Posts by Douglas Dodds
@gettymuseum.bsky.social @rijksmuseum.bsky.social @saschel.bsky.social @warburginstitute.bsky.social
This conversation around digital transformations at the Getty Museum and Rijksmuseum promises to be fascinating. It’s online and free too!
The brilliant Ditchling Museum is going through a hard time and has had to close temporarily. They’ve got some fab stuff in their shop including this beautiful exclusive knitting pattern - give them a hand if you can.
This is absolutely chilling, and straight out of the Nazi playbook
go.bsky.app/Nu7E2uZ
Not funny - hundreds died
Observer review of Tennyson biography, with large colourised photo of the poet
Colourising classic photos is a travesty, especially in a serious newspaper. Today’s Observer has a review of the latest Tennyson bio, with an uncredited colour photo of the poet, “photographed in 1869”. The original is by Julia Margaret Cameron, of course, and it’s in black & white.
Great to catch up with Adrian Wilson, Kim Mannes-Abbott and Micha Riss at the British Art Fair today. Adrian and his colleagues are doing a fantastic job of promoting the importance of the Quantel Paintbox in the history of digital art! @quantelpaintbox.bsky.social
And this from ARTnews - Christie’s Reportedly Closes Digital Art Department www.artnews.com/art-news/mar...
Photo of England women football players Kelly and Bronze, celebrating winning Euro 2025
Kelly - Bronze - well done!
I’ve passed this stunning building near Selkirk many times, hoping that someone would finally restore it. Designed by Peter Womersley for Bernat Klein, the studio is now in a bad way. At last, a coalition of heritage organisations are hoping to buy it at auction. Please donate if you can!
Interesting idea! Seems to me the V&A’s accession numbers aren’t fit for purpose any more - a year followed by a running number for the entire museum would be much easier to handle. We could have introduced a new system from say 2000 onwards, but didn’t…
AI bot scrapers are hitting every site on the web in search of training data. This report is the first good attempt to evaluate the impact of these AI scrapers, especially on smaller institutions that are trying to make their collections open to the public www.404media.co/ai-scraping-...
Edwin Heathcote on the revamped Chelsea Hotel, where “Rooms start at $605” - a night that is. You could have stayed for about 3 months in the ‘60s. @edwinheathcote.bsky.social
There are still five days left to submit something for SOUND+PURPOSE hosted in Lund in November. Some really great proposed contributions so far showcasing the strength and variety of research in sound. Come and join our discussions of the *why* of sound and the *purpose* of sound research!
Interior of the V&A’s new Storehouse, with many objects stacked on shelving over several floors
View of part of an office designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for Edgar Kaufmann. The orange and brown room is filled with wood arranged in horizontal and vertical lines
Installation view of a huge stage backdrop designed by Pablo Picasso, showing two figures in a blue and green landscape
Interior shot of many museum objects stacked on shelving
Wonderful visit to V&A East Storehouse - an amazing project that really transforms public access to the Museum's stored collections. It's great to see some old favourites back on display too.
Huge congratulations to everyone involved in making all of this happen - quite an achievement!
The National Museum of Absolutely Everything… an architectural delight, by Oliver Wainwright www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...
Great review of the V&A’s new Storehouse in the Guardian, plus an excellent write-up by their architecture critic too. I’m looking forward to visiting the Museum’s collection at the Olympic Park on Friday! www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...
If I were a museum anywhere that had loaned anything to anyone in the US I would ask for it back immediately and I would already have ceased any upcoming loans. Not as a punitive measure, merely pragmatic.
I knew next to nothing about his life in wartime until I found his records in the National Archives recently. Thankfully he survived, and the records did too!
Dad was in charge of a detachment at the Oflag VI-C PWX camp at Osnabrück - Eversheide from April - May 1945, but he may have been at Lüneburg on 8 May.
Four sergeants in the British Army's Pioneer Corps 73 Company, including Albert Dodds (right). The photo was probably taken in Lüneburg or Lübeck, Germany, in mid to late 1945.
On #VEDay80, remembering my father Albert Dodds (right), a sergeant in the British Army's Pioneer Corps. He was evacuated from France 3 weeks after Dunkirk, then took part in the Sicily, Salerno & Normandy landings. Most of his company was at Lüneburg in May 1945, when the Nazi forces surrendered.
New CFP: What Do (Digital) Images Want? Join us in exploring a decade of data, power & visual knowledge!
dahj.org/cfp/11
TANK vs TESLA
"We've crushed fascism before and we'll crush it again"
- WW2 veteran Ken, 98, in the tank
In other news, rubber ducks are migrating to Canada, where they won’t be subject to Trump’s tariffs on Mandarin goods
Last night I had the pleasure of hearing @annagk.bsky.social talk to our Dickens postgraduates about www.dickensnotes.com - a fantastic open access resource showing Dickens's working notes for his novels. Highly recommended!
Sunlit swimming pool with bright blue water, art deco arches and clerestory windows above
Another beautiful art deco pool ticked off my to-do list! This is Mounts Baths, Northampton - a water-filled cathedral for swimming worshippers