Jesse Saunders #2: The Impressionists @ The Kimbell Art Museum

The Impressionists @ The Kimbell Art Museum

This exhibit is a sub-section of the Kimbell Art Museum web page as an advertisement, as the pieces displayed are the current featured exhibition at the Museum, which is located in Fort Worth. The website is part of a publicity campaign that also includes billboard (there is one currently near Wheatsville Co-op) and radio/tv/print ads.

Collection Principles:
All of the images displayed are a part of the current Kimbell exhibition of Impressionist art, which are on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago. There is at least one painting in the online exhibition from each artist represented in the physical exhibition, however, not all of the items in the physical exhibit are represented in the online exhibit. It is not clear from the website how these decisions were made. However, it appears that planning went into the selection, as each artist has at least one painting displayed, and while some of the more famous works are displayed, many of the high profile paintings seem to have been reserved for viewing at the physical exhibition.

Metadata:
The images in this exhibit include metadata limited to what would generally be found in the physical exhibit: artists, title, year produced, medium of production, and size. The page for each image also includes the artists nationality and lifespan, as well as the donor or collection information, offering some provenance for the paintings.. In addition to traditional metadata, each painting's page also contains an area for user ratings (1-5 stars) and comments, which allows people to engage the work and leave their "impressions".


Object Characteristics:
There is no information given about how the scans of the paintings were produced or by whom. These could have been done by the the Art Institute of Chicago, The Kimbell Art Museum, or a 3rd party, it is unclear. The paintings are displayed on the web in jpeg format, with the option to enlarge them, so the images can be downloaded, however the size varies greatly from image to image, again with no reason being given for the size discrepancy.


Intended Audience:
It appears clear that the online exhibition is a marketing tool to bring in visitors to the museum exhibit, which I am sure that it has. However, it is interesting to read the user comments and discover that there are people who are viewing and commenting on the paintings from a variety of places, as well as people looking forward to, or reflecting on, their visit to the exhibition.



p.s. If you have even a slight interest in the Impressionist artists on display, I would highly recommend visiting the exhibit in Forth Worth. I visited the exhibit shortly after it opened and (while being in now way an art aficionado) was simply awestruck. It will be at the Kimbell until November 2nd.