's absolutely not the only factor impacting quality of life, it's true. GDP statistics are also not a perfect measure of productivity. But it's a very very good measure, of a very important contributor to quality of life, and if a particular way of organizing an economy is associated with this measure increasing at a slower rate, that is extremely important.
Economic growth rates, over longer periods of time, have a massive impact, because they have an exponential effect. A country with a per capita GDP growth rate of 4% will see double the income growth of a country with a per capita GDP growth rate of 2%, after only 35 years.
EDIT 2:
>>Which countries would you pick yourself as counter-evidence?
Norway, but it discovered oil in the 1970s, and was one of the top oil exporters in the world for decades with a population of only 4.5 million.
But anecdotes are not as important as large datasets, and large datasets show a strong correlation between small government (relative to GDP) and high economic growth rates.
>>feigned care of the poor
It's always good to assume that the person you're interacting with might be debating in good faith, and know things you don't. But I agree with the rest of that statement: it's anecdotal, just like the counter-examples you're searching for.
>>A GDP growth of 2-3% per year is also deeply unsustainable, doubling the economy every few decades can't continue.
It is sustainable for many many decades to come given returns from rising efficiency, and harvesting resources outside of earth, which are several orders of magnitude more plentiful than resources available on Earth.
Your pessimistic outlook reminds me of this:
"It is only in the backward countries of the world that increased production is still an important object: in those most advanced, what is economically needed is a better distribution"
-John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1848, said at a time when the per capita GDP of the UK was the same as Kenya's today, i.e. 20X less.
For example, there is a very strong negative correlation between government spending, as a percentage of GDP, and economic growth:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170821004405/http://ime.bg/upl...
And no markets will not "stop working". They'll work less effectively.
>>If my understanding of the system seems highly simplistic, it may be because I wrote an HN comment two sentences long as opposed to a book.
Every one's understanding of nation/global scale systems is overly simplistic, which is why it's impossible to predict what the market will do. In the absence of near-perfect knowedge, it's better to not interfere with spontaneously emergent bottom-up phenomena, like prices, or the market, via far-reaching cookie cutter rules.
EDIT:
With respect to below, I can't respond with a new comment due to comment rate-limiting, so I'll respond here:
It's not an opinion. They show the data, from 81 countries, over a span of decades, and show a pervasive correlation. The evidence speaks for itself.
This liberal think tank was instituted in a country that experienced 50 years of central economic planning, based on economically illiterate left-wing conspiracy-theories/economic-fallacies, so maybe they have legitimate cause to promote markets.
But go ahead and look down on them with your snarky derision.
>>Not really? There are other countries than the US which have had a significantly larger government (as well as higher taxes), or so called mixed-economies, that did just fine or even great?
Which countries? The data shows a strong negative correlation between government size and economic growth, within a dataset of 81 countries.
Look at Europe: the rise of social welfare spending as a percentage of GDP since the mid 1960s corresponded with stagnation in productivity and wage growth, just like occurred in the US.
>>As a side point, there's a discussion to be had regarding economic growth and GDP.
Per capita GDP growth, i.e. rising productivity, is the primary cause of improvements in quality of life. If ever you've lived in a country with low per capita GDP, and seen how ordinary people have to struggle so much more to afford to meet basic needs, you'd see why.
It's absolutely not the only factor impacting quality of life, it's true. GDP statistics are also not a perfect measure of productivity. But it's a very very good measure, of a very important contributor to quality of life, and if a particular way of organizing an economy is associated with this measure increasing at a slower rate, that is extremely important.
Economic growth rates, over longer periods of time, have a massive impact, because they have an exponential effect. A country with a per capita GDP growth rate of 4% will see double the income growth of a country with a per capita GDP growth rate of 2%, after only 35 years.
EDIT 2:
>>Which countries would you pick yourself as counter-evidence?
Norway, but it discovered oil in the 1970s, and was one of the top oil exporters in the world for decades with a population of only 4.5 million.
But anecdotes are not as important as large datasets, and large datasets show a strong correlation between small government (relative to GDP) and high economic growth rates.
>>feigned care of the poor
It's always good to assume that the person you're interacting with might be debating in good faith, and know things you don't. But I agree with the rest of that statement: it's anecdotal, just like the counter-examples you're searching for.
>>A GDP growth of 2-3% per year is also deeply unsustainable, doubling the economy every few decades can't continue.
It is sustainable for many many decades to come given returns from rising efficiency, and harvesting resources outside of earth, which are several orders of magnitude more plentiful than resources available on Earth.
Your pessimistic outlook reminds me of this:
"It is only in the backward countries of the world that increased production is still an important object: in those most advanced, what is economically needed is a better distribution"
-John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1848, said at a time when the per capita GDP of the UK was the same as Kenya's today, i.e. 20X less.
Update to your edit:
> Which countries?
Which countries would you pick yourself as counter-evidence?
> If ever you've lived in a country with low per capita GDP, and seen how ordinary people have to struggle so much more to afford to meet basic needs, you'd see why.
Alright, that just an anecdote with some added feigned care of the poor. It's already clear that this won't go anywhere.
> But it's a very very good measure
It's not, and that was acknowledged by even the "inventor" himself.
A GDP growth of 2-3% per year is also deeply unsustainable, doubling the economy every few decades can't continue.
Update 2:
> Norway
> But anecdotes are not as important as large datasets, and large datasets show a strong correlation between small government (relative to GDP) and high economic growth rates.
Hmm? A statement saying that a large government (and likely high taxes) inherently causes a bad outcome doesn't need a long-term graph to be falsified. Scandinavia is sufficient, even much of western Europe on top of that.
>>>feigned care of the poor
>> It's always good to assume that the person you're interacting with might be debating in good faith, and know things you don't.
Just saying that The Free Market believers aren't famous for their concern for the poor or inequality, so it sounds pretty false given both your link to "Institute for Market Economics" and your comment history:
> "the alliance between rent-seeking labor unions and the Democratic Party"
> "when the US was still a free market where people had a sacred right to freely contract."
> "How is the freedom to engage in profit-motived activity exploitation? The whole principle behind the free market is that all interactions have to be mutually voluntary in order to be legal."
The latter is the most obvious example of not caring for the outcomes of the Free Market on the poor.
> Which countries?
Which countries would you pick yourself as counter-evidence?
> If ever you've lived in a country with low per capita GDP, and seen how ordinary people have to struggle so much more to afford to meet basic needs, you'd see why.
Alright, that just an anecdote with some added feigned care of the poor. It's already clear that this won't go anywhere.
> But it's a very very good measure
It's not, and that was acknowledged by even the "inventor" himself.
A GDP growth of 2-3% per year is also deeply unsustainable, doubling the economy every few decades can't continue.
Update 2:
> Norway
> But anecdotes are not as important as large datasets, and large datasets show a strong correlation between small government (relative to GDP) and high economic growth rates.
Hmm? A statement saying that a large government (and likely high taxes) inherently causes a bad outcome doesn't need a long-term graph to be falsified. Scandinavia is sufficient, even much of western Europe on top of that.
>>>feigned care of the poor
>> It's always good to assume that the person you're interacting with might be debating in good faith, and know things you don't.
Just saying that The Free Market believers aren't famous for their concern for the poor or inequality, so it sounds pretty false given both your link to "Institute for Market Economics" and your comment history:
> "the alliance between rent-seeking labor unions and the Democratic Party"
> "when the US was still a free market where people had a sacred right to freely contract."
> "How is the freedom to engage in profit-motived activity exploitation? The whole principle behind the free market is that all interactions have to be mutually voluntary in order to be legal."
The latter is the most obvious example of not caring for the outcomes of the Free Market on the poor.
>>Hmm? A statement saying that a large government (and likely high taxes) inherently causes a bad outcome doesn't need a long-term graph to be falsified. Scandinavia is sufficient, even much of western Europe on top of that.
The bad outcome is a country doing worse than they otherwise would have. You can never prove that happened, because you can't run the experiment twice, so you try to find evidence to make a reasonable case for/against it, as the next best thing.
One way to do that is to look at large datasets, to see what the general effect of the policy seems to be when the experiment is run multiple times on varying countries. The size of the dataset helps to minimize the impact of other factors, given that those factors should average out as the dataset gets larger, thus hopefully exposing the impact of the factor under study.
In any case, Scandinavian countries saw stagnation in their rate of wage/economic growth after adopting social democracy, so they are not a counter-example.
The reason Scandinavia and more generally, Western Europe, are prosperous today is because they were the most free-market-based economies in the world for the longest period of time. Their lead over the rest of the world has shrunk since the 1960s, when they started to massively deviate from their adherence to the free-market rule set.
>>Just saying that The Free Market believers aren't famous for their concern for the poor
That characterization is nothing more than an effective smear job by rent-seeking insiders that depend on the state's suppression of people's private property and contracting rights for their privileges - like unionized workers - and left-wing populists.
>>The latter is the most obvious example of not caring for the outcomes of the Free Market on the poor.
You assume that because you assume profit-motivated activity, free markets, contract rights, and opposition to the Democratic Party, are all harmful to the poor. This assumption is deeply mistaken.
EDIT:
Responding to below:
I throw that advice back at you.
Sweden is typical of Scandinavia. Sweden had the third highest per capita GDP in the world in 1968. By 1991, after two decades of rapidly expanding social welfare programs, it had fallen to 17th in the rankings:
http://iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/files/San...
Until the 1960s, Sweden had both been one of the most free market economies in the world, and most rapidly growing economies in the world, for around a century.
The bad outcome is a country doing worse than they otherwise would have. You can never prove that happened, because you can't run the experiment twice, so you try to find evidence to make a reasonable case for/against it, as the next best thing.
One way to do that is to look at large datasets, to see what the general effect of the policy seems to be when the experiment is run multiple times on varying countries. The size of the dataset helps to minimize the impact of other factors, given that those factors should average out as the dataset gets larger, thus hopefully exposing the impact of the factor under study.
In any case, Scandinavian countries saw stagnation in their rate of wage/economic growth after adopting social democracy, so they are not a counter-example.
The reason Scandinavia and more generally, Western Europe, are prosperous today is because they were the most free-market-based economies in the world for the longest period of time. Their lead over the rest of the world has shrunk since the 1960s, when they started to massively deviate from their adherence to the free-market rule set.
>>Just saying that The Free Market believers aren't famous for their concern for the poor
That characterization is nothing more than an effective smear job by rent-seeking insiders that depend on the state's suppression of people's private property and contracting rights for their privileges - like unionized workers - and left-wing populists.
>>The latter is the most obvious example of not caring for the outcomes of the Free Market on the poor.
You assume that because you assume profit-motivated activity, free markets, contract rights, and opposition to the Democratic Party, are all harmful to the poor. This assumption is deeply mistaken.
EDIT:
Responding to below:
I throw that advice back at you.
Sweden is typical of Scandinavia. Sweden had the third highest per capita GDP in the world in 1968. By 1991, after two decades of rapidly expanding social welfare programs, it had fallen to 17th in the rankings:
http://iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/files/San...
Until the 1960s, Sweden had both been one of the most free market economies in the world, and most rapidly growing economies in the world, for around a century.
You seriously need to read up on Scandinavian economic history, because you have it exactly backwards and this isn't even something that is disputed.
Update:
> I throw that advice back at you.
You're wildly extrapolating using the already established bad measurement of GDP. Do you believe that social democracies primary concern is increasing GDP per capita? Have the living standards been significantly worse in Scandinavia? No, the opposite.
Economic growth is not an end in itself, it's also not an indication for how well off he people in Scandinavia are compared to others. It's indisputable that the average Scandinavian citizen has enjoyed very high living standard for the last 80 years or so. Even with very large public sector and high taxes. This blatantly disproves the notion that this is not possible as you suggested above.
Update:
> I throw that advice back at you.
You're wildly extrapolating using the already established bad measurement of GDP. Do you believe that social democracies primary concern is increasing GDP per capita? Have the living standards been significantly worse in Scandinavia? No, the opposite.
Economic growth is not an end in itself, it's also not an indication for how well off he people in Scandinavia are compared to others. It's indisputable that the average Scandinavian citizen has enjoyed very high living standard for the last 80 years or so. Even with very large public sector and high taxes. This blatantly disproves the notion that this is not possible as you suggested above.
[deleted]
>>You're wildly extrapolating using the already established bad measurement of GDP.
GDP is not a bad measure..
I think you're getting overly emotional, and not assessing my points rationally. For example, these counter-examples are not on-point:
>>Do you believe that social democracies primary concern is increasing GDP per capita?
I already argued why they should be: increases in per capita productivity are the primary source of improvements in quality of life.
For example, the reason the Scandinavian region had the highest quality of life in the world by the 1960s, when it had yet to create expansive social programs, is that in the preceding century, it had been the fastest growing economy in the world, with the most free market policies:
http://iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/files/San...
• Scandinavia is often cited as having high life expectancy and good health outcomes in areas such as infant mortality. Again, this predates the expansion of the welfare state. In 1960, Norway had the highest life expectancy in the OECD, followed by Sweden, Iceland and Denmark in third, fourth and fifth positions. By 2005, the gap in life expectancy between Scandinavian countries and both the UK and the US had shrunk considerably. Iceland, with a moderately sized welfare sector, has over time outpaced the four major Scandinavian countries in terms of life expectancy and infant mortality.
• Scandinavia’s more equal societies also developed well before the welfare states expanded. Income inequality reduced dramatically during the last three decades of the 19th century and during the first half of the 20th century. Indeed, most of the shift towards greater equality happened before the introduction of a large public sector and high taxes.
Hong Kong and Singapore, the two most free market jurisdictions in the world over the last several decades, have caught up to and surpassed Scandinavia in key measures of quality of life, like life expectancy, despite being far behind them in 1960.
Economic development is the primary source of quality of life gains.
>>Have the living standards been significantly worse in Scandinavia? No, the opposite.
Absolute strawman, that really shows no grasp of what my argument is.
>>It's indisputable that the average Scandinavian citizen has enjoyed very high living standard for the last 80 years or so. Even with very large public sector and high taxes. This blatantly disproves the notion that this is not possible as you suggested above.
I never said it is not possible, so that is a strawman. I said that the rate at which the economy, and with it, quality of life, improves, slows down with marginal increases in the suppression of market rights via top-down regulatory impositions and taxes.
And once again, this is demonstrated by the fact that the more free-market based Hong Kong and Singapore closed a massive economic and quality of life gap with Scandinavian countries since the 1960s, and even surpassed them in some metrics, like life expectancy.
GDP is not a bad measure..
I think you're getting overly emotional, and not assessing my points rationally. For example, these counter-examples are not on-point:
>>Do you believe that social democracies primary concern is increasing GDP per capita?
I already argued why they should be: increases in per capita productivity are the primary source of improvements in quality of life.
For example, the reason the Scandinavian region had the highest quality of life in the world by the 1960s, when it had yet to create expansive social programs, is that in the preceding century, it had been the fastest growing economy in the world, with the most free market policies:
http://iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/files/San...
• Scandinavia is often cited as having high life expectancy and good health outcomes in areas such as infant mortality. Again, this predates the expansion of the welfare state. In 1960, Norway had the highest life expectancy in the OECD, followed by Sweden, Iceland and Denmark in third, fourth and fifth positions. By 2005, the gap in life expectancy between Scandinavian countries and both the UK and the US had shrunk considerably. Iceland, with a moderately sized welfare sector, has over time outpaced the four major Scandinavian countries in terms of life expectancy and infant mortality.
• Scandinavia’s more equal societies also developed well before the welfare states expanded. Income inequality reduced dramatically during the last three decades of the 19th century and during the first half of the 20th century. Indeed, most of the shift towards greater equality happened before the introduction of a large public sector and high taxes.
Hong Kong and Singapore, the two most free market jurisdictions in the world over the last several decades, have caught up to and surpassed Scandinavia in key measures of quality of life, like life expectancy, despite being far behind them in 1960.
Economic development is the primary source of quality of life gains.
>>Have the living standards been significantly worse in Scandinavia? No, the opposite.
Absolute strawman, that really shows no grasp of what my argument is.
>>It's indisputable that the average Scandinavian citizen has enjoyed very high living standard for the last 80 years or so. Even with very large public sector and high taxes. This blatantly disproves the notion that this is not possible as you suggested above.
I never said it is not possible, so that is a strawman. I said that the rate at which the economy, and with it, quality of life, improves, slows down with marginal increases in the suppression of market rights via top-down regulatory impositions and taxes.
And once again, this is demonstrated by the fact that the more free-market based Hong Kong and Singapore closed a massive economic and quality of life gap with Scandinavian countries since the 1960s, and even surpassed them in some metrics, like life expectancy.
> The evidence speaks for itself.
Not really? There are other countries than the US which have had a significantly larger government (as well as higher taxes), or so called mixed-economies, that did just fine or even great?
It seems rather bad faith to omit such glaring examples when trying to prove a point.
As a side point, there's a discussion to be had regarding economic growth and GDP. Those measurements don't measure the well-being of a society, just economic activity. So we have countries with much lower GDP per capita but much also happier.
Not really? There are other countries than the US which have had a significantly larger government (as well as higher taxes), or so called mixed-economies, that did just fine or even great?
It seems rather bad faith to omit such glaring examples when trying to prove a point.
As a side point, there's a discussion to be had regarding economic growth and GDP. Those measurements don't measure the well-being of a society, just economic activity. So we have countries with much lower GDP per capita but much also happier.
[deleted]
Yeah I really don't care what some liberal think tank "thinks". And I'm not going to have this ideological discussion here, it never works out.
Yup.
The $1000 iPhone app [2008] https://kottke.org/08/08/the-1000-iphone-app
The $1000 iPhone app [2008] https://kottke.org/08/08/the-1000-iphone-app
In the past year, quite a few collections went online. I remember seeing that Van Gogh collection from Dutch museums was digitized and released recently. Does anyone know if there's a list of various online art collections? I'd really like to go through some.
Edit: Van Gogh collection: https://vangoghworldwide.org
Edit: Van Gogh collection: https://vangoghworldwide.org
Not limited to art but for cultural heritage collections in general.
There is the OpenGLAM Survey, a list of Galleres, Libraries, Archives, and Museum sharing their collections under open licenses: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yc8z0z7XdhVKvhTbD2_z...
Then there are also aggregators like dp.la, cultural.jp, digitalnz.org, europeana.eu etc that might also be of interest.
There is the OpenGLAM Survey, a list of Galleres, Libraries, Archives, and Museum sharing their collections under open licenses: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yc8z0z7XdhVKvhTbD2_z...
Then there are also aggregators like dp.la, cultural.jp, digitalnz.org, europeana.eu etc that might also be of interest.
[deleted]
The Peterson Museum (basically the Louvre of automobiles) did the same -or very close- with wonderful video tours of areas that only paying 150$ would get you to see (The Vault).
https://www.youtube.com/user/PetersenMuseum/videos
The Seattle flight museum also started a series where the main curator would talk about individual planes in long format, way better experience than looking at photos online.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCda1wjNf7JaYgx9ukXRqgIQ
Those are just the ones I noticed as an Aviation and Automobile enthusiast. If anyone knows others please share ;_;
https://www.youtube.com/user/PetersenMuseum/videos
The Seattle flight museum also started a series where the main curator would talk about individual planes in long format, way better experience than looking at photos online.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCda1wjNf7JaYgx9ukXRqgIQ
Those are just the ones I noticed as an Aviation and Automobile enthusiast. If anyone knows others please share ;_;
Thanks for the links, absolutely great channels. I wonder if there exist something like curated "awesome list" of museums online? Because I don't even think it's possible to find these gems just doing a search on Google/YouTube which returns mostly low quality to spam results.
Maybe we can start an HN or Reddit thread and then link it from AwesomeMuseamsOnline.(whatever cheap tld)
Or an "Awesome list" on GitHub.
https://github.com/topics/awesome
https://github.com/topics/awesome
Thought of the same, if no one else beats me i'll get started on this in a few hours
To everyone, the list has been created, the rest is easy :D
https://github.com/sofixa/awesome-museums-online
Tomorrow/early next week I'll throw in the boilerplate ( contributing.md, PR template, and see about organisation/generation/TOC/etc.) and then i'll start adding the mentions from this thread and others i know of.
Once it's decent and ready for wide contributions, i'll post on HN, Reddit and co.
https://github.com/sofixa/awesome-museums-online
Tomorrow/early next week I'll throw in the boilerplate ( contributing.md, PR template, and see about organisation/generation/TOC/etc.) and then i'll start adding the mentions from this thread and others i know of.
Once it's decent and ready for wide contributions, i'll post on HN, Reddit and co.
Initial version ready https://github.com/sofixa/awesome-museums-online, i'll keep adding museums ( from this thread and elsewhere) and sections
Thanks!
I made this years ago, still update it sometimes.
https://github.com/polm/awesome-digital-collections
https://github.com/polm/awesome-digital-collections
Please do this.
I made a list of museums, galleries and libraries that make their collections available in the public domain with high resolution downloads. A lot of places, even if their collections are out of copyright only have low resolution images available.
https://www.kevan.tv/articles/the-best-sites-for-public-doma...
https://www.kevan.tv/articles/the-best-sites-for-public-doma...
Nice, but wouldn't an "awesome list"-like page on GitHub be more manageable and update-friendly?
Possibly, but it’s all on and managed by GitHub anyway.
https://github.com/MattKevan/kevan.tv/blob/master/_articles/...
some more virtual tours:
https://artsandculture.google.com/project/streetviews
The Tank Museum (formerly Bovington Tank Museum) is also doing a long-running series of "tank chats" on their exhibits. They don't only give some very interesting details (if you're into that sort of thing) but also give some deep historical context behind the vehicles.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBAEOsdxIbLPFEomzphaZ...
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheTankMuseum
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBAEOsdxIbLPFEomzphaZ...
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheTankMuseum
They have been doing it for a while. Mr. Fletcher is quietly hilarious in some of his chats.
A bunch of the Chicago museums have done the same thing:
https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2020/04/16/things-to-do-...
https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2020/04/16/things-to-do-...
Google has art from over 2000 museums online.
https://artsandculture.google.com
https://artsandculture.google.com
The museum ship USS New Jersey:
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC_Ftxa2jwg8R4IWDw48uyBw
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC_Ftxa2jwg8R4IWDw48uyBw
I am getting HTTP 500 errors when I try to see a collection.
I am getting 500 even when doing a search.
Recently the Amsterdam Rijks Museum made their collection available via API, which I used to create website which will show you a random artwork on each button press:
https://randomrijks.com
https://randomrijks.com
[deleted]
Here’s the searchable collection of the Rijks:
https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio
Ooh, that sounds like a fantastic ‘new tab’ page. Thanks!
Like everyone really cares about old dead art these days :)
I was kinda hoping for "gigapixel" scans so I can zoom right right right in to a painting or sculpture etc, and see the details.
Am I missing something or is it just a bunch of medium-res photos?
Am I missing something or is it just a bunch of medium-res photos?
> Error 503 Backend fetch failed
The Met Museum did something similar a while back: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection ... A list of (all?) images https://github.com/gregsadetsky/open-access-is-great-but-whe... .
I’m only getting 503 varnish cache errors when I try to actually visit any artworks through this.
Is there an API or a way to do «polite scraping»? Could be a fun AI dataset.
Here's Mona Lisa:
https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl010066723
https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl010066723
The date of creation seems wrong, right? Shouldn't it be ~1500?
Maybe it's one of those things where someone mixed up the centuries. The page states "XVIIe siècle" (17th century), if someone somewhere mixed up "16th century" (which is correct) with "the 1600s", that could explain the error.
Personally I'm really not a fan of using the "century" notation, and in my native language it's never used.
Personally I'm really not a fan of using the "century" notation, and in my native language it's never used.
> and in my native language it's never used.
So how do you handle fuzzy dates? What language is it, if I may ask?
So how do you handle fuzzy dates? What language is it, if I may ask?
Swedish. It's exactly like English except we only use exact dates or "the X-hundreds" or "the X-ies", never the "off by one" count of centuries.
Just for the record, I'm not saying this is a feature of Swedish specifically. I'm sure there are other languages that do the same.
Just for the record, I'm not saying this is a feature of Swedish specifically. I'm sure there are other languages that do the same.
as spotted by sl956, I mistakenly linked to a copy.
The correct link to the actual Mona Lisa is this one: https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl010062370
LOL, it's finally time for Paul Graham's first startup to shine.
Why don't these photos to have color calibration targets?
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/163309-REG/Kodak_1907...
And maybe some meta data about the camera and settings.
I don't recall any online collections using targets. Surely these curation and archivist domain experts record this stuff. I've casually asked a few times, but no leads.
--
My partner likes to create master copies. Portrait, still life.
I've ordered fine art prints of dozens of originals. Always frustrating. I just get one of every option (matte, gloss, each type of medium). And let my partner pick the one that seems to match most closely. (Then I give away the extras as 'just because' gifts, which people seem to like.)
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/163309-REG/Kodak_1907...
And maybe some meta data about the camera and settings.
I don't recall any online collections using targets. Surely these curation and archivist domain experts record this stuff. I've casually asked a few times, but no leads.
--
My partner likes to create master copies. Portrait, still life.
I've ordered fine art prints of dozens of originals. Always frustrating. I just get one of every option (matte, gloss, each type of medium). And let my partner pick the one that seems to match most closely. (Then I give away the extras as 'just because' gifts, which people seem to like.)
I think you answered your own question.
You can request color calibrated TIFFs from the Rijksmuseum collection: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/research/image-requests
> FOR PROFESSIONAL USE
You can also request free high-res TIFF files with colour reference for professional use. To order TIFF files, please fill in the form below.
Nice. Hopefully this becomes the norm.
Just one anecdote: During a VIP tour of a museum, eg browsing the warehouse of stuff not on display, I asked about digital archiving. Blank looks. I'm guessing it's just not part of the curriculum for minting new archivists, curators, historians. I hope I'm wrong. Surely the younger cohorts know this stuff...?
You can also request free high-res TIFF files with colour reference for professional use. To order TIFF files, please fill in the form below.
Nice. Hopefully this becomes the norm.
Just one anecdote: During a VIP tour of a museum, eg browsing the warehouse of stuff not on display, I asked about digital archiving. Blank looks. I'm guessing it's just not part of the curriculum for minting new archivists, curators, historians. I hope I'm wrong. Surely the younger cohorts know this stuff...?
if you look at the terms and conditions for downloading, as with most museums, it's clear that they want to still sell prints and "licensing" images of any art they own
they definitely have color-calibrated images, but not for the public
edit: for those unaware, in the US, reproductions/photos of public domain 2D art are themselves public domain and not subject to copyright
they definitely have color-calibrated images, but not for the public
edit: for those unaware, in the US, reproductions/photos of public domain 2D art are themselves public domain and not subject to copyright
We've definitely ordered prints directly. At best, they've been IKEA poster quality. Might as well just use Kinkos.
There's a modest niche opportunity for a high end print shop to just handle it. White label the service so museums can reskin, rebrand, integrate.
I pitched the notion to the two local shops I use (high end, preferred by artists). Build relations with some museums, create a simple e-commerce site. No interest. I get it; Print is a dying industry and the old farts are just holding on until retirement.
I'm happy to pay real money for real prints. I hate fussing with this stuff and being responsible for the results. While I wrote software for print production manufacturing, I never touched the color calibration stuff. I'm just not temperamentally suited for that kind of work.
FWIW, the best source of true color images, for doing master copies, have been art coffee books from the 80s and 90s. When the print industry was basically printing money, some publishers took quality seriously.
There's a modest niche opportunity for a high end print shop to just handle it. White label the service so museums can reskin, rebrand, integrate.
I pitched the notion to the two local shops I use (high end, preferred by artists). Build relations with some museums, create a simple e-commerce site. No interest. I get it; Print is a dying industry and the old farts are just holding on until retirement.
I'm happy to pay real money for real prints. I hate fussing with this stuff and being responsible for the results. While I wrote software for print production manufacturing, I never touched the color calibration stuff. I'm just not temperamentally suited for that kind of work.
FWIW, the best source of true color images, for doing master copies, have been art coffee books from the 80s and 90s. When the print industry was basically printing money, some publishers took quality seriously.
There's a modest niche opportunity for a high end print shop to just handle it.
Maybe, or maybe not. In my experience, a lot of print shops, especially the chains, won't touch paintings for fear of liability, copyright or otherwise.
I tried to get one of my wife's paintings scanned and printed in a major American city, in order to send the print to her mother for Christmas. I must have gone to at least 30 places over two or three months, and none of them would touch it because there was no way to prove ownership. They wouldn't take our word for it. Some wanted paperwork from a lawyer.
I ended up taking it to a friend who is an architect, and he had it done in his office.
Maybe, or maybe not. In my experience, a lot of print shops, especially the chains, won't touch paintings for fear of liability, copyright or otherwise.
I tried to get one of my wife's paintings scanned and printed in a major American city, in order to send the print to her mother for Christmas. I must have gone to at least 30 places over two or three months, and none of them would touch it because there was no way to prove ownership. They wouldn't take our word for it. Some wanted paperwork from a lawyer.
I ended up taking it to a friend who is an architect, and he had it done in his office.
Why don't these photos to have color calibration targets?
You should ask for your money back.
You should ask for your money back.
Heh.
More seriously, I first browsed the textile & inscription images, guessing they'd most likely have color targets.
https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010000055
As you can see, they do have scales (of course).
I know nothing about archiving, archeology, history. I'm just guessing that color calibration would be crucial to their studies.
I think you can infer white balance from those scales. And because they're two toned, maybe some of the gamut too?
Not using a proper color target just seems like a missed opportunity.
More seriously, I first browsed the textile & inscription images, guessing they'd most likely have color targets.
https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010000055
As you can see, they do have scales (of course).
I know nothing about archiving, archeology, history. I'm just guessing that color calibration would be crucial to their studies.
I think you can infer white balance from those scales. And because they're two toned, maybe some of the gamut too?
Not using a proper color target just seems like a missed opportunity.
Where do you get these printed? I've searched for places that will do high quality prints and generally have come up empty handed. Maybe it's just something that must be done locally?
Has anyone ever raised copyright concerns?
Has anyone ever raised copyright concerns?
Start by finding someone who does "giclée printing". aka High end inkjet printers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giclée
We just tried all the local ones we could find. Then did repeat business with the one who was easiest to work with, did the best job.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giclée
We just tried all the local ones we could find. Then did repeat business with the one who was easiest to work with, did the best job.
Delighted to see a Persian Miniature grace the portal.
it's nice they're doing this, but I wonder when they're gonna start returning all the stolen pieces to their rightful owners, like Egypt for example.
>Stolen
Dubious opinion
>Rightful owners
All long dead
Dubious opinion
>Rightful owners
All long dead
If property can be rightfully inherited, either the descendants of whatever Pharaoh/other ancient Egyptian or the successor state of ancient Egypt are the rightful owners of what was taken from them. If your property may end up in a foreign museum millennia after you die, why even bother working?
France might not be the place to argue ownership by birthright. Vive la République !
Your argument relies on a number of premises that are not necessarily true.
First of all "Rightful inheritance" is a matter of human law not natural law. Whatever state or laws existed surrounding inheritance clearly do not exist anymore for artifacts more than a few hundred years old. It is absurd to say property rights of states existing thousands of years ago apply today. You won't find any courts arguing that. Absurd.
Second, descendants of millennia old property owners are both impossible, and too easy to find. Because of the way human genetics works you yourself may be a descendant. I'm a descendant of 13th century nobility, does that mean I and the millions of others with this ancestry inherit their various artifacts such as a cup or textile? Absurd.
>If your property may end up in a foreign museum millennia after you die, why even bother working?
I don't know. You'd have to decide that for yourself. To me the question is absurd. When I die I may will what is left of my estate, but I don't absurdly believe that thousands of years later my will be respected. Totally ridiculous.
These artifacts belong to the world. Any attempts by states to force other states or organizations to "return stolen items" is a mealy mouthed way of saying they want the value they perceive they have lost. This is absurd greed. Just like conquering land, the losers have no right to their lost land. That is never the case. And you will never see these same states trying to return the land they have "stolen" to the descendants thousands of years later, now spread myriad around the world, because it's fucking absurd.
When people die and a lot of time passes things become just things. Some novel state that has no true connection to, and in fact had no knowledge of, some past state has no right to property of millennia-dead people of that state. It's ridiculous.
If this was about doing the right thing then one would recognize that these are artifacts of our shared human heritage, and as such they should be kept in trust for the benefit for all humanity unbound to any particular regime cultural or legal. Of course it isn't about doing the right thing it's about stupid politics.
First of all "Rightful inheritance" is a matter of human law not natural law. Whatever state or laws existed surrounding inheritance clearly do not exist anymore for artifacts more than a few hundred years old. It is absurd to say property rights of states existing thousands of years ago apply today. You won't find any courts arguing that. Absurd.
Second, descendants of millennia old property owners are both impossible, and too easy to find. Because of the way human genetics works you yourself may be a descendant. I'm a descendant of 13th century nobility, does that mean I and the millions of others with this ancestry inherit their various artifacts such as a cup or textile? Absurd.
>If your property may end up in a foreign museum millennia after you die, why even bother working?
I don't know. You'd have to decide that for yourself. To me the question is absurd. When I die I may will what is left of my estate, but I don't absurdly believe that thousands of years later my will be respected. Totally ridiculous.
These artifacts belong to the world. Any attempts by states to force other states or organizations to "return stolen items" is a mealy mouthed way of saying they want the value they perceive they have lost. This is absurd greed. Just like conquering land, the losers have no right to their lost land. That is never the case. And you will never see these same states trying to return the land they have "stolen" to the descendants thousands of years later, now spread myriad around the world, because it's fucking absurd.
When people die and a lot of time passes things become just things. Some novel state that has no true connection to, and in fact had no knowledge of, some past state has no right to property of millennia-dead people of that state. It's ridiculous.
If this was about doing the right thing then one would recognize that these are artifacts of our shared human heritage, and as such they should be kept in trust for the benefit for all humanity unbound to any particular regime cultural or legal. Of course it isn't about doing the right thing it's about stupid politics.
Okay, I should stop using sarcasm on the internet. You're completely right.
I'm shocked you were joking. I've read the argument you posed made seriously lots of times.
Thanks for the reminder that not everyone has gone nuts.
Thanks for the reminder that not everyone has gone nuts.
Featuring everybody's favorite piece of Asterix fan art: https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010059199
Sorry to ask but can you explain the joke?
Funnily enough, https://americaexplained.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/running-jo..., claims to explain a joke based on the Asterix simulacrum of "Le radeau [...]" but it is an entirely different joke and no mention made of the inspiration for that image. Someone calls the situation out in a comment.
That just tickled me.
That just tickled me.
Both are true. The pirate ship being sunk is absolutely a running gag in the Asterix series, and in fact I had a vague recollection that the raft scene also appeared more than once, but once I took a closer look, that appeared to be wrong. So, lots of ships of this particular band of pirates being sunk, and once they are posing on this raft in a classical way.
See the first item in this post: https://auntymuriel.com/2012/12/23/asterix-in-translation-th...
Was: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22678816
Was: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22678816
They're referring to https://auntymuriel.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/medusa.jpg?w...
This is the part where we all laugh and the credits roll out
Someone not knowing the two can't make the connection. Can AI?
This is the part where we all laugh and the credits roll out
Someone not knowing the two can't make the connection. Can AI?
This is cool. Though a lot of it was. When I went to the Lourve I bought the guide app.
After leaving one could browse through some of the collections and listen to the descriptions.
I’m glad everyone can check these out now.
After leaving one could browse through some of the collections and listen to the descriptions.
I’m glad everyone can check these out now.
If you are looking for more art collections from France please check https://www.videomuseum.fr/en they encompasses 67 institutions (like Centre Pompidou - Musée national d'art moderne or Musée national Picasso) engaged to standardize the inventory of their collections and presently includes 36 000 artists, 390 000 works and 355 000 images. Very interesting!
Nukomeet is the company which is developing the project. You can find their case study https://nukomeet.com/work/navigart/
[deleted]
When will these be available as NFT?
Malcolm Gladwell has an episode of his podcast, Revisionist Histories, where he talks about how he considers museums are like Smaug’s horde. [1]
I wonder if digitising collections like this might go some way towards resolving this sort of problem?
1. http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/42-dragon-psychology-...
I wonder if digitising collections like this might go some way towards resolving this sort of problem?
1. http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/42-dragon-psychology-...
I'm puzzled by this statement on the Mona Lisa entry [1]: "Artwork recovered after World War II, retrieved by the Office des Biens et Intérêts Privés; to be returned to its rightful owner once they have been identified. Online records of all MNR (‘National Museums Recovery’) works can be found on the French Ministry of Culture’s Rose Valland database."
Does anybody know how World War II affected ownership in this case, considering by the time Louis XIV [edited, thanks julienchastang] died (1715) the painting was already in the Palace of Versailles? [2]
[1] https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010066723
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa
Does anybody know how World War II affected ownership in this case, considering by the time Louis XIV [edited, thanks julienchastang] died (1715) the painting was already in the Palace of Versailles? [2]
[1] https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010066723
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa
It's because that one is a copy of the original (still old, but ~100 years posterior to Da Vinci's).
According to https://www.pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/mnr/MNR00265 its last known owner was Friedrich Welz, an Austrian gallery owner, so the work must have come to Paris postwar to figure out whether it needed to be restituted to a previous owner.
The original Joconde is https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010062370
According to https://www.pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/mnr/MNR00265 its last known owner was Friedrich Welz, an Austrian gallery owner, so the work must have come to Paris postwar to figure out whether it needed to be restituted to a previous owner.
The original Joconde is https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010062370
And here's a good accounting of the Mona Lisa's journey in hiding during WW2, and the existence of the other copies.
https://www.artcuriouspodcast.com/artcuriouspodcast/1
It's underwhelming in real life, very small, dimly lit, under thick glass, teeming with tourists.
Online art is a great endeavor but there's no context for art without the space in which it lives, and in this I think the Musée d'Orsay is the better space.
https://www.artcuriouspodcast.com/artcuriouspodcast/1
It's underwhelming in real life, very small, dimly lit, under thick glass, teeming with tourists.
Online art is a great endeavor but there's no context for art without the space in which it lives, and in this I think the Musée d'Orsay is the better space.
If I have one day in Paris, it's definitely the Musée d'Orsay rather than the Louvre. Nothing against the Louvre of course, but the setting isn't really as good and you really have to plan where you spend your time.
I highly recommend The Musée Marmottan, probably my favorite in Paris. Small and intimate space, beautiful light, charming interior, and doesn't feel like a museum. The collection is beautiful and well worth the visit.
> there's no context for art without the space in which it lives
Interesting - I tend to think of context in terms of things like social, cultural, or historical context rather than the physical space.
Potentially online museums and galleries can provide a lot more historical context than a physical museums could, not only by providing supporting information but also by including many works that would not necessarily be located in the same physical museums.
But I'm intrigued by the physical space issue - perhaps using 3D graphics, VR, and AR could help virtual gallery attendees to gain a better spacial understanding of the work as well as how it is displayed in the physical museum.
In terms of current social, cultural, and historical context, I think virtual galleries can certainly present works in the context of current culture and recent history, and I also wonder if there are effective ways to provide a shared experience of visiting a gallery with other people, including people that you know as well as random members of the public, much as you might have in a physical gallery or museum.
Interesting - I tend to think of context in terms of things like social, cultural, or historical context rather than the physical space.
Potentially online museums and galleries can provide a lot more historical context than a physical museums could, not only by providing supporting information but also by including many works that would not necessarily be located in the same physical museums.
But I'm intrigued by the physical space issue - perhaps using 3D graphics, VR, and AR could help virtual gallery attendees to gain a better spacial understanding of the work as well as how it is displayed in the physical museum.
In terms of current social, cultural, and historical context, I think virtual galleries can certainly present works in the context of current culture and recent history, and I also wonder if there are effective ways to provide a shared experience of visiting a gallery with other people, including people that you know as well as random members of the public, much as you might have in a physical gallery or museum.
Sorry, just to clarify. "The" Mona Lisa - or at least the picture presented as such - in the Louvre, in Paris, is not the actual picture but a later copy by a different artist?
There's nothing on Wikipedia suggesting that, based on a skim, it says:
>It had been believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506; however, Leonardo may have continued working on it as late as 1517. It was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic itself, on permanent display at the Louvre, Paris since 1797.[10] //
I'm guessing I've misunderstood??
There's nothing on Wikipedia suggesting that, based on a skim, it says:
>It had been believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506; however, Leonardo may have continued working on it as late as 1517. It was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic itself, on permanent display at the Louvre, Paris since 1797.[10] //
I'm guessing I've misunderstood??
I was similarly confused at first. But it looks like the Louvre has two versions, the original by Davinci and this other copy by an unknown artist.
I knew that, but, I see where the error is now.
The OP posts saying ~'why does _the_ Mona Lisa image say this' and then the responder doesn't explicitly correct them: the linked image is not _the_ one but one of the copies, a copy that's also in the Louvre collection.
Aside, Wikipedia says it's been "on permanent display" in the Louvre since Louis XIV; not quite right, perhaps they meant part of the permanent collection.
I'm interested that Wikipedia claims it had no special renown until pretty recently, yet there are several high quality copies. Is that consistent?
The OP posts saying ~'why does _the_ Mona Lisa image say this' and then the responder doesn't explicitly correct them: the linked image is not _the_ one but one of the copies, a copy that's also in the Louvre collection.
Aside, Wikipedia says it's been "on permanent display" in the Louvre since Louis XIV; not quite right, perhaps they meant part of the permanent collection.
I'm interested that Wikipedia claims it had no special renown until pretty recently, yet there are several high quality copies. Is that consistent?
Thanks for clarifying this. Is it standard to use the original painter’s name even though it’s not their own work?
It's sort of written backwards, but the notice says something like "Da Vinci (after)" ("d'après"), meaning it's a copy after the work of Da Vinci's. The actual artist isn't known.
It's filed as “Da Vinci [...], d'après”; which basically means “copied from Da Vinci”.
When the name of the copyist isn't known, it's common to file the copy under the name of the original artist – and with the “d'après” at the end not to break the alphabetical order.
When the name of the copyist isn't known, it's common to file the copy under the name of the original artist – and with the “d'après” at the end not to break the alphabetical order.
Louis XIV not Louis IV.
Is there an API to consume it?
Would be nice if they had a web app that would cycle through the entire collection randomly. I have an old purchased Windows app somewhere that has several hundred images of the Louvre collection that I used to view that way on a projection screen. They say search results can be exported as a CSV file, so maybe a search that returns everything would produce a file that be used with a simple script to display all the images.
I tried exporting all the paintings and got a file with about 10,000 lines of this kind of content:
cl010055411;"Une Négresse portée par deux maures";"Desportes, Alexandre-François ; France";"1600 / 1700 (XVIIe siècle)";"INV 3891; B 1739";"Département des Peintures"
cl010052671;"Sainte Famille";"Girolamo del Pacchia ; Italie";"1500 / 1600 (XVIe siècle)";"MNR 827; D 55-7-2";"Département des Peintures"
cl010052673;Cavalier;"Anonyme ; Italie";"1400 / 1500 (XVe siècle)";"MNR 761";"Département des Peintures"
That first number is the catalog number which can dropped into a URL:
https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010055411
Some photos don't seem to exist (like the one above). Should be fairly easy to use curl and a script to pull a copy of the photos and display them though. Possibly they would get upset about someone using a bot to copy/view their entire photo collection, though maybe not if it only downloaded one photo every 5-30 minutes. If lots of people started doing this and didn't save the files locally their bandwidth use could go through the roof. A tag on the end will make the photo fullscreen in a web browser:
https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010208581#full...
So a Javascript app might work well, though it would be nice to fill the computer screen rather than the browser window frame. Maybe I'll write an app and send it to them if I get inspired. Not high on my priority list, but doesn't seem too difficult.
I tried exporting all the paintings and got a file with about 10,000 lines of this kind of content:
cl010055411;"Une Négresse portée par deux maures";"Desportes, Alexandre-François ; France";"1600 / 1700 (XVIIe siècle)";"INV 3891; B 1739";"Département des Peintures"
cl010052671;"Sainte Famille";"Girolamo del Pacchia ; Italie";"1500 / 1600 (XVIe siècle)";"MNR 827; D 55-7-2";"Département des Peintures"
cl010052673;Cavalier;"Anonyme ; Italie";"1400 / 1500 (XVe siècle)";"MNR 761";"Département des Peintures"
That first number is the catalog number which can dropped into a URL:
https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010055411
Some photos don't seem to exist (like the one above). Should be fairly easy to use curl and a script to pull a copy of the photos and display them though. Possibly they would get upset about someone using a bot to copy/view their entire photo collection, though maybe not if it only downloaded one photo every 5-30 minutes. If lots of people started doing this and didn't save the files locally their bandwidth use could go through the roof. A tag on the end will make the photo fullscreen in a web browser:
https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010208581#full...
So a Javascript app might work well, though it would be nice to fill the computer screen rather than the browser window frame. Maybe I'll write an app and send it to them if I get inspired. Not high on my priority list, but doesn't seem too difficult.
This is a tangential point, but I've recently noticed that I discover a lot of art through wikipedia. Many pages that deal with abstract concepts are illustrated with wonderful and varied selections of art, e.g.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love
That is indeed beautiful but also a sad reminder that current copyright systems have frozen this situation in time - we can only ever use antique art freely in this way, and all recent art is locked behind pseudo-immortal copyright terms.
I hope to explore via VR soon. That's the only way I can spend as much time as I'd like to spend in the Louvre (besides packing up and moving to Paris and getting a job as a guard in the museum)
Yeah I look forward to hyper resolution from tours if these places. Or better just open world where i can wander. Imagine being the only person in the louvre, slipper and sweats with a bottle of wine standing inches from unprotected works.
Paris was my last destination before COVID hit and the Louvre was worth every moment, but impossible to cover in a day. It is great to be able to revisit a museum from the web.
Besides the food, the other highlight was https://www.centrepompidou.fr/ Easily my favourite hideous building, somehow I love it. Fascinating works and a great view from the rooftop patio.
Besides the food, the other highlight was https://www.centrepompidou.fr/ Easily my favourite hideous building, somehow I love it. Fascinating works and a great view from the rooftop patio.
The resolution of (some) images is vary disappointing, especially the downloads versions which seem even worse...
https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl020579933
MOMA on the other hand has very high quality imagery of Durer.
https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl020579933
MOMA on the other hand has very high quality imagery of Durer.
At least Tineye works well in this case.
Are 3D scans available for the Louvre’s, or any other museum’s, collections of sculpture and artifacts? I would love to import them into Unity and set up more museum worlds in apps like VRChat. A few such worlds already exist, and are among my most favorite VR experiences.
Don't know about Louvre, but some museums definitely publish 3D models online. Europeana[1] in principle should be the one-stop place to find those from European museums, but still finding those is bit difficult now imho.
Sketchfab has a recent blog-post on their part: https://sketchfab.com/blogs/community/1-year-of-public-domai...
[1] https://www.europeana.eu/
Sketchfab has a recent blog-post on their part: https://sketchfab.com/blogs/community/1-year-of-public-domai...
[1] https://www.europeana.eu/
Very cool, I like that! I went there once, it's overwhelming how large it is. I was frustrated only EU folks could get a student discount, when here in the states I don't think anyone's threat model is someone faking a student ID to get a discount on entry to a museum.
The company that is behind their digitalization is Zetcom. They have thousands of museum around the world and some are accessible online. You can check their web site https://www.zetcom.com.
"More options" doesn't do anything on the first click, and on the second click it expands the menu and selects whichever artist is now where "More options" was.
This is very frustrating.
EDIT: And apparently selecting an artist from the filter list doesn't do anything but refresh the page. This is the worst. website. ever.
This is very frustrating.
EDIT: And apparently selecting an artist from the filter list doesn't do anything but refresh the page. This is the worst. website. ever.
I want the point clouds.
Great to have the whole collection but the realizations are very disappointing, barely better than Wikipedia if that. The zoom is a joke. I looked up Napoleon at Eylau which is gigantic painting, about 5 metres by 7. The download version is only 126kb - GTFOH.
https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010066486
https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010066486
That is indeed very disappointing. I suppose a lot of these works have been digitised a long time ago, maybe the technology wasn't up to it yet?
Or perhaps they are just worried about forgeries or unauthorised replicas?
Or perhaps they are just worried about forgeries or unauthorised replicas?
Brb, minting some NFTs (that's how it's done, right?)
I think I found an error with one of the photos of amulets.
I believe this amulet is upside down and represents a cat curled up.
See if you can spot it.
https://collections.louvre.fr/en/recherche?typology%5B0%5D=5
I believe this amulet is upside down and represents a cat curled up.
See if you can spot it.
https://collections.louvre.fr/en/recherche?typology%5B0%5D=5
"You wouldn't download a Mona Lisa" :D