FAR FLUNG

Far Flung



Far Flung

Introduction

While researching for many of the topics in this class, I came across invaluable online resources. Many websites claimed to have museum quality reproductions of artwork, but I found the pictures lacking of the passion and feeling. However, there a website that can actually deliver on this claim. It is called the Amico Library, an online collection of art pieces from thirty-nine museums all over the United States. It has a compilation of more than 100,000 paintings, sculptures and photographs, supplied by the donor museums that are exquisite in detail, color and design.

The Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO), has members from the large museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art who supply the website with high-resolution digital images of artwork culled from their permanent collections. They also provide brief catalog descriptions and location, thumbnail-sized images for the general public. If you are a subscriber however, you have unlimited access to the site. Subscription fees are from $200 to $10,000 annually, depending on the size of the school.

The site is an invaluable source of information, not only providing pictures of the selected art piece, but is powerful enough to give you all necessary data about the piece, where it was from, who owns it now, curatorial descriptions, history on the piece and some even come with a video. If you wanted images, they were available to you in all forms, you could order them online and get it in color slides, postcard, posters etc.

Amico was started in 1999 during the dot-com boom and is non-profit yet totally self-sufficient. They have 285 colleges and universities as subscribers as well as hundreds of public libraries, middle and high schools. The museums also pay dues to the organization, but this will soon be stopped when they start making enough money for ...