from BBC News
Singapore war internee's art on show
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An article on BBC News about some recently donated watercolurs displayed at the Changi Museum (see museum wesite and previous post).

[ Thanks to Singapore Heritage Mailing List ]

from wikimapia
National Monuments of Singapore

Following on from an earlier post, I have finished marking-up all the locations of gazetted national monuments in Singapore for a start.




A close-up of the city centre area, which has the majority of the gazetted monuments:



Point and click on a location, and then click the "info" button to get links to more information and images, where available online.

Next in line will be various conservation areas and also locations which have some historic significance. As the wikimapia interface is very much a collaborative one, do add on information and locations where possible.

Also, I have tagged locations on wikimapia with a general tag: "heritage", and will also be using other more specific ones such as: "monument", "museum", "conservation_area" etc.

You can change markers on the map via the drop-down menu for filtering by tags at the top-right of the map window - or leave it unfiltered to get an overwhelming sense of details!

Have a browse round and leave your comments or feedback here ...

from BBC News
X-rays reveal Archimedes secrets
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Interesting to read about the life journey of a goatskin parchment who started off from bearing Archimedes' work in the 10th Century, to being recycled by monks to record Greek Orthodox prayers around the 13th Century and finally being ornamented by forgers in the 20th Century, where gold paintings of religious imagery were added so as to try to boost the value of the tome. What a life!

Amazing how the imaging technique of X-ray fluorescence made it possible for scientists to "travel" back in time by layers and reveal this "biography" of the palimpsest...

from yesterday,sg
Post-Earthquake Cultural Resource Documentation Trip to Yogyakarta
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Highlights of a talk given at the Heritage Conservation Centre in Singapore. [ Thanks to yesterday.sg for the post! ]

from New York Times
Should Art Museums Always Be Free? There's Room for Debate
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If the argument for access to museums' collections is taken from a humanistic point of view, then charging for entry would be indefensible. Especially, as pointed out in this article:

"Museums speak of wanting to attract larger, more democratic audiences. They cannot even begin to know this audience, much less accommodate it, until they lower the barriers, at least to their permanent collections."

Roberta Smith goes on in the article to list, surprisingly, a number of American museums which stand by the principle of free access. This echoed the earlier attempt across in the UK to do away with entrance fees which saw a corresponding rise in visitorship numbers by as much as 72% in the first year (see earlier post here).

Putting it another way, mission must not be diluted in the pursuit of the bottomline. In fact, Smith argues that:

"If museums were to broadcast unequivocally that their first priority is art and the public's contact with art, their public image would improve and sharpen. And other things about them would start to change, from the people who sit on their boards, to the buildings they build."

It would be most prudent that museums not forget their social mission, even as they woo the evermore "sophisticated audience" (see earlier related post here).

from Los Angeles Times
Call the tech squad
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The problem of preserving new-media and contemporary is not a new issue. However, what may be a turning point (for the better, I think) is the increasing profile given to this area of art conservation. This is due, in no small part, to a convergence of the interests of collectors and museums, who have both the clout and wealth to ensure that attention is paid to the long-term (physical, as well as economic) well-being of their collections. This may not be a bad thing in itself.

from Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Textile Fiber Atlas
go to web-page
download PDF (6.4 Mb)

The classic 1942 work, Textile Fiber Atlas: A Collection of Photomicrographs of Common Textile Fibers, by Werner Von Bergen and Walter Krauss is now available in scanned PDF format from the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. Thanks to the efforts of Mary Ballard, Senior Textile Conservator at the Museum Conservation Institute (formerly CAL and SCMRE).

[ also see initial announcement on the Conservation DistList mailing list here. ]

from Guardian
Road plans put Stonehenge status at risk
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An update on the effort to rollback an ill-conceived plan for a traffic tunnel in the vicinity of the World Heritage site, which besides threatening the actual site, might also damage archaeological evidences in the area (see earlier BBC report).

from BBC News
Guggenheim expands into Emirates
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from Guardian Culture Vulture Blog
The Guggenheim effect
go to weblog post

This latest attempt by the Guggenheim to build yet another branch follows from earlier unsuccessful attempts in Asia (see earlier posts here and here). Isn't it time to stop this madness?

Seletar Airbase Project
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A highly commendable project to document a historic part of Singapore that has to make way for "progress". Perhaps loosing physical markers of one's past and memories is the price one pays for growing up in Singapore - or does it have to be that way?

[ Thanks to yesterday.sg for the link ]