UCSD Arts Libraries

Charley Harper Illustrations

NotCot posted on Grain Edit’s post of their Flickr set of Charley Harper illustrations from The Giant Golden Book Of Biology. Harper is one of my favorite illustrators of that time–

LA Historical Photographs Online

This isn’t new, but I was reminded of this great resource by the Librarian In Black. UCLA’s archive, Changing Times: Los Angeles in Photographs, 1920-1990 is a digital collection of over 5,000 photos from the LA Times and the Los Angeles Daily News. Lovely!

By Aliens, For Aliens

The Barbican Art Gallery in London will soon have an exhibition up, curated by extraterrestrials. Perhaps you’ve heard of some of them? Damien Hirst, Brian Eno (obvious alien), Bruce Nauman, Andy Warhol, Mona Hatoum, Rebecca Warren, Christo & Jeanne-Claude (I can vouch, they are certainly aliens), Jenny Holzer..It runs March 6 through May 18th, and is in conjunction with Films From Another Planet and Close Encounters.

“Anthropologists from outer space set out on a mission to understand life on earth. Imagine that they begin their mission by examining the curious phenomenon that human beings call ‘contemporary art’. What does Art tell them about human life and culture?…
Believing these objects to have a real or functional use, the Museum’s curators deploy an eccentric classification system. They treat artworks as artifacts. The Martian perspective opens up contemporary art to fresh interpretations as well as humorous misunderstandings. In presuming to understand an unfamiliar culture, the Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art parodies the way that Western anthropologists historically viewed non-Western cultures through alien eyes.”
Show Page.Guardian Slideshow & Guardian Article.
Via BoingBoing

The Arts Libraries Celebrates Seuss!

Monday, March 3rd, at 11:30 a.m. and again at 1:00 p.m., the chimes atop Geisel Library will play a special piece in honor of Dr. Seuss’s (aka Theodore Geisel) birthday composed by 6th College’s Matthew Swagler. This new work was commissioned by Geisel Library, the UCSD Arts Libraries and the University Carillonneur, Scott Paulson. Also look (& listen) for Geisel Library’s own Teeny Tiny Pit Orchestra who will be playing songs from the Cat in the Hat Songbook. Come have some cake (there’ll be 2000 pieces!!) and listen to some fine music!

Graffiti at the National Portrait Gallery

From BoingBoing
Art galleries have been showing the work of graffiti artists for quite some time now. Right now, large graffiti pieces are also on display in the “hallowed halls” of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. The pieces, by Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp, are part of an intriguing new exhibition titled Recognize! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture. Along with graffiti, it features the work of a poet, photographer, filmmaker, and portrait artist. Seen here, “CON” (Montana spray paint on Sintra panel, 182.9 cm x 609.6 cm).

From Smithsonian:

Since museum officials were hesitant about artists spraying paint directly onto the gallery walls, the works were instead executed off-site by two local artists, Tim “Con” Conlon, 33, of Washington, D.C. and Dave “Arek” Hupp, 34, from Baltimore, who have both been spray-painting (or “tagging”) trains and bridges since they were teenagers. Continue reading Graffiti at the National Portrait Gallery…

7,200 bananas

From MAKE

Stefan Sagmeister’s works are on display @ Deitch in NYC, January 31, 2008 — February 23, 2008 @ 76 Grand Street, New York. The bananas you see here are real, all 7,200 of them on a giant wall - it smelled like 7,200 bananas too, slightly rotting -

Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far, an interactive exhibition by Stefan Sagmeister, opens at Deitch Projects on January 31, 2008. The exhibition will include works that have a life of their own, transforming throughout the exhibition as viewers engage with them. Continue reading 7,200 bananas…

Cue Serious Music..

Important Notice for UCSD Faculty:

The Art & Architecture Library’s Slide Collection will close June 6th, 2008.

If you need an orientation to ARTstor, Please contact Vickie O’Riordan – Visual Resources Curator. ARTstor is a database of over 550,000 digital images licensed by the UC campuses to support classroom teaching. ARTstor provides tools that enable faculty and students to find, display, and use digital images in the classroom and for academic and scholarly purposes.

Social Fabrics

From Provisions Library and their blog Signal Fire

Organized by Leonardo Education Forum and the University of Texas at Dallas, Social Fabrics demonstrates “convergences between individual expression and statement making, on the one hand, and the phenomenology of ‘network society’ on the other”. To put it more simply: the exhibition is a fashion show in which artists combine wearable art, locative media and sensor technology to express social commentary on life in a high tech society. Commenting on our digital media-infused and fashion driven lifestyles, the artists in the show express themselves in provocative new ways. As curators Susan Ryan and Patrick Lichty point out, “Fashion and digital technology have been interdependent at least since the development of Jacquard’s loom in the 1800’s.”

Social Fabrics is organized in conjunction with the annual conference of the College Art Association, February 20–23.

Continue reading Social Fabrics…

Logo Evoloution

Neatorama has a very interesting post on the evolution of some large corporation’s logos. From Canon

to Nokia (why did they ever change it from the original? Beautiful!)

to LG, which, who knew? Used to be a cosmetics company (someone please get me a jar of that Lucky Cream please)

The Arts Libraries Celebrates Black History Month!

AAASRP (the African and African-American Research Studies Project) and the UCSD Arts Libraries present a special free screening of “The Last King Of Scotland” starring Forest Whitaker with comments from Dr. Ricardo Guthrie (UC Santa Barbara) at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, February 10, 2008 in the Seuss Room of Geisel Library at UCSD.

This screening is held in conjunction with a month-long exhibit for Black History Month titled “Hollywood’s Africa.” This exhibit covers Hollywood’s approach to Africa via movie posters, publicity photos, and video images, and features recent research on the topic from AAASRP.

The exhibit is on the lower level, West wing of Geisel Library. Call (858) 534-8074 for more information about the February exhibit and the Feb 10 screening.