The exhibition, Preserving a Legacy: Wishard Hospital Murals, is only open for one more month.  If you haven’t been, you might miss out on the unique opportunity to see the in-progress conservation work on these beautiful Hoosier paintings.

Wishard Hospital Murals

When you walk into the exhibition, you are greeted by a rare glimpse of art conservation.  The first painting you will see is Carl C. Graf’s Three Muses, which is presented in a partially conserved state.  The left side of the painting has not yet been conserved and is obscured by dirt, discolored varnish, and heavy restorer’s overpaint.  Walking into the gallery is like a behind-the-scenes visit to the conservation lab.  Take a look for yourself in the image below.

Three Muses

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It’s hard to believe, but Facebook is kind of old.

As of this month, at the ripe old age of five, it’s ancient in Web 2.0 terms. But for being a senior citizen of the web, Facebook sure has managed to stay fresh and relevant. What started as a social experiment in Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room has grown to capture over 150 million users.

icanhascheezburger.com

Here are some ways Facebook has managed to grow and adapt so far…

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“Has anyone seen our intern?” This blog series will follow the IMA’s Public Affairs Intern, Jennifer Anderson, as she escapes the office space for a little R&R in the galleries…

"Portrait of James Whitcomb Riley" by John Singer Sargent

Within the first week of my internship, I made two exciting discoveries here at the IMA. One was The Prado in Google Earth and the other, which I found upstairs in the American Galleries was the John Singer Sargent painting, Portrait of James Whitcomb Riley.

For those who aren’t already familiar, The Prado Museum and Google Earth have teamed up to create an interactive site for the museum, which can be accessed on the internet through Google Earth. The application creates a 3D view of the museum and incredibly detailed imagery of 14 masterpieces found in the museum, including works by Velasquez, Rubens, and Rembrandt, and Goya. According to the Associated Press article, the project involved 8,200 photographs of the works and an assumedly hefty bill (footed by Google).
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ArtBabble officially launched in the IMA Davis LAB one month ago today.  We have been attentively watching the invites that have been sent and accepted since that time.  To date, almost exactly one out of every three invites has been accepted.  Without a baseline it’s hard to say whether this is good or bad, but hey… we’ll take it.  A few days ago, Daniel posted a chart showing the number of new users per day on ArtBabble.  I would like to share some visualizations of the invites as of this morning.

You can click on any of the graphs to get a larger view.  The points in the graph are all ArtBabble users.  The lines between the points represent an invite that was sent.  The top point in this graph represents a fake user, “ArtBabble”, that has “invited” all the first tier of users.  The blue lines represent these pseudo-invites.  The red lines represent an invite that was sent and has not yet been accepted.  Finally, the green lines represent an invite that was sent and accepted.  This graph also lets us easily see that the longest invite chain included six people.

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Phil’s Pharmacy prescribes the following links to combat Monday online anemia.

Workstations of Popular Websites – Sometimes it’s fun to see where an artist creates their art. Similarly, sometimes it’s fun to see the spaces where web-content creators create their web content.

Aptera 2e Electric Car – Pixar fans ghost-ride the whip. Can anyone else see see Wall-e and Eva getting out of this ride? Three wheels? Less friction I guess and therefore more efficient. Now, if only Google would partner with a California based company on hoverboards.

Kern – If you’ve got an iPhone and love typography, check out this cool game. “The iPhone’s first design-nerd game.” – Boing Boing Offworld.

Wordle.net – Word clouds are floating in from everywhere and with this fun site you can form your own. Here’s one I made. Enjoy!

European Design Facebook Contest – The week three winner has been selected. Up is the new picture.