John G. Blog #10: Heavens Above: Art and Actuality

Heavens Above: Art and Actuality

"Heavens Above: Art and Actuality" is an online digital exhibition through The Science, Industry, and Business division of the New York Public Library. This is an exhibition contrasting the 19th century art and Science of Etienne Leopold Trouvelot (1827 - 1895) with the contemporary photographic images of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The exhibit was on display at the SIBL in New York in 2001.

Collection Principles

I thought that this website/online exhibit was interesting because it compared and contrasted art from history with contemporary photographs. The exhibition focused on the art and Science of E.L. Trouvelot who was a French-born artist and amateur astronomer. He worked in the U.S. at several prestigious observatories and universities and was known for his astronomical drawings from various telescopes. His chromolithographs and other works from "Trouvelot: From Moths to Mars" are featured in this exhibition.

Object Characteristics

The objects in this exhibitions are Trouvelot's chromolithographs and photography from NASA. Although the exhibition presents a variety of images, when viewers click on the image, they are redirected to the NYPL.org website to learn about the rights and permissions associated with the images.

Metadata

Brief descriptions of Trouvelot's images are included on each page, but I was unable to locate any detailed metadata from these descriptions. Images from NASA, however, include image metadata information on the attached links. Information about the name, type, dimensions, and size (bytes) are included for each image.

Intended Audience

It appears that the intended audience for this exhibition is scholars, artists, and astronomers. I thought that it was very interesting to showcase historic art and images about objects in space and contrast them with contemporary photography. After reviewing all of the other digital exhibitions and collections this semester, I can tell that this online exhibition was created in the early 2000's. Metadata was limited and the functions and capabilities of the website were very limited and not very attractive or user friendly.