[Photo of Bartholomeus Breenbergh Preaching of St John the Baptist; dmadeo/flickr
Calling all photographers! There’s a new photo scavenger hunt in town. Wikipedia, the Brooklyn Museum (and 14 other art institutions) have gotten together to have a month-long contest for Wikipedia Loves Art. It’s a free content photography contest to win various prizes from each participating museum, for individuals or groups, to illustrate Wikipedia articles. Each museum has a Goal List, which you can find at their prospective Wikipedia page by going thru the Wikipedia Loves Art article. Six of the fifteen institutions are located in New York, alone, so there’s plenty to shoot but plenty of competition, too. Both the Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art have scheduled meet-ups in early February. All details, including meet-up schedules and scavenger hunt lists; can be found at the Wikipedia Loves Art Flickr group. The Brooklyn Museum is coordinating the project and there’s a flickr pool here.
7 responses so far ↓
1 Victor Samra // Feb 4, 2009 at 6:02 pm
The Museum of Modern Art, The New-York Historical Society, The Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center are also taking part in Wikipedia Loves Art. It looks like the meet-up date for MoMA will be Saturday, September 21, though we’ll confirm it through Wikipedia page.
I hope everyone will consider taking part. It will be fun!
Cheers,
Victor Samra
Digital Marketing Manager@MoMA
2 Brenda from Flatbush // Feb 4, 2009 at 6:50 pm
This is a great idea for expanding the pool of free art images and liberating us from the tyranny of pay-to-use stock images. (The work may be in public domain, but the stock house owns the hi-res image of the work–tricky buggers.) Of course, you need to be quite an ace to get a halfway decent shot of a painting in low gallery light with neither flash nor tripod…
3 Pete // Feb 5, 2009 at 9:45 am
hmm… seems more like a way to get photography work done for free so hard working photographers who are already hurting in this economy have even less income possibilities… I realize it’s for Wiki which is a free service so no money for paying for images, but .. with the license that will be used for the photos I’m sure others will use these images for purposes other than wiki.. hence not paying for stock photography and cutting off another source of income for photographers. I think we should all go out and make “lawyering” our hobby instead.. we can go out and practice law.. help people out.. and put the lawyers out of business instead…
4 Brenda from Flatbush // Feb 5, 2009 at 11:18 am
I’d wager that stock photography of public-domain art masterpieces represents a molecule of the total universe of pro photographers’ work for hire…and greater availability of decent imagery of said masterpieces represents a magnificent use of the web community…
5 Pete // Feb 5, 2009 at 12:45 pm
The reality is, there are fewer and fewer “art” photographers who photograph artwork for hire.. it’s one of many photography niches that is dying off.. I’m just lamenting the replacing of professionals with amateurs… and people being so willing to “work” for free when some higher up in a corporation comes up with a marketing scheme that turns it into a game..
6 Taking Bids on Schnabel’s Pajamas - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com // Feb 5, 2009 at 12:52 pm
[…] Wikipedia wants you to grab your cameras and shoot some art! [Gowanus […]
7 arty // Feb 5, 2009 at 5:42 pm
“…and greater availability of decent imagery of said masterpieces represents a magnificent use of the web community…”
Great! Does that mean the web community is going to pay the rent for the photographers’ homes?
When in doubt, screw the artists. It’s pretty hard for them to fight back. Look at the poor guy who shot the original of Shepard Fairey’s Obama image. I hear he’s moving to a Park Avenue co-op off the profits of that one. But the web community likes it a lot!