United Kingdom’s Public Catalogue Foundation Paintings Online

An incredible resource and just great fun is the United Kingdom’s Public Catalogue Foundation paintings online at the BBC website. The archive contains more than 210,000 paintings by 40,000 artists—more are being added as you read this. And they are all online.

It’s the first archive to include all the paintings in a nation’s public collections. The organizations that own the paintings include the National Trust, English Heritage, the Government Art Collection and Arts Council England. The collections are held by museums, universities, hospitals, town halls, local libraries, and even a lighthouse. It would take years to see all of them in these varied locations. it would take months just to find out when they are open.

The Wikipedia of Paintings

The site is beautifully designed so it easy to use. You can both view the paintings and tag them. Eventually, it will be a resource as amazing as Wikipedia with paintings indexed in all manner of ways, including painter, nationality, dates, media, title, subject, and style.

The tagging system helps choose accurate tags. When I typed in a word, I was given a list of standard tags to choose from. Each one defined. This is reassuring at the highest level because it goes as far as possible in the direction of accurate tagging. When i want to find a automobile, I won’t have to type “car” plus every other name that might ever had been associated with it in order to find all the paintings that include automobiles.

Why Tagging?

I just tagged a 17th century painting of a woman in an elegant hat with “ribbon,” for example. In  a few years, even a few months, i will be able to find needlework examples of the use of ribbons in dozens of paintings. And they won’t include paintings with ribbons of water or ribboned fields of wheat.

This is a fabulous place to learn about paintings and teach children about paintings. Tagging is engaging and the more points of view there are the better. Children see very different things than adults. There are no age restrictions.

What Can You Find and Do There?

What makes this collection different is that it is huge and contains such variety, and the tagging system which allows you to create your  own collections of paintings to view.

Want to see how kittens have been portrayed in the last 400 years? Want to tag gloves to show that gloves are an interesting subject in 19th-20th century paintings? To see when earrings started appearing on women — and men? To see when fish became an subject worth painting and why? This is your place. Don’t miss it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/

About the Public Catalogue Foundation

The Public Catalogue Foundation (PCF) in the United Kingdom plans to digitize all the paintings in the National Trust and other public collections in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. The organizations that own the paintings include the National Trust, English Heritage, the Government Art Collection and Arts Council England. The collections are held by museums, universities, hospitals, town halls, local libraries and even a lighthouse.

Effective Viewing Distance for Sculpture

During a discussion about placing a sculpture in the small park at Fourth Street NW and Blair Road, referred to as the triangle park, I was sent this diagram of the effective viewing distance for sculpture in relation to its size. It may be from Jan Gehl’s paper “Close Encounters with Buildings.” Apologies if posting it violates any copyrights. Our decision is approaching and this information might be helpful.

Chart of Optimum Viewing Distance for Sculputure

A meter is a bit more than 3 feet. If the sculpture in question is 10 feet tall, it would be  3+ meters. Effective viewing would be about 5 meters or 15+ feet. If it were placed against the Barack building to the south, it could be viewed comfortably from the front of the park or the street. That’s if it’s 10 feet tall and if could be placed there without affecting the one remaining tree which is close to that wall. How close can a heavy object be placed to a tree without damaging the root structure? How will be sculpture be affected by birds in that tree?

The sculpture may also be on a base when it is installed. Sculptures are often put on bases not to make them taller and more impressive but to protect them from casual vandalism. A three-foot base would mean an effective viewing distance of an additional three feet of viewing space. We could be up to 20 feet. Anyone sitting or standing in the park would not have the most effective view of the Hand.

Retaining Human Scale and Honoring the Sculpture

If the goal is to eventually have a park in which a variety of people can sit and enjoy the flowers and, hopefully, new Cherry Trees, the Hand could be a pretty overbearing presence. The Hand would also not be well served by being hidden behind Cherry Trees. An oasis of green at that corner isn’t compatible with that size sculpture. It and the neighborhood would be better served with a placement in front of the Takoma Recreation Center.