An Ancient Egyptian Homework Assignment from 1800 Years Ago: Some Things Are Truly Timeless

Every gen­er­a­tion of school­child­ren no doubt first assumes home­work to be a his­tor­i­cal­ly dis­tinct form of pun­ish­ment, devel­oped express­ly to be inflict­ed on them. But the par­ents of today’s mis­er­able home­work-doers also, of course, had to do home­work them­selves, as did their par­ents’ par­ents. It turns out that you can go back sur­pris­ing­ly far in his­to­ry and still find exam­ples of the men­ace of home­work, as far back as ancient Egypt, a civ­i­liza­tion from which one exam­ple of an out-of-class­room assign­ment will go on dis­play at the British Library’s exhi­bi­tion Writ­ing: Mak­ing Your Mark, which opens this spring.

“Begin­ning with the ori­gins of writ­ing in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Chi­na and the Amer­i­c­as, the exhi­bi­tion will explore the many man­i­fes­ta­tions, pur­pos­es and forms of writ­ing, demon­strat­ing how writ­ing has con­tin­u­al­ly enabled human progress and ques­tion­ing the role it plays in an increas­ing­ly dig­i­tal world,” says the British Library’s press release.

“From an ancient wax tablet con­tain­ing a schoolchild’s home­work as they strug­gle to learn their Greek let­ters to a Chi­nese type­writer from the 1970s, Writ­ing: Mak­ing Your Mark will show­case over 30 dif­fer­ent writ­ing sys­tems to reveal that every mark made – whether on paper or on a screen – is the con­tin­u­a­tion of a 5,000 year sto­ry and is a step towards deter­min­ing how writ­ing will be used in the future.”

That wax tablet, pre­served since the sec­ond cen­tu­ry A.D., bears Greek words that Live­science’s Mindy Weis­berg­er describes as “famil­iar to any kid whose par­ents wor­ry about them falling in with a bad crowd”: “You should accept advice from a wise man only” and “You can­not trust all your friends.” First acquired by the British Library in 1892 but not pub­licly dis­played since the 1970s, the tablet’s sur­face pre­serves “a two-part les­son in Greek that pro­vides a snap­shot of dai­ly life for a pupil attend­ing pri­ma­ry school in Egypt about 1,800 years ago.” Its lines, “copied by this long-ago stu­dent were not just for prac­tic­ing pen­man­ship; they were also intend­ed to impart moral lessons.”

But why Greek? “In the 2nd cen­tu­ry A.D., when this les­son was writ­ten,” writes Smithsonian.com’s Jason Daley, “Egypt had been under Roman rule for almost 200 years fol­low­ing 300 years of Greek and Mace­don­ian rule under the Ptole­my dynasty. Greeks in Egypt held a spe­cial sta­tus below Roman cit­i­zens but high­er than those of Egypt­ian descent. Any edu­cat­ed per­son in the Roman world, how­ev­er, would be expect­ed to know Latin, Greek and — depend­ing on where they lived — local or region­al lan­guages.” It was a bit like the sit­u­a­tion today with the Eng­lish lan­guage, which has become a require­ment for edu­cat­ed peo­ple in a vari­ety of cul­tures — and a sub­ject espe­cial­ly loathed by many a home­work-bur­dened stu­dent the world over.

via Live­science

Relat­ed Con­tent:

You Could Soon Be Able to Text with 2,000 Ancient Egypt­ian Hiero­glyphs

Try the Old­est Known Recipe For Tooth­paste: From Ancient Egypt, Cir­ca the 4th Cen­tu­ry BC

The Turin Erot­ic Papyrus: The Old­est Known Depic­tion of Human Sex­u­al­i­ty (Cir­ca 1150 B.C.E.)

The Ancient Egyp­tians Wore Fash­ion­able Striped Socks, New Pio­neer­ing Imag­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Imag­ing Reveals

Muse­um Dis­cov­ers Math Note­book of an 18th-Cen­tu­ry Eng­lish Farm Boy, Adorned with Doo­dles of Chick­ens Wear­ing Pants

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

John Lennon’s Report Card at Age 15: “He Has Too Many Wrong Ambitions and His Energy Is Too Often Misplaced”

In Sep­tem­ber 1956, a young John Lennon took home a dis­mal report card–the kind that many smart, way­ward kids can prob­a­bly relate to.

French teacher: “An intel­li­gent boy who could be very much bet­ter with a lit­tle con­cen­tra­tion in class.”

Math teacher: “He is cer­tain­ly on the road to fail­ure if this goes on.”

Physics teacher: “His work always lacks effort. He is con­tent to ‘drift’ instead of using his abil­i­ties.”

Reli­gion teacher: “Atti­tude in class most unsat­is­fac­to­ry.”

Head mas­ter: “He has too many wrong ambi­tions and his ener­gy is too often mis­placed.”

Guess they had him all fig­ured out…

via @Michael Beschloss

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

9‑Year-Old Edward Hop­per Draws a Pic­ture on the Back of His 3rd Grade Report Card

Hip 1960s Latin Teacher Trans­lat­ed Bea­t­les Songs into Latin for His Stu­dents: Read Lyrics for “O Teneum Manum,” “Diei Duri Nox” & More

Famous Writ­ers’ Report Cards: Ernest Hem­ing­way, William Faulkn­er, Nor­man Mail­er, E.E. Cum­mings & Anne Sex­ton

The John Lennon Sketch­book, a Short Ani­ma­tion Made of Lennon’s Draw­ings, Pre­mieres on YouTube

John Lennon Sums Up Elvis, Yoko & Howard Cosell in One Word

 

How Peter Jackson Made His State-of-the-Art World War I Documentary, They Shall Not Grow Old: An Inside Look

There are very few work­ing direc­tors today who can do what Peter Jack­son does so well—create extra­or­di­nary spec­ta­cles on the grand­est of scales while also stay­ing tight­ly focused on char­ac­ter devel­op­ment and emo­tion­al depth. He’s made mis­steps. His Hob­bit tril­o­gy felt bloat­ed, busy and unnec­es­sary, but one rea­son it so dis­ap­point­ed was because he’d already shown him­self a mas­ter of fan­ta­sy film­mak­ing with what many con­sid­ered the unfilm­ma­ble Lord of the Rings.

Of course non-Tolkien-relat­ed Jack­son films like Heav­en­ly Crea­tures also show­case these strengths, on a small­er scale: the abil­i­ty to retain the human dimen­sion amidst cin­e­mat­ic spec­ta­cles and inhu­man dark­ness (a qual­i­ty he mined explic­it­ly in his years as a hor­ror direc­tor). All of these sen­si­bil­i­ties, includ­ing a pro­nounced streak of dark humor and tal­ent for manip­u­lat­ing his audi­ences, make him the ide­al direc­tor for a doc­u­men­tary on World War I.

It’s a con­flict that makes lit­tle his­tor­i­cal sense to most of us, that unfold­ed on a scale few of us can imag­ine, with few iden­ti­fi­able heroes and vil­lains and a com­pli­cat­ed geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion that can feel out of our grasp.

Many doc­u­men­taries on the war are infor­ma­tive but, frankly, quite dull. In striv­ing for objec­tiv­i­ty, they lose sight of human­i­ty. Rather than adopt the voice of god and news­reel look that char­ac­ter­izes the usu­al fare, Jack­son has tak­en an active role in shap­ing the nar­ra­tive for us with cut­ting-edge block­buster cin­e­mat­ic tech­niques. He gives us char­ac­ters to care about in show­ing the hor­ror of trench war­fare, the con­fu­sion and cama­raderie of war. Though he uses orig­i­nal footage, it is dig­i­tal­ly enhanced and col­orized, screened in 3D, with record­ings of remem­brances from the sol­diers them­selves dra­mat­i­cal­ly over­laid to cre­ate the sense that the fig­ures we see onscreen are speak­ing to us.

The result, as Guy Lodge writes at Vari­ety, “is a tech­ni­cal daz­zler with a sur­pris­ing­ly humane streak…. So daz­zling­ly trans­for­ma­tive is the restora­tion of this footage that it may as well be the prod­uct of a movie shoot.” Indeed, once the cred­its roll, view­ers see the same “ver­i­ta­ble army of mag­ic-work­ing tech­ni­cians’ names” as they would on any big-bud­get action movie. Jack­son has, in effect, pro­duced “the world’s most state-of-the-art edu­ca­tion­al film,” apply­ing all the emo­tion­al levers and pul­leys of fea­ture film­mak­ing to a his­tor­i­cal archive.

Like most of us, stu­dents have trou­ble under­stand­ing the scale of the war and con­nect­ing with the lives of peo­ple so indis­tinct­ly pho­tographed and far away in time. Jack­son makes sure that they can do both, and his film will be sent to every high school in the U.K. Those schools will not, of course, be able to repro­duce the 3D effects. Yet even these, though they sound “gim­micky on the face of it,” writes Lodge, prove “to have an expe­ri­en­tial pur­pose, con­vey­ing the jud­der­ing move­ment and chaos of a con­flict many of us have large­ly viewed through cal­ci­fied still images.”

In the inter­views and behind the scenes videos here, we learn how Jack­son and his team solved the film speed prob­lem to make the old reels look nat­ur­al, how they cre­at­ed a col­or palette and removed blur­ri­ness and blem­ish­es. Jack­son also talks about his own per­son­al stake in the project, imag­in­ing what his grand­fa­ther endured in the Great War. This con­nec­tion seems to have spurred him all the more in the effort.

“To memo­ri­al­ize these sol­diers a hun­dred years lat­er,” he says, “is to try to bring some of their human­i­ty back into the world again, to stop them being a black and white cliché.” In cre­at­ing this mov­ing memo­r­i­al, Jack­son goes far beyond the man­date of an edu­ca­tion­al film. He has used all the tech­niques at his dis­pos­al to make good on the promise in Robert Lau­rence Binyon’s 1914 poem “For the Fall­en,” from which the doc­u­men­tary takes its title:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years con­demn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morn­ing
We will remem­ber them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Jackson’s New Film on World War I Fea­tures Incred­i­ble Dig­i­tal­ly-Restored Footage From the Front Lines: Get a Glimpse

Watch World War I Unfold in a 6 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1914 to 1918

The Great War: Video Series Will Doc­u­ment How WWI Unfold­ed, Week-by-Week, for the Next 4 Years

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The Solar System Quilt: In 1876, a Teacher Creates a Handcrafted Quilt to Use as a Teaching Aid in Her Astronomy Class

Ded­i­cat­ed teach­ers often go well beyond the call of duty, sac­ri­fic­ing large amounts of free time for the bet­ter­ment of their class­rooms and their pupils.

Any teacher who’s ever paid for sup­plies out of their own pock­et, then spent the week­end con­struct­ing an elab­o­rate bul­letin board dis­play, will appre­ci­ate the her­culean efforts of Sarah Ellen Hard­ing Bak­er.

Bak­er, a teacher and astronomer in Cedar Coun­ty, Iowa, is rumored to have spent 7 years embroi­der­ing a beau­ti­ful appliquéd quilt to use as a visu­al aid in lec­tures.

Fin­ished in 1876, the quilt is large enough that even a near-sight­ed stu­dent could see its plan­ets and moons from the back row.

Orbits are indi­cat­ed with silken threads against a black back­ground.

A comet in the upper left is thought to be Hal­ley’s Comet, whose last appear­ance would have been in 1835, 12 years before Baker’s birth.

The Smith­son­ian Nation­al Muse­um of Amer­i­can His­to­ry, where Baker’s quilt is housed, notes that astron­o­my was deemed an accept­able inter­est for 19th-cen­tu­ry women, which may explain the num­ber of celes­tial-themed quilts that date to the peri­od.

Author and quilt his­to­ri­an Bar­bara Brack­man includes a few on her Mate­r­i­al Cul­ture blog, while her His­tor­i­cal­ly Mod­ern blog vis­its some more recent exam­ples, includ­ing one that makes use of a stars-and-earth hot-iron trans­fer pub­lished in Good House­keep­ing mag­a­zine, to accom­pa­ny an arti­cle cel­e­brat­ing the win­ners of its 1939 World of Tomor­row Quilt Con­test.

Bak­er got just ten years out of her quilt before suc­cumb­ing to tuber­cu­lo­sis at the age of 39, the moth­er of 7 chil­dren, 5 of whom sur­vived her.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Mas­sive, Knit­ted Tapes­try of the Galaxy: Soft­ware Engi­neer Hacks a Knit­ting Machine & Cre­ates a Star Map Fea­tur­ing 88 Con­stel­la­tions

The Ancient Astron­o­my of Stone­henge Decod­ed

Too Big for Any Muse­um, AIDS Quilt Goes Dig­i­tal Thanks to Microsoft

Watch Nina Paley’s “Embroi­der­ma­tion,” a New, Stun­ning­ly Labor-Inten­sive Form of Ani­ma­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC this Decem­ber for the 10th anniver­sary pro­duc­tion of Greg Kotis’ apoc­a­lyp­tic hol­i­day tale, The Truth About San­ta, and the next month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Library of Congress Makes Thousands of Fabulous Photos, Posters & Images Free to Use & Reuse

The his­to­ry of the ven­er­a­ble Library of Con­gress demon­strates the vast impor­tance that the founders of the U.S. accord­ed to read­ing and study­ing. It may be one of the country’s most durable insti­tu­tions, “the old­est fed­er­al cul­tur­al insti­tu­tion in the nation,” it pro­claims. While par­ti­san ran­cor, war, and vio­lence recur, the LoC has stolid­ly held an ever-increas­ing­ly diverse col­lec­tion of arti­facts sit­ting peace­ful­ly along­side each oth­er on sev­er­al hun­dred miles of shelves, a mon­u­ment to the life of the mind that ought to get more atten­tion.

Tout­ing itself as “the largest library in the world,” its col­lec­tions “are uni­ver­sal, not lim­it­ed by sub­ject, for­mat, or nation­al bound­ary, and include research mate­ri­als from all parts of the world and in more than 450 lan­guages.”

Its first mate­ri­als were, of course, books—including over six-thou­sand books pur­chased from Thomas Jefferson’s pri­vate col­lec­tion after the British burned the orig­i­nal library down in 1814. Now, it “adds approx­i­mate­ly 12,000 items to the col­lec­tion dai­ly,” in every pos­si­ble for­mat one can imag­ine.

And since its dig­i­tal col­lec­tions came online, any­one, any­where in the world can call up these vast resources with an inter­net con­nec­tion and a few clicks. Though we tend to take such things for grant­ed in our fer­vid­ly dis­tract­ed times, a lit­tle reflec­tion should remind us of how incred­i­ble that is. But before we wax too rhap­sod­ic, let’s remem­ber there’s a busi­ness end to the LoC and it’s called the U.S. Copy­right Office, that guardian of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty that both ensures cre­ators can prof­it from their labors and pre­vents the free and open use of so many enrich­ing mate­ri­als long after those cre­ators have need of them.

But the Library has done its dig­i­tal users a ser­vice in this regard as well, with its “Free to Use and Reuse Sets,” a siz­able col­lec­tion of images that the Library “believes… is either in the pub­lic domain, has no known copy­right, or has been cleared by the copy­right own­er for pub­lic use.” (The use of the word “believes” seems to leave room for doubt, but if you got it with per­mis­sion from the LoC, you’re prob­a­bly safe.) Need pho­tographs of Abra­ham Lincoln—and scans of his speech­es, let­ters, and “duel­ing instruc­tions”—for that book you’re writ­ing? You’re cov­ered with this gallery. Need a col­lec­tion of clas­sic chil­dren’s books for your web­site (or your read­ing plea­sure)? Here you go.

From the graph­ic genius of vin­tage WPA and trav­el posters to icon­ic jazz por­traits by William Got­tlieb to base­ball cards to end­less­ly quaint and quirky Amer­i­can road­side attrac­tions to pic­tures of dogs and their peo­ple… you nev­er know when you might need such images, but when you do you now know where to find them. Want to know what’s in the set called “Not an Ostrich”? A valkyrie cat named Brunnhilde, for one thing, and much more here.

The Library cur­rent­ly high­lights its “Poster Parade”—a set of posters from the 1890s to the 1960s fea­tur­ing “trav­el, com­mer­cial prod­ucts, war pro­pa­gan­da, enter­tain­ment, and more”—in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Poster House, a muse­um open­ing in New York next year. These range from delec­table art nou­veau ads to shouty broad­sides telling you to drink your milk, brush your teeth, or have “More Cour­tesy.” Sen­si­ble pre­scrip­tions, but we also need more knowl­edge, study, and thought. Start at the LoC’s Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions here and har­vest your free to use and reuse images here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Library of Con­gress Makes 25 Mil­lion Records From Its Cat­a­log Free to Down­load

Large Archive of Han­nah Arendt’s Papers Dig­i­tized by the Library of Con­gress: Read Her Lec­tures, Drafts of Arti­cles, Notes & Cor­re­spon­dence

Get­ty Images Makes 35 Mil­lion Pho­tos Free to Use Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

 

36 Artists Give Advice to Young Creators: Wim Wenders, Jonathan Franzen, Lydia Davis, Patti Smith, David Byrne, Umberto Eco & More

“What­ev­er you do, nobody else can do that bet­ter than you. You have to find what you can do bet­ter than any­one else, what you have in your­self that nobody else has in them. Don’t do any­thing that you know, deep in your heart, that some­body else can do bet­ter, but do what nobody else can do except for you.” That sounds like fine advice, but when receiv­ing advice we should always con­sid­er the source. In this case we could hard­ly do bet­ter: the source is Wim Wen­ders, direc­tor of Alice in the CitiesParis, TexasWings of Desire, and many oth­er films besides, an auteur sel­dom accused of mak­ing movies any­one else could make.

Wen­ders’ inter­view clip and the oth­ers here come from “Advice to the Young,” a video series cre­at­ed by the Louisiana Muse­um in Den­mark (which has quite an impres­sive gift shop, inci­den­tal­ly, if you hap­pen to need advice on gift-shop­ping). Jonathan Franzen, author of nov­els like The Cor­rec­tionsFree­dom, and Puri­ty, admits to feel­ing embar­rass­ment about “giv­ing advice to the young writer,” but he still has valu­able words for cre­ators in any domain: “The most impor­tant advice I have is to have fun, to try to cre­ate some­thing that is fun to work on.”

And by fun he means fun like you have on a ten­nis court, where “you’re not just mess­ing around, you’re not just hit­ting the ball wher­ev­er you want — you are focused on hav­ing a game, and once you are in it you are hav­ing fun. That’s the kind of focused fun I’m talk­ing about, and if you are hav­ing that kind of focused fun, there’s a good chance that the read­er will too.”

The range of writ­ers from which Louisiana Muse­um has sought advice also includes Lydia Davis, whose sen­si­bil­i­ty may dif­fer from Franzen’s but who has gar­nered an equal (or even greater) degree of respect from her read­er­ship. “You learn from mod­els and you ana­lyze them, you study them, you ana­lyze them very close­ly, one thing at a time,” she says, begin­ning her more expan­sive advice based on her own method. “You don’t just sort of read the para­graph and say, ‘Oh, that real­ly flows, you know? That’s good.’ You say, ‘What kind of adjec­tives? How many? What kind of nouns? How long are the sen­tences? What’s the rhythm?’ You know, you pick it apart, and that’s very help­ful.” Her oth­er sug­ges­tions include to “be very patient, even patient with chaos” and to keep a note­book (“it takes some of the ten­sion and the wor­ry away, because if you write it down, it may just be a note. It does­n’t have to be the begin­ning of any­thing”).

“Do what you want to do,” Davis con­cludes, “and don’t wor­ry if it’s a lit­tle odd or does­n’t fit the mar­ket.” That bit of guid­ance seems to have worked for her, and in the great vari­ety of forms it can take seems to have worked for seem­ing­ly every oth­er artist. Take Ed Ruscha, for instance, whose can­vass­es of gas sta­tions, cor­po­rate sig­nage, and oth­er icons of Amer­i­can blank­ness must hard­ly have seemed geared toward any par­tic­u­lar “mar­ket” when first he paint­ed them. For the young he has only one piece of advice, received sec­ond-hand and briefly deliv­ered: “No one could ever beat this thing that Max Ernst said. They asked him what a young artist should do, and he said, ‘cut off an ear.’ That’s good advice to fol­low. You can’t beat that.”

Oth­er artists fea­tured in the video playlist include Lau­rie Ander­son, David Byrne, Umber­to Eco, Pat­ti Smith & more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

21 Artists Give “Advice to the Young:” Vital Lessons from Lau­rie Ander­son, David Byrne, Umber­to Eco, Pat­ti Smith & More

Bri­an Eno’s Advice for Those Who Want to Do Their Best Cre­ative Work: Don’t Get a Job

To Make Great Films, You Must Read, Read, Read and Write, Write, Write, Say Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Wern­er Her­zog

John Cleese’s Advice to Young Artists: “Steal Any­thing You Think Is Real­ly Good”

Walt Whit­man Gives Advice to Aspir­ing Young Writ­ers: “Don’t Write Poet­ry” & Oth­er Prac­ti­cal Tips (1888)

Ursu­la Le Guin Gives Insight­ful Writ­ing Advice in Her Free Online Work­shop

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Art Institute of Chicago Puts 44,000+ Works of Art Online: View Them in High Resolution

After the fire that total­ly destroyed Brazil’s Museu Nacional in Rio, many peo­ple lament­ed that the muse­um had not dig­i­tal­ly backed up its col­lec­tion and point­ed to the event as a trag­ic exam­ple of why such dig­i­ti­za­tion is so nec­es­sary. Just a cou­ple decades ago, stor­ing and dis­play­ing this much infor­ma­tion was impos­si­ble, so it may seem like a strange demand to make. And in any case, two-dimen­sion­al images stored on servers—or even 3D print­ed copies—cannot replace or sub­sti­tute for orig­i­nal, price­less arti­facts or works of art.

But muse­ums around the world that have dig­i­tized most–or all–of their col­lec­tions don’t claim to have repli­cat­ed or replaced the expe­ri­ence of an in-per­son vis­it, or to have ren­dered phys­i­cal media obso­lete.

Dig­i­tal col­lec­tions pro­vide access to mil­lions of peo­ple who can­not, or will not, ever trav­el to the major cities in which fine art resides, and they give mil­lions of schol­ars, teach­ers, and stu­dents resources once avail­able only to a select few.

We can’t all take the day off like Fer­ris Bueller and stand in front of Georges Seurat’s Sun­day After­noon on the Island of La Grande Jat­te. But thanks to the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go, we can all view and down­load the 1884 pointil­list paint­ing in high res­o­lu­tion, zoom in close­ly like the trou­bled Cameron to spe­cif­ic details, share the dig­i­tal image under a Cre­ative Com­mons Zero license, and sim­i­lar­ly inter­act with an oil sketch for the final paint­ing and sev­er­al con­té cray­on stud­ies.

And if that weren’t enough, the muse­um also includes a bib­li­og­ra­phy, exhi­bi­tion his­to­ry, notes on prove­nance, audio and video his­to­ries and descrip­tions, and edu­ca­tion­al resources like teacher man­u­als, les­son plans, and exams. This goes for many of the 44,312—with more to come—digital images online, includ­ing such famous works of art as Vin­cent van Gogh’s 1889 The Bed­room, Grant Wood’s 1930 Amer­i­can Goth­ic, Pablo Picasso’s 1903–4 blue peri­od paint­ing The Old Gui­tarist, Edward Hopper’s 1942 Nighthawks, Mary Cassatt’s 1893 The Child’s Bath, and so many more that it bog­gles the mind.

Browse Impres­sion­ism, Pop Art, works from the African Dias­po­ra, Cityscapes, Fash­ion, Mytho­log­i­cal Works, and oth­er gen­res and cat­e­gories. Search artists, dates, styles, media, depart­ments, places, and more.

A per­son­al vis­it to the Art Insti­tute is an awe-inspir­ing, and some­what over­whelm­ing expe­ri­ence, if you can get the day to go. You can vis­it the web­site, with full unre­strict­ed access, and gath­er infor­ma­tion, study, mar­vel, and casu­al­ly browse, at any time of day—every day if you like. No, it’s not the same, but as a learn­ing expe­ri­ence, in some ways, it’s even bet­ter. And if, by some awful chance, any­thing should hap­pen to this art, we won’t have to rely on user-sub­mit­ted pho­tos to recon­struct the cul­tur­al mem­o­ry.

The launch of this col­lec­tion comes as part of the museum’s web­site redesign, and it is an exten­sive, and expen­sive, endeav­or. The Art Insti­tute, which charges for entry, can afford to make its col­lec­tions free online. Some oth­er muse­ums charge image fees to sup­port their online work. Ide­al­ly, as art his­to­ri­an Ben­dor Grosvenor writes at Art His­to­ry News, muse­ums should offer free and open access to both phys­i­cal and online col­lec­tions, and some insti­tu­tions, like Sweden’s National­mu­se­um, have shown that this is pos­si­ble.

And, as Grosvenor shows, the suc­cess of open access online col­lec­tions has yield­ed anoth­er ben­e­fit, for both view­ers and muse­ums alike. The more peo­ple are exposed to art online, the more like­ly they are to vis­it muse­ums in per­son. Chica­go awaits you. Until then, vir­tu­al­ly immerse your­self in the Art Institute’s many thou­sands of trea­sures here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

25 Mil­lion Images From 14 Art Insti­tu­tions to Be Dig­i­tized & Put Online In One Huge Schol­ar­ly Archive

1.8 Mil­lion Free Works of Art from World-Class Muse­ums: A Meta List of Great Art Avail­able Online

Wikipedia Leads Effort to Cre­ate a Dig­i­tal Archive of 20 Mil­lion Arti­facts Lost in the Brazil­ian Muse­um Fire

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Meet Berea College, the Innovative College That Charges No Tuition & Gives Students a Chance to Graduate Debt-Free

“The loom­ing stu­dent loan default cri­sis is worse than we thought,” writes Pro­fes­sor of Eco­nom­ics Judith Scott-Clay­ton at Brook­ings. I’ll leave it to you to parse the report, but to sum up… it looks bad. Sub­prime mort­gage cri­sis bad. Maybe… there’s anoth­er way? Work­ing mod­els of ful­ly sub­si­dized high­er ed sys­tems in oth­er countries—like ful­ly sub­si­dized health­care systems—strongly sug­gest as much. Some high-end pro­grams in the U.S., like NYU’s new­ly free med­ical school, have tak­en an ear­ly lead, hop­ing to solve the prob­lem of doc­tor short­ages.

But there’s an ear­li­er, hum­bler, more pro­gres­sive mod­el of free col­lege in the States, Kentucky’s lit­tle-known Berea Col­lege, found­ed in 1855 by an abo­li­tion­ist Pres­by­ter­ian min­is­ter John Gregg Fee as the first inte­grat­ed, co-edu­ca­tion­al col­lege in the Amer­i­can South. “It has not charged stu­dents tuition since 1892,” Adam Har­ris reports at The Atlantic. “Every stu­dent on cam­pus works, and its labor pro­gram is like work-study on steroids. The work includes every­day tasks such as jan­i­to­r­i­al ser­vices, but old­er stu­dents are often assigned jobs aligned to their vol­un­teer pro­grams.”

Rather than work­ing to pay off tuition, “stu­dents receive a phys­i­cal check for their labor that can go toward hous­ing and liv­ing expens­es.” Near­ly half of the school’s grad­u­ates leave with no debt, with the remain­ing car­ry­ing an aver­age of less than $7,000 from room and board expens­es. Com­pare that to a nation­al aver­age of $37,172 in loan debt per stu­dent for the class of 2016. How does Berea do it? It funds tuition with its large endow­ment of 1.2 bil­lion dol­lars.

Through a per­verse his­tor­i­cal irony, as Har­ris describes, the same racist hatred that ran Berea’s founder out of town in 1859, and forced the school to seg­re­gate in 1904, made cer­tain that its fund­ing mod­el would sus­tain it far into its (re)integrated future. After Kentucky’s pas­sage of the so-called “Day Law,” bar­ring black stu­dents from attend­ing, mon­ey began to pour in.

The prospect of edu­cat­ing poor white peo­ple from Appalachia for no tuition was some­thing that the com­mu­ni­ty could get behind. And near­ly 100 years ago, on Octo­ber 20, 1920, the board made sure that the col­lege would be able to do so for a long time. Accord­ing to Jeff Amburgey, the school’s chief finan­cial offi­cer, “The board essen­tial­ly said, for Berea to sus­tain its fund­ing mod­el,” any unre­strict­ed bequests—essentially mon­ey that some­one leaves the insti­tu­tion after they have passed away, that is not tagged for a spe­cif­ic purpose—could not be spent right away. Instead, he says, the mon­ey was expect­ed to be treat­ed as part of the endow­ment, and only the return on that invest­ment could be spent.

Berea could not, as some oth­er schools do, spend mil­lions on foot­ball sta­di­ums instead of invest­ing in its stu­dents. In the 50s, the school rein­te­grat­ed, but the process was very slow, as it was every­where in the coun­try. “The com­mu­ni­ty was gone,” says Berea his­to­ry pro­fes­sor Alices­tyne Tur­ley, refer­ring to the Recon­struc­tion-era com­mu­ni­ty that had a stu­dent body mix of 50–50 black and white stu­dents.

The school had to relearn its found­ing prin­ci­ples, as expressed in its founder’s cho­sen mot­to, from the Book of Acts: “God has made of one blood all peo­ples of the earth.” Now most of the enrollees, low-income white and black stu­dents most­ly from Appalachia, qual­i­fy for Pell grants. 10 per­cent of the bud­get comes from char­i­ta­ble gifts. But the school pays the bulk of the tuition, $39,400 per stu­dent, from its endow­ment.

Is this sus­tain­able? Time will tell. Though a 1937 pro­mo­tion­al film, above, from the college’s seg­re­gat­ed past decries “the false glit­ter of easy pros­per­i­ty,” its cur­rent pres­i­dent tells Har­ris “we’re not the kind of insti­tu­tion that holds the world of finance in dis­dain. We are depen­dent on it.” A stock mar­ket crash could bank­rupt Berea, and no bailouts would be forth­com­ing. But for now, the col­lege thrives, with very impres­sive rank­ing num­bers in the U.S. News Best Col­leges report (it comes in a #4 in Best Under­grad­u­ate Teach­ing and #3 in Most Inno­v­a­tive Schools).

The school hosts bell hooks as a pro­fes­sor in res­i­dence and boasts as an alum­nus Carter G. Wood­son, the “father of black his­to­ry,” with a cen­ter named for him whose mis­sion is “to assert the kin­ship of all peo­ple and pro­vide inter­ra­cial edu­ca­tion with a par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on under­stand­ing and equal­i­ty among blacks and whites as a foun­da­tion for build­ing com­mu­ni­ty among all peo­ples of the earth.”

Maybe if there were a way to, say, fund Berea, and col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties nation­wide, through some kind of, say, tax­a­tion on, say, the most prof­itable com­pa­nies on the plan­et, or some such… just imag­ine.…

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Mas­ter List of 1,300 Free Cours­es From Top Uni­ver­si­ties: 45,000 Hours of Audio/Video Lec­tures

How Fin­land Cre­at­ed One of the Best Edu­ca­tion­al Sys­tems in the World (by Doing the Oppo­site of U.S.)

In Japan­ese Schools, Lunch Is As Much About Learn­ing As It’s About Eat­ing

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

« Go BackMore in this category... »
Quantcast