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Close-up: Proximity and Defamiliarisation in Art, Film and Photography - Fruitmarket

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24.10.08 - 11.01.09 Curated by Dawn Ades and Simon Baker This exhibition explored the transformative effects of the close-up in photography and film from the nineteenth century to the present. Magnification can heighten reality or reveal things invisible to the naked eye, but proximity and changes in scale can also render the world strange and unfamiliar.

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Voma does not have an offline physical exhibition hall, it is the world's first completely online art museum. The interior facilities, the exterior of the building and the environment of the physical museum have been created using virtual technology.

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VOMA (the Virtual Online Museum of Art) is the world's first online art museum. It is fully interactive, free, and since it is open to anyone with an internet connection, fully accessible.

The online model means that VOMA is free to work with partners in new ways. It aims to become a truly communal experience, one which adds the voices of visitors to the conversation. VOMA, which was founded in 2020, has already exhibited works by a wide range of artists, from Banksy to Caravaggio. It exhibits work from across history, including well-known artists and hidden gems.

Meet Lee Cavaliere

Lee Cavaliere, VOMA's director, spent several years working with 's collection displays, before moving on to the commercial sector, delivering contemporary exhibitions programmes at Max Wigram Gallery and the Fine Art Society on Bond Street, London.

He tells blooloop:

"While I was at Tate I was working with the collections and displays; we worked on things like the Turner Prize and the Turbine Hall. It was interesting because it was across the collection."

He then went into the commercial world:

"I was director of a couple of commercial galleries, working closely with their artists and delivering their programmes, and doing art fairs internationally. I've been freelance as a consultant for several years."

Dedicated to opening up access to the arts, promoting equality and challenging exclusion and elitism, Cavaliere now heads up numerous charitable, community and NGO projects internationally, in addition to his role with VOMA.

The Sixteen Trust

In 2019, he founded the Sixteen Trust, an arts and education charity that aims to inspire children between the ages of 11 and 16 in financially challenged areas through mentoring from real-world arts professionals, across disciplines. Bringing new ideas, it engages young people in the broad spectrum of careers in the arts, giving long-term support, tied into the school curriculum and in partnership with schools and educators.

"The Sixteen was inspired by the fact that I had been in the art world for many years, and everyone looked and sounded like me," says Cavaliere.

Still from the exhibition 'Reclaiming the Body', featuring Sandro Boticelli, Luciano Garbati, Artemisia Gentileschi and Frida Kahlo

"There is a lack of diversity and opportunity within the arts broadly. I think there is still this idea within education, and it's even carried through to university and beyond, that if you're an artist, then it's a romantic pursuit where you're going to starve to death and be noble in your poverty.

"Actually, the art market is a $50 billion international industry. But if you look at the arts, arts subjects in schools are being devalued, because there is no proper economic argument being made for them.

"What is happening, therefore, is that people who already have means are going into jobs in the arts, which is damaging the arts in several ways. It's diluting the quality of the people, and it's also diluting the gene pool, in that the people who oversee what we're seeing are coming from a potentially narrow educational and economic background. That was the beginning of it."

Inspiring young people

Additionally:

"A conversation I had years ago with Phoebe Philo about the cross-pollination of arts subjects, and the way that creative thinking feeds into absolutely everything, sparked an idea. She is a very successful fashion designer, but she studied visual art.

"I looked at my address book and realised it is full of interesting people who work across the arts, in architecture, theatre, museums, transport: it's a huge, really interesting industry. I think if you show that to kids who would otherwise think that the arts aren't economically viable, they suddenly realise that they can have a say and a voice and that maybe the arts do have something to do with them."

It's a huge, really interesting industry. I think if you show that to kids who would otherwise think that the arts aren't economically viable, they suddenly realise that they can have a say and a voice and that maybe the arts do have something to do with them

The Sixteen Trust has been working to inspire young people, improve career prospects, and broaden opportunities through sustainable, long-term projects for two years now.

VOMA opens to the public

VOMA opened its virtual doors on 7 Sept 2020. Its genesis, Cavaliere says, came about because of a conversation between himself and Stuart Semple:

"He's an artist-activist I've known for some years," he says. "We have quite similar brains in that we are both very interested in trying to open up access to art. For a long time, Stuart has been working with the internet as a means of democratising the art world.

"The idea behind VOMA was to create a high-quality museum that exists completely online and is freely available. The problem, again, with museums is that they're only accessible to the people that they're accessible to."

Cavaliere is fortunate in that he grew up in Surrey, just outside London, so could, if he wished, go to the Tate:

"But even if you're from the area, there's no guarantee that you're going to want to go into a museum," he points out:

"They are not always very welcoming places. They sometimes don't cause people to feel that they can have a conversation they're involved with. We spent a good year looking at that question, talking with museums and with artists, visitors, kids and schools, just consulting and seeing what it was that people felt was missing from the museum experience, why they weren't engaging, so we could then attack that."

A new type of virtual museum

The result is VOMA:

"We've created a virtual museum that is architect designed, and quite lovely. It hosts exhibitions that have an international museum quality where we work on collaborations with museum collections, artists, and artists' estates around the world to bring together work from across history, to deliver it to anyone who wants to see it.

"So far, we've hit hundreds of thousands of people in 60 countries. So, it is clearly working, and there's clearly a desire for it."

VOMA is successfully reaching new audiences.

"We've got very good analytics on that," he says:

"The overwhelming number of people who visit are younger; the 18 to 25 age range is a big spike in the numbers. We're also hitting people in rural areas, and around the world.

"The interesting thing about it is its virality. We see these random spikes in the numbers in Korea or Brazil, and that's nothing to do with us. It's where something has been posted, then reshared 2000 times, for whatever reason. That's something that most museums would kill for. Because VOMA is so easily accessible, we're seeing about 50 to 60% of people are viewing it on their mobile.

"Kids in Guatemala are walking around, literally, with a museum in their pocket, which is what we wanted."

Improving access

In terms of addressing how to reach those who may see the arts as irrelevant or indulgent, or who can't spare the time or the money to make the arts part of their life, Cavaliere says:

"VOMA doesn't take any time or money. I can pick it up right now, just click, and I'm there, and that helps. But yes, access is a problem."

Abe Odedina and Édouard Manet looking again at the background story of black servitude in 'Olympia'

"A lot of the kids that we work with at the Sixteen are in places like Margate that have a museum. There is a lot of talk about cultural regeneration because of the museum, but most of the kids have never even thought about going to it. They've never been to any museum. It is a huge challenge.

"Giving easy access, - and you can't get much easier than it being literally in your hand - does help. 20% of our visitors are repeat visitors, which is encouraging. The time that people spend there per visit is, on average, about seven minutes, but it can be anything up to about an hour and a half."

Collaborating with VOMA

The VOMA team are always looking for new collaborations:

"The current show, for example, is about art and protest. I managed to find some people who organised the gathering of some painted boards in Minneapolis.

"During the George Floyd protests, local businesses boarded up the front of their buildings to protect them from the riots. These boards were then painted by local artists. Then completely grassroots, non-art organisations gathered these boards to preserve the story; we're showing them in VOMA, so that's a completely new audience."

"What we are trying to do is work with as many different people and voices as possible. We work quite closely with the artists and the museums that we borrow work from."

What is a museum?

VOMA deconstructs what a museum is, and what we want and need from a museum. Cavaliere explains:

"We started with the building. That was quite interesting because when you go to a museum, it tends to be this monolithic structure that, effectively, shouts down at you a little bit. We wanted to create something that didn't do that, and that was changeable. Our idea is that we are going to keep changing the building, and the landscape around it, which is a fun thing."

Visitors to VOMA can type comments and questions in a dialogue in the corner of the screen as they wander:

"We're getting constant feedback from visitors from all around the world, which is lovely," he says. "We're also trying to democratise the curatorial process a bit. I don't like the idea that exhibitions are 'delivered' by someone; that can be very problematic. I'm cited as the curator, but it is the artists that are really the curators. This was a collaboration through discussion."

Making connections at VOMA

Many of the works, Cavaliere says, speak to each other across time.

"[Exhibiting] the George Floyd boards was a collaboration with Save The Boards, Minneapolis and Memorialize the Movement, the two groups involved in collecting, preserving, archiving, and reactivating the plywood protest art. These are very deep conversations, and we ended up making good friends with artists and the organisations that support them."

The idea is for VOMA to be a listening post for developing culture. Culture and history are moving targets, and you must keep evolving with that

There are several freedoms inherent in the concept of a purely digital museum:

"The idea is for VOMA to be a listening post for developing culture. There has been an argument recently in Europe about what it means to be a museum, between the two points of view that a museum is either a) a means for preserving history, or b) a means to map culture. I'm more on the b) side. Culture and history are moving targets, and you must keep evolving with that.

"VOMA gives us an unprecedented opportunity to do that because we don't have to worry about tickets or paying for a monolithic structure. One challenge for museums is primarily that you've got to pay the rent. That brings all sorts of limitations, so you've got to start doing exhibitions that people will pay tickets for.

"That's why we get so many Andy Warhol shows - because curators think everyone loves Andy Warhol. The issue there is that museums are overwhelmingly populated by the same few white, male artists.

"I think the idea of galleries and museums being kind of guardians of culture is something that we may need to challenge."

The challenges of a virtual museum model

There are, of course, challenges in running a free virtual museum:

"The main challenge is making it work financially," he says. "We are working on several different ways of doing that. We can work on a skeleton crew. What you're seeing in VOMA is almost a proposal of what we could do. Every single area of it could be expanded and developed."

The exhibition 'Breaking Into Colour', including Joan Mitchell, Vincent Van Gogh and Josef Albers.

Accordingly:

"We are looking at collaborations and sponsorship," he explains. "We don't want to completely sell out. Our independence is important. We have been approached by some organisations we didn't particularly want to work with because of their moral issues. It is important that we are careful about that. We want it to remain free and open and honest. But at the same time, that is a very noble cause, which doesn't pay.

"We are working on that, but right now the challenge is staying true to where we started while keeping an eye to developing. Many of the challenges are answered just by the very nature of VOMA. It is this wonderfully inclusive space, and the exhibitions themselves can be put together with that in mind."

Education at VOMA

Cavaliere is also keen to develop the education side:

"We are working, along with the Sixteen Trust, since it's all part of the same charity, to develop the education programme, and to do more outreach. We'd like to get a full-time education officer."

In terms of digital outreach, he adds:

"Stuart and I did initially conceive of VOMA as being something that you could download, and then do your own shows, but it is way too advanced for that, though we have come up with other ways of young people being able to put their own exhibitions on in the virtual space, including their own work, or that of well-known artists. We are talking with various museums about going into partnership with that technology."

"The thing that we do have is a completely ground-breaking technological solution to online exhibitions and online museum education."

Looking to the future

There are, he says, various irons in various fires in terms of how VOMA will grow. For the future, he says:

"I think we need a much larger education programme; the potential is enormous. I'd also like to see more events, more talks. They have been successful so far. I want to be working with more curators internationally."

"Then we have one wall, the Discovery Wall, which is work that has been suggested by visitors. I want to build a new space. This is called the Convertible Gallery because it's outside and has no roof. It will be for work that has been suggested by artists. It's an idea around broadening out the idea of how you put shows together. I'd like to explore that further.

"I'd also like to re redesign the building and put it somewhere new because it's been where it is now for a year."

VOMA can be at the centre of global conversations

The team has also been exploring hosting a conference on art and digital innovation:

"VOMA, I think, has the potential to be at the centre of those conversations globally. Particularly as we move into the metaverse.

"We can develop in all areas. I want to be commissioning more artists. Artists are the geniuses here. If you give them new technology, they will run with it and create new, beautiful things."

In conclusion:

"It's a brave new world, and it is quite nice to be at the vanguard. It's interesting: I fully expected there to be a hundred of these by now. But I think because we're doing it as a non-profit, we're the only people mad enough to have done it to this level."

Top image: VOMA entrance, with sculpture 'Pinga' by Misha Milovanovich.

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Inside VOMA: the Virtual Online Museum of Art

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VOMA (the Virtual Online Museum of Art) is the world's first online art museum . It is fully interactive, free, and since it is open to anyone with an internet connection, fully accessible. The online model means that VOMA is free to work with partners in new ways.

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Art Basel is the highest level of art fair in the world. The official website also includes an online showroom, behind-the-scenes stories, and art talks, and offers simultaneous online and offline live streaming of Art Basel exhibitions.

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Brian Boucher

As shipping costs rise, galleries get creative

Mon, Sep 25, 2023

From building and packing crates in-house to flying in artists to create the work locally, galleries are finding new ways to minimize transport spend and cut carbon emissions

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Brian Boucher As shipping costs rise, galleries get creative Mon, Sep 25, 2023 From building and packing crates in-house to flying in artists to create the work locally, galleries are finding new ways to minimize transport spend and cut carbon emissions

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An online panoramic tour of 51 exhibitions from 2016 to 2021 is available on their public website.

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See the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang, restored to life a thousand years ago through the use of technology. In Digital Dunhuang, the ten dynasties of Dunhuang are restored in 360 degrees through virtual technology. 30 caves and 4,430 square meters of frescoes.

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On their official website, not only do they have a huge gallery of cultural relics, but they also have vr panoramic virtual recreations of the palace buildings and important cultural relics.

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Established in 1925, the Palace Museum is located in the imperial palace of the consecutive Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. The magnificent architectural complex, also known as the Forbidden City, and the vast holdings of paintings, calligraphy, ceramics, and antiquities of the imperial collections make it one of the most prestigious museums in China and the world. In 1961, the State Council designated the former imperial residence as one of China's foremost-protected cultural heritage sites, and in 1987 it was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Location and Layout
Situated in the heart of Beijing, the Palace Museum is approached through the Gate of Heavenly Peace ( Tian'an men). Immediately to the north of the Palace Museum is Prospect Hill (also called Coal Hill), while on the east and west are the Wangfujing and Zhongnanhai neighborhoods. Ancient China's astronomers endowed the location with cosmic significance. They correlated the emperor's abode, which they considered the pivot of the terrestrial world, with the Pole Star ( Ziwei yuan)-believed to be the center of the heavens. Because of its centrality and restricted access, the palace was called the Forbidden City. It was built from 1406 to 1420 by the third emperor of the Ming dynasty, the Yongle Emperor (r. 1403-1420) who, upon usurping the throne, determined to move his capital northward from Nanjing to Beijing. Over 200 years later, the Ming dynasty fell to the Manchu Qing dynasty in 1644. Then, in 1911, the Qing were subsequently overthrown by republican revolutionaries. The last emperor, Puyi (who ruled from 1909 to 1911 under the reign name Xuantong), continued to live in the palace after his abdication until he was expelled in 1924. During nearly six hundred years of imperial operation, the palace served as the residence and court of twenty-four emperors.

The Forbidden City is surrounded by 10-metre-high walls and a 52-metre-wide moat. Measuring 961 meters from north to south and 753 meters from east to west, the complex covers an area of 1,120,000 square meters. Each side of the rectangular city has a gate. These four gates are the Meridian Gate ( Wu men) on the south, the Gate of Divine Prowess ( Shenwu men) on the north, and the East and West Prosperity Gates ( Donghua men and Xihua men), respectively. Entering from the south, visitors will see a succession of halls and palaces spreading out on either side of the central axis. The glowing yellow roofs of the stately buildings seem to levitate above the vermilion walls. This magnificent sight is amplified by the painted ridges and carved beams of the ancient structures.

Known as the Outer Court, the southern portion of the Forbidden City features three main halls - the Hall of Supreme Harmony ( Taihe dian), Hall of Central Harmony ( Zhonghe dian), and Hall of Preserving Harmony ( Baohe dian). These three halls are flanked by the Belvedere of Embodying Benevolence ( Tiren ge) and Belvedere of Spreading Righteousness ( Hongyi ge). The Outer Court was the venue for the emperor's court and grand audiences.

Mirroring this arrangement is the Inner Court, which is the northern portion of the Forbidden City. The Palace of Heavenly Purity ( Qianqing gong), Hall of Union ( Jiaotai dian), and Palace of Earthly Tranquility ( Kunning gong) lie upon the central axis. The Six Eastern Palaces and the Six Western Palaces are private imperial residences found on their respective sides of the main axis. Other major buildings in the Inner Court include the Hall for Abstinence ( Zhai gong) and Hall of Sincere Solemnity ( Chengsu dian) in the east and the Hall of Mental Cultivation ( Yangxin dian), Belvedere of Raining Flowers ( Yuhua ge), and Palace of Compassion and Tranquility ( Cining gong) in the west. The Inner Court is not only comprised of the residences of the emperor and his consorts but also venues for religious rituals and administrative activities. The far north end of the Inner Court is the Imperial Garden.

In total, the buildings of the two courts account for an area of some 163,000 square meters. These structures were designed in strict accordance to the traditional code of architectural hierarchy, which designated specific features to reflect the paramount authority and status of the emperor. Ordinary mortals were forbidden-and most would never dare-to come within close proximity to this imperial city.
Founding of the Palace Museum
The Xinhai Revolution of 1911 ended with the abdication of the last emperor Puyi. The provisional government allowed him to continue to live in the Inner Court of the Forbidden City. Meanwhile, all of the imperial treasures from palaces in Jehol (or Rehe-present-day Chengde, Hebei Province) and Mukden (present-day Shenyang, Liaoning Province) were moved to the Forbidden City for public display in the Outer Court in 1914. While confined to the Inner Court, Puyi utilized the vestiges of his dynastic influence to plot his own restoration. He also smuggled out or pawned countless works of art under the pretexts of granting them as rewards to his courtiers and servants or sending them for repair.

In 1924, during a coup launched by the warlord Feng Yuxiang, Puyi was finally expelled from the Forbidden City. The management of the palace fell to a committee that was set up to deal with the concerns of the deposed imperial family. That committee also audited the imperial collections. After a year of tireless preparations, on 10 October 1925, the committee arranged a grand ceremony in front of the Palace of Heavenly Purity to mark the inception of the Palace Museum. News of the opening flashed across the nation. Such was the scramble of visitors on the opening day that traffic jams around Beijing almost brought the city to a standstill.

According to a twenty-eight volume inventory published in 1925, the treasure trove left by the Qing imperial family numbered more than 1,860,000 items. This collection included sacrificial vessels and ancient jade artifacts from the earliest dynasties of Chinese history; paintings and calligraphy dating to as early as the seventh century; porcelain from the Song and Yuan; a variety of enamel and lacquer ware; gold and silver ornaments; antiques made of bamboo, wood, horn, and gourds; religious statues in gold and bronze; thousands of imperial robes and ornaments; textiles; and furniture. In addition, countless books, literary works, and historical documents were found among the antiquities. All these were divided into separate collections that were placed under the care of designated staff to sort and collate. Exhibition halls were opened to display some of the treasures. The establishment of the museum ushered in new fields of research and academic inquiry, and writers and editors soon began publishing books and journals to report the exciting, new findings. The Palace Museum quickly became a thriving center for scholarly research and public interest.
Collection Evacuation and Ensuing Division
Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the Japanese had annexed territory in China's northeast and proceeded to march on Beijing. With this looming threat, the Museum's authorities decided to evacuate its collection rather than let it fall into enemy hands or risk destruction in battle. In the frantic time from February to May 1933, the most important pieces in the collection were packed into 13,427 crates and sixty-four bundles and sent to Shanghai in five batches. Another six thousand some crates were assembled from the Antiquities Exhibition Institute, Summer Palace, and Imperial College. In 1936, they were dispatched to Nanjing where a depository had been built and a branch of the Palace Museum was to be established.

On 7 July 1937, shots fired at the Lugou Bridge (also known as the Marco Polo Bridge) west of Beijing heralded the eruption of the Sino-Japanese War. Within a year, the Japanese had invaded most of eastern China. The treasures stored in Nanjing had to be moved again-this time by three routes to Sichuan, where they were secreted in Baxian, Emei, and Leshan. Only at the end of the war were they consolidated in Chongqing and subsequently returned to Nanjing in 1947. With the imminent victory of the Communist army south of the Yangtze River, the weakened Kuomintang began their retreat to Taiwan. From the end of 1948 to 1949, the Kuomintang selected 2,972 crates to be shipped across the Strait for storage in Taichung. The contents of these crates formed the collection of the Taipei Palace Museum, which opened to the public in 1965. Most of the national treasures remaining in Nanjing were gradually returned to Beijing, although to this day 2,221 crates remain in storage in Nanjing.

During this tumultuous decade of war and revolution, none of the treasures were lost or damaged, in spite of the incredible quantity of antiquities. This was largely due to the steadfast commitment of the Palace Museum staff, whose achievement in preserving these treasures was nothing short of heroic. Unfortunately, as a result of this long period of upheaval, some of the treasures were dispersed into various institutions. Over the years, the collection has remained divided. Today, many people still hope for the eventual reunification of the collection and the restoration of its comprehensive representation of Chinese traditional culture.

In the early 1950s, shortly after the establishment of the People's Republic of China, the Palace Museum staff was imbued with new determination and enthusiasm to restore the Forbidden City to its former glory. The Museum's administration launched a policy of comprehensive restoration. Where previously the dirty and dilapidated halls and courts lay under weeds and piles of rubbish, the palace shined with a renewed vibrancy after some 250,000 cubic meters of accumulated debris were cleared out. In time, the crumbling palace buildings, repaired and renovated, once again displayed their original resplendence. All the tall structures were equipped with lightning rods, while modern systems were installed to ensure fire protection and security. Additionally, the maintenance of the surrounding moat has been a distinct government priority, particularly since the beginning of the reforms instituted during the early 1980s.
Collections
The collections of the Palace Museum originate from the Qing imperial collection and include ceramics, paintings, calligraphy, bronzes, timepieces, jades, palace paraphernalia, ancient books, and historical documents. During the 1950s and 1960s, a systematic inventory was completed and redressed previous inaccurate catalogues. After the founding of the Museum in 1925, particularly after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collection was further augmented in various ways. For example, many precious artifacts were salvaged from a muddled assortment of apparently worthless objects. After more than a decade of painstaking efforts, some 710,000 treasured pieces from the Qing palace were retrieved. Meanwhile, national allocations, requisitions, and private donations brought more than 220,000 additional pieces of cultural significance to the Museum. These acquisitions made up for the lack of certain aspects of ancient Chinese history in the original Qing collections and included colored earthenware from prehistoric times, bronzes and jades from the Shang and Zhou dynasties, pottery tomb figurines from the Han dynasty, stone sculpture from the Northern and Southern Dynasties, and tri-color pottery from the Tang dynasty. The ancient paintings, scrolls, and calligraphy added to the collections were particularly spectacular. These exquisite additions included Lu Ji's A Consoling Letter ( Pingfu tie) in cursive script, Wang Xun's Letter to Boyuan ( Boyuan tie), and Gu Kaizhi's Nymph of the Luo River ( Luoshenfu tu) from the Jin dynasty; Zhan Ziqian's landscape handscroll Spring Excursion ( Youchun tu) from the Sui dynasty; Han Huang's Five Oxen ( Wuniu tu) and Du Mu's running-cursive script handscroll Courtesan Zhang Haohao ( Zhang haohao shi) from the Tang dynasty; Gu Hongzhong's The Night Revels of Han Xizai ( Han Xizai yeyan tu) from the Five Dynasties; Li Gonglin's Imperial Horses at Pasture after Wei Yan (Lin Wei Yan mufang tu), Guo Xi's Dry Tree and Rock, Level Distance Landscape ( Keshi pingyuan tu), and Zhang Zeduan's Life along the Bian River at the Pure Brightness Festival ( Qingming shanghe tu) from the Song dynasty. These pieces are all unrivaled masterpieces from throughout the history of Chinese art. Currently, the total number of works of art in the Museum's collection exceeds 1.8 million.

As unremitting as the attempt to recover lost masterpieces has been, the Museum continues to exert efforts to recover certain national treasures. Some of these works include Zhang Xian's Illustrating Ten Poems ( Shiyong tu, Song dynasty), Nai Xian's calligraphy Poems Reflecting on the Past in the Southern City ( Chengnan yonggu shi, Yuan dynasty), Shen Zhou's landscape handscroll After Huang Gongwang's Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains ( Fang Huang Gongwang fuchun shanju tu, Ming dynasty), and Shi Tao's ink bamboo Loudly Calling Yuke ( Gaohu Yuke tu, Qing dynasty). The first two were spirited out of the palace by the last emperor, Puyi, on the excuse of bestowing them to his brother, Pujie. These two priceless works passed into other hands, and it was not until the 1990s that they were returned to their rightful place in the Palace Museum collection.
Development and Accessibility
Beginning in the 1950s, the Museum's existing repositories have been completely overhauled to provide humidity controls, insect proofing, and other safeguards for the preservation of the collection. In the 1990s, a new storehouse with a capacity of over 600,000 items was built and included advanced temperature and humidity controls and protections against fire and theft. In the 1950s, a workshop was established for the care of collection pieces. This workshop was expanded in the 1980s into the Conservation Department. The workshop and subsequent department continue traditional forms of craftsmanship and utilize scientific methods in the restoration of damaged art. Over the past few decades, the Conservation Department has attended to as many as 110,000 objects from the Museum's collection and other public institutions.

In addition to continuously refurbishing the main courts and halls, the Museum has expanded the scope of exhibitions by opening new galleries to display bronzes, porcelain, handicrafts, paintings and calligraphy, jewelry, and clocks. Temporary exhibition galleries have also featured a wide range of thematic shows. Furthermore, the Museum has curated traveling exhibitions for museums overseas and hosted visiting international exhibitions. Since the beginning of China's period of economic reform, an increasing number of exhibitions have been displayed around Asia and in Oceania, Europe, and North and South America. These exchanges have aroused great interest and esteem and played a significant role in promoting international understanding and cultural dialogue.

The Palace Museum's range of publications has created further interest in domains such as the Forbidden City's history, architecture, and vast cultural holdings. The substantial body of published works includes Famous Historical Paintings in the Palace Museum Collection, Selected Porcelain from the Palace Museum Collection, National Treasures, Palaces of the Forbidden City, Daily Life in the Forbidden City, A Collection of National Treasures, and The Complete Palace Museum Collection (in 60 volumes). There are also two periodicals, namely, the Palace Museum Journal and The Forbidden City.

Although the Forbidden City used to be an impenetrable fortress, the imperial palace is now a public museum. The collection, displayed in gallery halls throughout the complex, is becoming increasingly more accessible with digital technologies. The Museum's website, established in 2001, is dedicated to presenting a "Digital Palace Museum" by which the wealth of cultural heritage contained in the Forbidden City may be effectively spread worldwide.

With rich collections representing the broad spectrum of 5,000 years of Chinese civilization and the 600 year history of the Forbidden City, the Palace Museum has seen many developments since its founding in 1925 and looks forward to carrying on the legacy of the past for future generations. Now, as always, the Palace Museum is committed to the preservation of national heritage and the goal of serving as a model for museums around the world.

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Established in 1925, the Palace Museum is located in the imperial palace of the consecutive Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. The magnificent architectural complex, also known as the Forbidden City, and the vast holdings of paintings, calligraphy, ceramics, and antiquities of the imperial collections make it one of the most prestigious museums in China and the world.

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Scholarship is at the heart of the museum, with the 'Academic Research' section containing research topics and cutting-edge discussions on art museums, galleries, art and collections. A series of articles on the interpretation of the Virtual Museum.

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In June 2019, the CAFAM Membership Card is officially launched! The CAFAM membership's original intention is to "repay its donors". Every donation will be completely used in the museum's future development. CAFAM is devoted to popularizing and broadening its influence in arts education, benefiting the promotion of beauty with public donation, and bringing the public benefits concept of arts education to every visitor.

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In June 2019, the CAFAM Membership Card is officially launched! The CAFAM membership's original intention is to "repay its donors". Every donation will be completely used in the museum's future development. CAFAM is devoted to popularizing and broadening its influence in arts education, benefiting the promotion of beauty with public donation, and bringing the public benefits concept of arts education to every visitor.

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Albatrosses eat carrion and will travel great distances in search of food, even flying across the Pacific Ocean to feed on floating fish carcasses to survive. In theory, everything floating in the ocean is food to them, but sadly, it's not food they ate floating in the ocean, it's garbage. Birds don't have the ability to recognize garbage. They don't realize it's not edible. When albatrosses go out to feed their children, they bring back their stomachs full of plastic waste.

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On Midway Atoll, a remote cluster of islands more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent, the detritus of our mass consumption surfaces in an astonishing place: inside the stomachs of thousands of dead baby albatrosses.

The nesting chicks are fed lethal quantities of plastic by their parents, who mistake the floating trash for food as they forage over the vast polluted Pacific Ocean.

For me, kneeling over their carcasses is like looking into a macabre mirror. These birds reflect back an appallingly emblematic result of the collective trance of our consumerism and runaway industrial growth.

Like the albatross, we first-world humans find ourselves lacking the ability to discern anymore what is nourishing from what is toxic to our lives and our spirits. Choked to death on our waste, the mythical albatross calls upon us to recognize that our greatest challenge lies not out there, but in here.

- Chris Jordan

Chris Jordan was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet 2011 photography prize. He was awarded a special commission by the jury to undertake a field trip to Kenya, where Pictet & Cie Bank is supporting a sustainability project. It was his first time to visit Africa. Lens Culture is honored to have Chris Jordan on the international jury for the 1st annualLensCulture Earth Awards 2015.

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Midway: Message from the Gyre - Photographs and text by Chris Jordan | LensCulture

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On Midway Atoll, a remote cluster of islands more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent, the detritus of our mass consumption surfaces in an astonishing place: inside the stomachs of thousands of dead baby albatrosses. The nesting chicks are fed lethal quantities of plastic by their parents, who mistake the floating trash for food as they forage over the vast polluted Pacific Ocean.

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The Sea Around Us is a prize-winning and best-selling book by the American marine biologist Rachel Carson, first published as a whole by Oxford University Press in 1951. It reveals the science and poetry of the sea while ranging from its primeval beginnings to the latest scientific probings. Often described as "poetic," it was Carson's second published book and the one that launched her into the public eye and a second career as a writer and conservationist; in retrospect it is counted the second book of her so-called sea trilogy.

The Sea Around Us won both the 1952 National Book Award for Nonfiction and a Burroughs Medal in nature writing. It remained on the New York Times Best Seller List for 86 weeks and it has been translated into 28 languages.

Simon & Schuster had published her first book Under the Sea Wind in 1941; it was reviewed favorably but it sold poorly. Carson initially planned to call the sequel Return to the Sea, and began writing in 1948, just after hiring Marie Rodell as her literary agent. Carson began by writing a single chapter (what would be "The Birth of an Island") along with a detailed outline, which Rodell used to pitch the book to publishers. During research for the book, Carson met with a number of oceanographers to discuss current research. Carson and Rodell had little initial success with magazines as outlets for the islands chapter, nor for a second chapter titled "Another Beachhead." In April 1949, with about a third of the chapters complete, Rodell began trying to find a publisher for the entire book. By June she had arranged a contract with Oxford University Press that promised completion of the manuscript by March 1, 1950. Carson continued to write and research through 1949 and into 1950, despite unexpected health and financial difficulties. In part the research involved a trip aboard a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ship, Albatross III. After revising the completion date, Carson completed the manuscript in June 1950. By that time, several periodicals (The New Yorker, Science Digest, and The Yale Review) were interested in publishing some of the chapters.

Nine of fourteen chapters were serialized in The New Yorker beginning on June 2, 1951, and the book was published on July 2 by Oxford University Press. The serialization created a very large popular response, and the book was the subject of the feature review in The New York Times Book Review the day before publication. One chapter ("The Birth of an Island") was published in The Yale Review; it won the George Westinghouse Science Writing prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

After the book's release, Carson was inundated with an unexpected volume of fan mail and media attention. She was soon the object of attention from "the literary crowd," and because of a subsequent condensation in Reader's Digest, a broad general audience as well. The book sold more than 250,000 copies in 1951, in addition to the condensation and excerpts published elsewhere.

A film version was filmed in 1952 and released in 1953; it won the 1953 Oscar for Best Documentary (though Carson was extremely disappointed with the script and would never sell film rights to her work again).

Further reading

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The Sea Around Us is a prize-winning and best-selling book by the American marine biologist Rachel Carson, first published as a whole by Oxford University Press in 1951. It reveals the science and poetry of the sea while ranging from its primeval beginnings to the latest scientific probings.

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水下摄影师镜头下被污染的海洋

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UN News produces daily news content in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Kiswahili, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, and weekly programmes in Hindi, Urdu and Bangla. Our multimedia service, through this new integrated single platform, updates throughout the day, in text, audio and video - also making use of quality images and other media from across the UN system.

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designboom | architecture & design magazine

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image © hiroshi iwasaki

still life with fish? photography by hiroshi iwasaki.

'lifeless' still life painting has been among the most appreciated masterpieces when it comes to painting, however hiroshi iwasaki manages to push the boundaries of the traditional discipline through the language of photography.the gossamer like qualities of each creature is captured with compelling visual force - evoking an essence of powerful fragility.

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still life fish photography by hiroshi iwasaki

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image © hiroshi iwasaki still life with fish? photography by hiroshi iwasaki. 'lifeless' still life painting has been among the most appreciated masterpieces when it comes to painting, however hiroshi iwasaki manages to push the boundaries of the traditional discipline through the language of photography.the gossamer like qualities of each creature is captured with compelling visual force - evoking an essence of powerful fragility.