Japanese matchbox labels | Flickr. История России в фотографиях. Architectural Teaching Slide Collection. The Block and Koenig slides are two of the smaller unique collections in the possession of the USC Libraries. They document examples of 20th century California architecture that developed stylistically from the foundations of the International Style as established by the 1932 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, titled Modern Architecture: International Exhibition, and of European pre-World War II Modernism.
The collection consists of about 1300 slides from the Fritz Block collection that document Modern architecture of Southern California (although there are some slides that pertain to Modern architecture of Northern California), and 100 slides from the collection of Pierre Koenig. Fritz Block (1889-1955) was a German-trained architect, who moved to Los Angeles in 1938. He started his own color slide company in Hollywood. His papers are at UC Santa Barbara; his slides came to USC. He shot slides of many private homes, as well as of some housing developments. 1.8 Million Free Works of Art from World-Class Museums: A Meta List of Great Art Available Online.
Since the first stirrings of the internet, artists and curators have puzzled over what the fluidity of online space would do to the experience of viewing works of art. At a conference on the subject in 2001, Susan Hazan of the Israel Museum wondered whether there is “space for enchantment in a technological world?” She referred to Walter Benjamin’s ruminations on the “potentially liberating phenomenon” of technologically reproduced art, yet also noted that “what was forfeited in this process were the ‘aura’ and the authority of the object containing within it the values of cultural heritage and tradition.” Evaluating a number of online galleries of the time, Hazan found that “the speed with which we are able to access remote museums and pull them up side by side on the screen is alarmingly immediate.”
Perhaps the “accelerated mobility” of the internet, she worried, “causes objects to become disposable and to decline in significance.” Art Images from Museums & Libraries Art Books. MetPublications. GSG: highlights=Open Content Images. Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University. The British Library's Photostream. NYC Municipal Archives. Ian Lynam Design. Whitney Museum of American Art: Collection. Collection: The Tichnor Brothers Collection. Art and artists. §. Internet Archive Book Images' Photostream. Wellcome Images. Collection | The Metropolitan Museum of Art. GSG: highlights=Open Content Images.