Mackintosh Italian Job
Posted: August 4, 2008 Filed under: "visual arts", ahrc, digitisation, digitization, images | Tags: architecture, art deco, glasgow, italy, mackintosh, sketchbook 1 Comment »A little known sketchbook used by the world famous Glasgow architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh on a tour of Italy has now been opened up for use online at www.vads.ac.uk/collections/MAC
The sketchbook, which is today held in the Glasgow School of Art archive, was taken by Charles Rennie Mackintosh on his tour of Italy, France and Belgium in 1891 as the recipient of the Alexander Thomson Travelling Studentship.
It provides a unique insight into the architect’s formative years and shows Mackintosh as a young architect with a mind of his own. Mackintosh ignored the strict stipulations of the grant body which made his trip possible, and instead pursued his desire to learn more about Renaissance architecture.
Pulling the plug on the digital humanities
Posted: May 17, 2007 Filed under: ahds, ahrc, infrastructure Leave a comment »The UK’s central archive for arts and humanities data, the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) has unexpectedly lost half its funding after the Arts and Humanities Research Council withdrew the half a million pounds it contributed towards the running of the service.
I have a slightly vested interest in that I worked for the AHDS for several years, but even then this seems a poor decision to endanger a unit that is responsible for long-term preservation of digital data, and has had a pioneering role in setting up a working preservation service. There are not many others in existence in the world.
Even stranger is the four-line justification given on the funding council’s website. Most seasoned observers will not the statements are simply not true; the lack of accompanying evidence is telling.
