Metropolitan Museum of Art makes more than 375,000 public domain images available as CC0

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/02/08/metropolitan-museum-of-art-mak.html

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none of the links in this paragraph work

We’ve created 20 thematic sets of images to get you started: Masterpiece Paintings, Cats, Monsters and Mythological Creatures, Met-staches, New York City, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, Winter Wonderland, Vincent van Gogh, The Pre-Raphaelite Style, Self-Portraits, Quilts, Gold, Georges Seurat, Arms and Armor, The Monuments Men at The Met, Faces from the Ancient World, Tiffany Glass, Dress to Impress, Art or Design?, and Dishes.

Where is this from and how can I find the links?

Replace the “boingboing.net” in the URL with “metmuseum.org.”
Or go here:

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I’ve actually been eyeing these “digital canvas” devices (Black Dove, Meural) and this kind of a content release makes them that much more appealing. Right now they’re pretty pricey, but I could see spending $500 on a 50" or larger device.

Fixed. Thanks for the heads-up.

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Forget about the frames, I just want a decent Roku screensaver app.

The Cleveland Museum of Art’s phone app from a few years ago made you download a ton of JPGs. I went on my android and pulled all the files, put them on on a USB stick(with a bunch of other artwork my wife and I picked) and used that for images on a screensaver on my Roku. My only complaint is that none of the picture screensaver apps on Roku are any good. Images are either off center, clipped, or move. I can’t find one that will just fit the images on the screen.

Still, I’m going to be going through this and adding more images to that USB stick.

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I think that’s one of the advantages of the frames - they come with apps and services that allow you to upload the pics and have them display properly. Also, no Roku needed so no extra box to connect, and they have a matte surface so it looks more like a real picture.

Those look really cool, but I sell public domain art prints, so I’m mostly hoping that they don’t put me out of business.

One clear disadvantage I see is that most artwork isn’t going to fit the dimensions of the frame. In fact, some of the artworks that Meural is showing on their front page animation are clearly cropped. With tens of thousands of works to choose from, you’ll always be able to find something that looks good inside the frame, but when there’s a specific piece that you want, there’s a strong possibility that it won’t.

How much people care about this is a separate question. People buy prints and canvas wraps all the time that have been cropped to fit standard dimensions. Costs and convenience seem to trump faithfulness to the original artwork, but I wish that they didn’t.

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It’ll be interesting to see where the market goes on this. Digital picture frames never really took off, so I’m guessing these won’t be terribly popular either. But they do offer some advantages in terms of changing up the wall art regularly, and (perhaps most interestingly) the ability to display moving images. Up until these devices came out, there really wasn’t a market for “reprints” of moving art. I’ve seen lots of installations and pieces of moving art, but they are really only available in the museum (unless you can afford to buy and display them on your own). These change that, and make moving art pieces available at home. There are limitations of course - just like the format issues you describe for paintings, moving images probably won’t be the same as they are in the museum. But they never really are, I think - prints are supposed to remind the viewer, not replace the experience of the original art.

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Yes! This could be very useful in future hedgehog art history research.

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