Inspiration! From Facebook to Amsterdam

by Judy Gula

Inspiration! From Facebook to Amsterdam

by Judy Gula

I try to check Facebook every morning, but I have to be quick about it so I don't get sucked in. You all know about that ... right?! Well, today, I totally got sucked in. Through Facebook, I discovered a cool textile blog written by Geri deGruy called Explorations. Geri’s most recent post discussed a wonderful website called Open Culture, which sends out daily emails about free cultural and educational resources on the web.

Through a post on Open Culture, Geri discovered that museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art are now creating digital photo files of their artwork. The museums participating so far are listed in this blog post by Open Culture.

Are you still with me? My story doesn’t end here... One of the museums listed is the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Why am I specifically interested in this collection? Indonesia, of course! The Dutch occupied Indonesia for centuries. Some of the world’s best collections of batiks were collected by the Dutch. So, I thought this museum might have a wealth of batik patterns to view. I searched on “batik” and many really cool images came up — I was so excited! I wanted copies!

You can create an account at Rijksmuseum website and save the photos that you like to that account. So, of course, I created an account, logged in, started saving the photos that I wanted .... AND then I got an email from the museum. I had won a prize for being the 150,000 visitor to create an account at the Rijksmuseum! And this was all before 8am!

Studio portrait of a young Javanese woman in a dancing posture, Kassian Cephas, c. 1867 - c. 1910
Studio portrait of one young Javanese woman, Kassian Cephas, c. 1870 - c. 1912
Studio portrait of a seated young woman in a sarong with Javanese batik motif, Kassian Cephas, c. 1867 - c. 1910
Studio portrait of a seated young Javanese woman, Kassian Cephas, c. 1890 - c. 1910

I am just blown away by these photos and thrilled that I found them. Thank you to the Rijksmuseum for these wonderful photos. I will be crusing additional museum digital sites soon!


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