Among the most well-known images in the history of photography is “The Open Door” (pictured), in which William Henry Fox Talbot used his pioneering calotype process to preserve forever the scene of a broom leaning at a jaunty angle on the threshold of Lacock Abbey. Talbot’s 1844 tableau is among the approximately 4,600 high-resolution digital images from the J. Paul Getty Museum that are now free use, modify, and publish for any purpose thanks to an open door policy announced today by The Getty.

“As of today, the Getty makes available, without charge, all available digital images to which the Getty holds all the rights or that are in the public domain to be used for any purpose,” said Getty president and CEO Jim Cuno in a statement announcing the Open Content program, which aligns the institution with similar programs at the Walters Art Museum, the National Gallery of Art, Yale University, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Harvard University. Images were previously available upon request, for a fee, and permissions were granted for specific uses only.
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(Courtesy Petersen Automotive Museum)

The Pedersen Art Museum made headlines recently for what the Los Angeles Times characterized as a plan to sell off “a third of its 400 classic cars” to finance a major renovation and “put more emphasis on motorcycles and French vehicles…passions that match the tastes of the museum’s new leadership.” That leadership was not amused and has fired back with a statement intended to set the record straight.

“The collection has now reached over 400 pieces. Not only are we unable to showcase all of the vehicles, but maintaining and keeping that many cars in running order is virtually impossible,” wrote museum board chairman Peter Mullin and co-vice-chairman Bruce Meyer in an open letter posted to the museum’s website. “We are culling the collection for the first time in nearly 20 years, selling cars that can easily be procured on loan or vehicles that were never intended for exhibition.” The only vehicles that are being sold, according to Mullin and Meyer, are those “that we have in multiples or are not in show-worthy condition.”
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(Image courtesy EarthCam)

Raise your Warhol-themed bottle of Perrier, because Andy would have turned 85 today. We think the artist would have gotten a kick out of one morbid, panoptical take on a birthday party: live-streaming footage from his elaborately landscaped Pittsburgh gravesite. The footage–which is also available in high-definition 16-megapixel and pop art-style formats–is a collaboration among EarthCam, the Andy Warhol Museum, and St. John Chrystostom Byzantine Catholic Church (home to a temporary “ChurchCam” in honor of the birthday boy, who was baptized there). “I think my uncle would have been jealous. He would have said, ‘I should have been at Marilyn’s gravesite filming everything,’” said Donald Warhola, Warhol’s nephew, in a statement announcing the birthday grave webcam. “It pays homage to one of his most famous and controversial projects, the ‘Death and Disaster’ series.”

But it does make for excellent fodder for discussions, film screenings, “interactive experiences,” and more thought-provoking happenings at New York’s Rubin Museum of Art. The reliably innovative cultural hub, the only museum in the United States dedicated to the Himalayan region, is now putting the finishing touches on “The Ignorance Series,” a fresh line-up of public programs that will explore how the unknown permeates our lives and impacts our perceptions of the world—at a time when it seems as if every answer is just a smartphone Google search away.
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(Courtesy Neue Galerie)

“The doctor should be opaque to his patients,” wrote Sigmund Freud, “and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.” Sounds like a job for a sweet pair of shades. The psychoanalyst’s signature round-framed specs get summer-ready with the Selima Optique Freud Sunshades (pictured), specially designed by Selima Salaun for New York’s Neue Galerie. The museum, which is devoted to early twentieth-century German and Austrian art and design, commissioned the limited-edition sunnies, and they are available exclusively at the Neue Galerie design shop and online store. The handmade polished tortoise frames, with UV400-protective green lenses, pair perfectly with the luxe leather glasses case from R. Horn: it’s an authorized reproduction of the case exhibited at the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna. The dark green pebbled calf-skin exterior (superego?) conceals a cardinal red interior that is all id.

Dealer-turned-director Jeffrey Deitch is poised to part ways with the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Los Angeles Times reports. He is expected to step down with just under two years left in his five-year contract. “One person, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said that Deitch was ‘choosing to step down,’” wrote Mike Boehm in an article published today. “Another person who has spoken to Deitch said that MOCA is expected to announce Deitch’s exit along with the news that the museum is nearing completion of a fundraising campaign it announced in March to boost its endowment from about $20 million to $100 million.” Stay tuned for the press release, which is reportedly due following a MOCA board meeting scheduled for tomorrow. And L.A.’s loss may be New York’s (re)gain. B.L.A.T.C. reports that Deitch is already on the hunt for an apartment and a gallery space on the Upper East Side.

Among the Morgan’s 250,000 works is a 1630 Rembrandt etching, “Self-Portrait in a Cap.”

There’s always plenty to see at New York’s Morgan Library & Museum, which unveiled its stunning Renzo Piano-designed expansion in 2006, and the place is a magnet for school groups who take in Mr. Morgan‘s majestic library and visit the latest exhibitions. So what leaves a lasting impression with the youngsters—Charles McKim‘s Italian Renaissance-style palazzo? The illuminated manuscripts? A Rembrandt self-portrait? Try the high-tech toilets. Time Out New York recently flushed out the secret from Nicole Haroutunian, a museum educator at the Morgan:

We spend 90 minutes looking at one of the most beautiful libraries in the world, at 1,000-year-old books decorated with gold, at a secret staircase; yet often what most impresses the students who visit is the automatic toilets in the bathroom. The kids usually come piling out saying, “Even the bathrooms are so fancy! The toilet flushes on its own!” They also always think that the water fountains are made of gold.

History will not be kind to patchwork leather and purple paisley velvet, but the oxymoronic notion of “hippie fashion” makes for a groovy exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. [Cut to footage of crowds digging granny dresses, kooky tunics, and platform shoes to the tune of "Sugar Magnolia" and "Purple Haze."] Later today, a couple of vintage VW buses will be stationed at the museum’s Huntington Avenue entrance for social media photo ops, and those far from the Hub can feel the love anytime with “Hippie Chic: Remix,” an online app that debuted this week.

Doff your blue feathered Yves Saint Laurent chubby and spend a few minutes choosing among 54 ensembles inspired by the fashion revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s as well as trippy options involving faces borrowed from the MFA collection (George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, Dante Gabriel Rossetti‘s Pre-Raphaelite flower child) or an uploaded visage. The result of the not-so-long, strange, online trip is a psychedelic album cover designed for sharing with far-out followers.

There’s a trend a-brewin’ in the form of deconstructed, shape-shifting graphic identities for art museums. We still can’t stomach the “responsive W” that Experimental Jetset cooked up for the Whitney, but Project Projects is onto something with its dynamic new look for the RISD Museum. Part of an overhaul that included a name change (it was formerly known as The Museum of Art Rhode Island School of Design) and the first website redesign in the museum’s history, the fresh mark was inspired by the architectural space of the RISD Museum—composed of five buildings located on the historic East Side of Providence, Rhode Island–and consists of a stylized “M” within which the letters R, I, S, and D are positioned.

Check out the identity’s fluid, interactive application on the new website, also a Project Projects project. “Throughout [the site], colorful bands function as gallery walls and create a sense of progression from room to room as the visitor scrolls, dimensionalizing the site and connecting it to the identity system’s emphasis on the museum as a space,” note the designers, who have mixed the bands with “button-like tags [that] foster a more networked type of discovery through the museum’s collections from Ancient to Contemporary, grouping objects by time period, genre, material, and technique to emphasize methods of making across disciplines.”

For the first Monday since 1971, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is open to the public (step right up to see the blood-stained roof deck, which looks even spookier in a steady drizzle!). But there’s a price to pay for this new seven-days-a-week schedule: also for the first time since 1971, admission will not come in the form of a brightly colored metal badge. The museum has moved to paper tickets. Quel scandale! Blame it on the rising cost of metal and a dwindling supply of manufacturers of tiny tin discs in a rainbow of 16 collect-them-all hues. “It just became too expensive,” the Met’s Harold Holzer told The New York Times. “We saw that it was inevitable.” Fear not, badge fans, because we suspect that the remaining stock will soon pop up in the Met’s gift shop, possibly in jewelry or key chain form.