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Comment by adriand | Hacker News Reader

This is pretty incredible.

There was once a time when the only way for the average person to see a beautiful painting was to go to church. Later on this role was taken up by art galleries. Now anyone can see this stuff from the comfort of their own home.

What do you think this means for the future of art galleries? What are they for? Different ones are answering this question in different ways. Some are reinventing themselves successfully, others not so much.

I am particularly interested in the destiny of galleries in smaller markets. They are easier to sustain in large cities. In cities with fewer than a million people, the struggle for relevance makes for a challenging environment.

(My questions aren’t rhetorical - I sit on the board of directors for a Canadian gallery in a city of 500k people - we have one of Canada’s largest collections and an incredible program, but nothing is easy...)

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> What do you think this means for the future of art galleries? What are they for?

Although it's great being able so see the image on your desktop the experience of seeing the actual artwork is very often much better.

On screen you'll miss out on much of the subtly of texture, surface finishes, scale, framing, the ability to look at it from different angles and distances and more. These all add a lot to the viewing experience.

Art museums are very pleasant places to be, and create an aura of sacredness that is never going to exist on my living room couch.

This may displace museum visits by people who need to look at paintings for utilitarian purposes (research, homework) but if anything, finding a great painting here will only want to make me go the museum more.

The advent of digital accessibility is far more impactful for local museums in smaller markets. These institutions now have access to global audiences who may never have heard of the museum (or even the town / city), would certainly never have visited in person, but are perhaps searching a wider database by artist, genre etc and encounter these small collections thus beginning a fruitful journey of potential engagement.

> This is pretty incredible. ... Now anyone can see this stuff from the comfort of their own home.

Agreed. And moreover, the licensing intentionally allows reproductions, so you can print life-size posters of these pieces to hang at home, if you want.

> What do you think this means for the future of art galleries? What are they for?

Hasn’t the primary function of a gallery always been to sell art, more than to be a public museum for the average person? If you think about it that way, maybe having online galleries doesn’t necessarily affect brick and mortar galleries? Perhaps it’s possible that online galleries will push more people will see the premium value of owning original art?

> I am particularly interested in the destiny of galleries in smaller markets.

In theory, Chicago’s move here to release public domain images doesn’t change small galleries, right? Small galleries are showing & selling current work and more by local artists, work that is still under copyright.

As an artist, I hope that the rising tides lift all boats, that public and easy online access to a lot of art will be a force for art education and appreciation. But, who knows, maybe an online flood will have unintended negative consequences.

I wish these images were large enough to print quality life-sized posters. Only the smallest of them, such as the Great Wave at 10" x 14" would come close to being quality prints at the sizes I was seeing (Great Wave is 3000 pixels wide)

It's interesting to me that you bring up the topic of churches, because I've yet to find a museum that can rival the feeling of visiting a "proper", Gothic cathedral. I think the main difference is that a museum feels like it "just" holds art, while a cathedral "is" art.

About the future of art galleries, I'm reminded of a Reddit post where someone mentioned visiting a Goya exhibition. The audioguide gave enough background on the pieces that you could trace the evolution of Goya's state of mind, and as a result you could understand the man through his art. I've always been jealous of that story: I love art galleries, I've visited plenty, and yet seeing lots and lots of art has not really improved my understanding of it.

I imagine art galleries could follow a path similar to libraries: a place where you go not because of the paintings themselves, but rather as a place to learn and where the (curated) selection tells a story.

You may want to read 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' by Walter Benjamin; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_...

Nah, don't bother reading it. The importance of Benjamin's essay has been vastly overrated by academic art theorists. As proof I would point out that the very first image in the linked article is Hokusai's iconic "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji" which is of course a woodblock print (i.e., a "mechanical reproduction") but no less appreciated as a work of art for being so.

Why do you think your opinion constitutes fact? I found the essay to hold a lot of weight with respects to the aura of art, and the presence of certain art that exists outside of a 2d format. The article goes into the concepts of originality and is worth a read to expand your viewpoints. To dismiss it seems short sighted.

To be able to make this point you still had to have read Benjamin's essay. Is academia not a constant conversation, constant disruption of previously unquestioned assumptions?

I would argue the continued usefulness of Benjamin's essay is similar to the writings of McLuhan - it forces you to think critically about the mode and method of the production of an image/artwork (or message), and how that mode affects (or doesn't) a work. It's a radically different and refreshing perspective for looking at art or media as a whole.

For instance - how different (and much more moving) is seeing a woodblock print of Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji in person from seeing a tiny thumbnail in Google Image search, a further step of mechanical reproduction?

Checkout https://library.artstor.org

They opened up a bunch of university collections this summer. Their institution subscription gives students access to millions of images for research.

What expresses the most in art, IMHO, is the nuance and not the broad strokes. In music, for example, many people can play the notes in the right order; it's the great musician's nuance that makes it art. In acting, it's the tone and subtleties in the actor's voice and expression. Reproductions don't capture that; nothing matches seeing it in person. I've tried high quality reproductions of 2-dimentional works I love, and it's not even worth it.

Also, much artwork these days is 3 or 4 dimensional (time), so 2-D reproductions have even less fidelity.

Don't dismiss the fidelity challenges even when at a physical gallery looking at original works of art.

Glazing, lighting, signage, height, framing, decor, noise, other people and many other factors can reduce the fidelity of experience or provide unskippable distractions.

The most extreme example being visiting the Mona Lisa in person, but these challenges exist with most physical art except perhaps that hung in your own home over which you have complete control.

Even the very best reproductions are not at all the same as seeing the actual work. Having high quality reproductions means I can see a decent approximation of something it would be difficult/expensive for me to go see, but doesn't replicate the experience.

I suspect the role of galleries remains largely unchanged - curation and context will always be relevant. I do think you are on to something with the issue of smaller markets: how do you convince people to come in person, and can you do it at a price point that will attract them?

I recently compared (Canadian, as it happens) ticket and membership costs for galleries in a an approximately 500k market and a > 5million market. Although the individual costs were about the same, the entire physical size of the small market one was far less that one tenth the larger one. Regardless of the collection size, this is pretty limiting. Some of the fixed costs don't scale well, and I do think this makes things more difficult in smaller markets, particularly if you are trying to draw people from outside your core market.

As more and more high quality reproductions from big markets become available, has your board discussed the possibility of curated display/discussion of collections of these? Particularly if you could have the use of a first rate projection system?

I don't think this kind of resource is going to decrease attendance at art museums. People who want to go are still going to go, but while I live near Washington D.C., and have been to the National Gallery of Art many times, there are hundreds or thousands of museums and art galleries in cities I will most likely never travel to.

I think it's reasonable to consider these digital resources as a supplement to, rather than a replacement of, visiting the gallery in person.

I mean, part of the appeal of the Louvre at least isn't just that you can see the art in the physical world, but that you're practically bathed in it. This sense of being overwhelmed and the serendipity factor in discovering new works constituted a lot of the appeal when I used to visit there. You could go into there once every weekend for a year and never have the same experience twice.

I feel like reducing historical art pieces to "beautiful images" doesn't really capture what it means when something is art. For instance, you can view reproduced images of famous artwork whenever you want online, so what makes it valuable, therefore, is not just the imagery.

Salvador Dalí is a notorious troll in this regard. Many of his works are extremely well known by their reproductions. but he plays with scale- the originals are often absurdly smaller or larger than you imagine from the reproductions.

No one ever complained of flickr "Oh it's okay but you need to see the real thing", so it's interesting how this viewpoint is absolutely medium-specific.

I would argue plenty of paintings are better viewed online, sculptures far less so. Is it better to have a restricted view at the back of a live performance or see a perfectly edited video later?

It's hard to be moved shuffling through queues at the Louvre.

Many types of paintings are fundamentally three dimensional - something that really isn't captured in an image.

You make a good point about the different value of different presentations. In some ways the bad seat is better than the video, in others not.

Virtual reality gallery viewing from your living room will be a thing, it's possible now just a matter of time they hook up these databases of art and perfect the gallery viewing experience to make it accessible.

I have long considered buying high end tvs just to use as slide show viewers in my house. I could probably justify it at this point with the number of available high quality images and the quality of screens. But I would really like a 250 ppi+ screen that is 40+ inches to pull the trigger.

you might want to consider the Samsung Frame TV:

https://www.samsung.com/us/explore/the-frame/highlights/

43" at 4K is 102 PPI, so I guess you would need a 16K TV to get 250+

I'd be careful buying Samsung TVs. They will probably release an update that injects ads into the UI at some point

https://gist.github.com/peteryates/b44b70d19ccd52f62d66cdd4b...

Or just use a third party device and skip using their software entirely. Smart TVs basically universally suck.

8k @ 40 is 220 ppi, so getting well into close enough range.

I've created an AppleTV app that uses IIIF (technology behind Art Institute of Chicago image release) that was based on this. Though this content area was historic maps [1]

[1] https://www.jack-reed.com/old-map-room/

> average person to see a beautiful painting

I don't think average person like me really understands what a beautiful painting means.

I educated my appreciation for painting by putting up a slideshow from Hermitage (high res images) with 5 minutes per painting, running on a spare monitor in my direct field of view. Kept this setup running for a couple of years, and it gradually seeped in. No need to rush it, just enjoy. Sometimes you can find articles on Wikipedia about the life of people in those paintings. It's like time travelling to the past.

IMO you will need to pivot to calendar-based activity that involves people on your premises ..

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