Tag Archive for: museum

UTSA professor’s thrift store score becomes priceless addition to Georgia museum | UTSA Today | UTSA

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While the artwork itself was striking, so too was the crisp, clear blue signature in the painting’s lower right-hand corner. Pugh realized he had come across an original painting and immediately searched the web to find out more about Keith Bankston.

According to the Digital Library of Georgia, Bankston was born and raised in Macon. He was inspired to pursue a career in art during a trip to Paris shortly after his high school graduation. After attending Florida State, he would return to Middle Georgia to teach art in the Bibb County public schools while simultaneously working to establish himself as an exhibiting artist. However, his fledgling art career was cut short when he died from AIDS in 1992 at the age of 34.

Pugh also found that multiple Bankston paintings were part of the collection at the Tubman African American Museum in Macon, an educational and cultural hub that strives to enrich cultural understanding and present the highest quality art to the Georgia communities it serves. Upon reading about Bankston and the Tubman Museum, Pugh knew he wanted to purchase the painting. But he no longer wanted to keep it.

“I really like it. But something like this—by a known artist in Georgia—would provide the most benefit in a museum in Georgia where everyone else can enjoy it,” Pugh said.

He bought Bankston’s “Eve in the Rose Garden” for $125 and wasted no time reaching out to Jeff Bruce, the director of exhibitions for the Tubman Museum, with intentions of donating the piece. The museum was excited to hear about the painting’s existence and happy to accept his gift. The museum will add “Eve in the Rose Garden” to its permanent collection of African American art.

“Keith Bankston is a beloved figure in the art community in Macon. His story is a kind of tragic tale of what could have been—of great potential that was never fully realized due to the AIDS epidemic.” Bruce said. “His light was just beginning to shine, so we honor the promise of his talent by collecting and exhibiting his work, and by sharing the story of his short but impactful career with young people in Middle Georgia, as well as visitors…

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Three Arrested for Dresden Museum Theft – But Jewelry Is Still Missing

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BERLIN – More than 1,500 police carried out a series of searches in Berlin and arrested three people in a massive operation connected to the spectacular theft of 18th-century jewels from a unique collection in Dresden last November, authorities said Tuesday.

The operation was coordinated by police and prosecutors in Dresden, investigating the Nov. 25, 2019, theft of a large diamond brooch, a diamond epaulette and other treasures from the Saxony city’s Green Vault Museum.

A total of 1,638 police officers from Saxony, Berlin and several other states, as well as federal special police forces, searched a total of 18 places, including 10 apartments and also garages and vehicles.

Their target was “art treasures and possible evidence such as computer storage media, clothing and tools,” Dresden police and prosecutors said. The searches, focused on Berlin’s Neukoelln district, did not immediately turn up any of the missing treasures.

“We’d have to have a lot of luck in order to find them a year after the crime,” Dresden police spokesman Thomas Geithner told reporters.

Three people, identified only as German citizens, two aged 23 and one 26, were arrested on suspicion of organized robbery and arson.

Police issued photos of two others, wanted on the same charges, identifying them as Abdul Majed Remmo, 21, and Mohamed Remmo, 21.

The focus was reportedly on a known crime family, and Berlin’s top security official, Andreas Geisel, said the raids should serve as a warning to organized crime.

“Nobody should believe that he set himself above the rules of the state,” Geisel said.

The Green Vault is one of the world’s oldest museums. It was established in 1723 and contains the treasury of Augustus the Strong of Saxony, comprising around 4,000 objects of gold, precious stones and other materials.

Shortly after the theft, authorities offered a 500,000-euro ($593,000) reward for information leading to the recovery of the jewels or the arrest of the thieves.

In March, prosecutors and police said they had determined that an Audi S6 used in the theft and later set alight in a Dresden garage was sold to an unidentified buyer in August.

They said they believe a young man…

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Try your hand at being an operator at the Roseville Telephone Museum

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An early magneto telephone.

Enlarge / An early 1910-era magneto telephone. (credit: Cyrus Farivar)

ROSEVILLE, Calif.—I don’t know about you, but I marvel that, with a tiny device in my pocket, I can instantly hear the voice of any of my loved ones, any time, essentially for free.

Of course, this wasn’t always the case. I’m old enough (nearly 37!) to remember when the phone would ring from overseas relatives and my parents would remind us to hurry to the phone: IT’S LONG DISTANCE! And yes, my parents used to pick up the phone and disrupt my dial-up Internet escapades.

But our contemporary landscape, replete with theoretically smart handputers, has an amazing past that extends well beyond my lifetime.

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Biz & IT – Ars Technica

The Museum Of Art And Digital Entertainment Calls For Anti-Circumvention Exemptions To Be Extended To Online Game Archives

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Now that we’ve covered a couple of stories about game companies, notably Blizzard, bullying the fans that run antiquated versions of MMO games on their own servers to shut down, it’s as good a time as any to discuss a recent call for the DMCA anti-circumvention exemptions to include the curation of abandoned MMO games. A few weeks back, during the triennial public consultation period in which the U.S. Copyright Office gathers public commentary on potential exemptions to the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions, a bunch of public comments came in on the topic of abandoned video games. Importantly, the Librarian of Congress already has granted exemptions for the purpose of preserving the art of video games so that libraries and museums can use emulators to revive classic games for the public.

But what do you do if you’re looking to preserve a massive multiplayer online game, or even single-player games, that rely on server connections with the company that made those games in order to operate? Those servers don’t last forever, obviously. Hundreds of such games have been shut down in recent years, lost forever as the companies behind them no longer support the games or those that play them.

Well, one non-profit in California, The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment, wants anti-circumvention exemptions for running servers for these games to keep them alive as well.

“Although the Current Exemption does not cover it, preservation of online video games is now critical,” MADE writes in its comment to the Copyright Office. “Online games have become ubiquitous and are only growing in popularity. For example, an estimated fifty-three percent of gamers play multiplayer games at least once a week, and spend, on average, six hours a week playing with others online.”

“Today, however, local multiplayer options are increasingly rare, and many games no longer support LAN connected multiplayer capability,” MADE counters, adding that nowadays even some single-player games require an online connection. “More troubling still to archivists, many video games rely on server connectivity to function in single-player mode and become unplayable when servers shut down.”

Due to that, MADE is asking the Copyright Office (and the Librarian of Congress) to allow libraries and museums exemptions to run their own servers to display these games as well. Frankly, it’s difficult to conjure an argument against the request. If games are art, and they are, then they ought to be preserved. The Copyright Office has already agreed with this line of thinking for the category of games that don’t require an online connection, so it’s difficult to see how it could punt on the issue of online games.

And, yet, we have examples of fan-run servers of abandoned games, or versions of games, getting bullied by companies like Blizzard. These fan-servers are essentially filling the same role that groups like MADE would like to do: preserving old gaming content that has been made otherwise unavailable by companies that have turned down online game servers.

It’s enough to make one wonder why a group of fans of a game shouldn’t get the same protections afforded to a library or museum, if the end result is nearly identical.

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