Partage Plus – Digitising and enabling Art Nouveau for Europeana

 

partage-plus-logoPartage Plus, starting in March 2012 and lasting for 2 years, will digitise Art Nouveau objects, artworks, posters, and buildings to create c75,000 items, including 2,000 3D models, of content for access through Europeana, a single access point to millions of books, paintings, films, museum objects and archival records that have been digitised throughout Europe

The Art Nouveau style was a great success all over Europe at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. It is well represented, in almost every art form, in museum collections, archives, libraries, photographic archives, and on buildings throughout Europe. After a short period of disinterest, with the arrival of modernist styles, it seems that Art Nouveau is now even more popular than ever.

The amount of content to be available on Partage Plus represents a significant increase in the quantity of Art Nouveau content available on the Web. Within the scope of Partage Plus grand masterpieces of the Art Nouveau period as well as outstanding examples from the collections of the collaborating institutions will be made accessible to users. The Partage Plus website will act as the hub for meeting users’ needs and provide users with the opportunity to gather information about the Art Nouveau style; experience Art Nouveau works online through Europeana; and visit institutions with Art Nouveau collections.

Argyle High Back Chair, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh for 120 Mains Street, Glasgow and also for the Luncheon Room, Argyle Street Tea Rooms, Glasgow, 1897
Argyle High Back Chair, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh for 120 Mains Street, Glasgow and also for the Luncheon Room, Argyle Street Tea Rooms, Glasgow, 1897

Glasgow School of Art’s Mackintosh collection is soon to form part of the Partage Plus online catalogue. Photographers will be visiting us in October to take 3D images of the Mackintosh furniture collection, and other items from the collection, such as architectural drawings and artwork, may be available sooner than that.

The Partage Plus blog is a brilliant resource for Art Nouveau researchers and admirers, and just in the last few days, Charles Rennie Mackintosh has been the subject of two articles: one about the Glasgow School of Art, and another about House for an Art Lover.

For more information, visit the Partage Plus website.

Front cover of folio of House for an Art Lover designs, by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, 1901
Front cover of folio of House for an Art Lover designs, by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, 1901