From August 20 to August 26 the Drents Museum will have a selection of their most interesting Art Nouveau objects digitized by the team of Steinbichler Optotechnik. During the week of 3D scanning a flyer will be handed out to museum visitors informing them about the Partage Plus project and the period of Art Nouveau. Readers of the Partage Plus Blog now have the opportunity to take a look at the stylish information brochure from the Drents Museum before everybody else can!
Partage Plus – Digitization art nouveau
The Drents Museum participates in Partage Plus, a European Commission digitization and research project. Twenty-three European cultural institutions from no less than 17 countries participate in this project. Between March 2012 and April 2014, Partage Plus will digitize over 76.000 art nouveau objects and will make them available online. The Drents Museum is the only Dutch participant. Its collection Art and Applied Art 1885 – 1935, including art nouveau, lends itself perfectly to this project; the collection contains some excellent examples of typical Dutch art nouveau.
Art nouveau is a style of art, applied art and architecture which flourished in the whole of Europe at the turn of the Twentieth century. The movement coincides with a period of great social changes; it was a time of mass industrialization and ground-breaking inventions. In the Netherlands, the art nouveau style developed between 1890 and 1910.
The Drents Museum collection consists of, among other things, furniture, crockery, vases, paintings, drawings, posters, books and sculptures in art nouveau style. 2000 objects are to be digitized for Partage Plus. By means of advanced techniques a three-dimensional scan will be made of some 150 objects. Visitors of the Drents Museum will be able to see part of this scanning process.
Not only the websites of the Partage Plus partners will display the digitized objects, they will also be collected and displayed on the portal site Europeana, a European digital documentation center in which cultural institutions, libraries and archives offer their material to the public. The Drents Museum’s digitized objects will be available on this portal site as well as in the museum by means of MuseumPlus.
The major works from the Drents Museum’s art nouveau collection are to be found on the ground floor of the Art 1885 – 1935 department. From November 25, 2013 till March 16, 2014, part of this department will feature a small exhibition on books and sheet music from the art nouveau collection.
Dutch art nouveau: Nieuwe Kunst (New Art)
The innovative elements in Dutch art and applied art at the turn of the Twentieth century are combined under the term Nieuwe Kunst (New Art): this is the Dutch contribution to international art nouveau. Similar to the international style, best known for its elegant flowing lines and pastel colors, the Nieuwe Kunst knew many forms. In Dutch art nouveau we find a constructive style and a decorative style as well as a mix between the two. Within international art nouveau, the distinctive character of the Dutch style is its attention to function and construction of an object. However, this characteristic only applies to the sober, constructive style of for instance the work of H.P. Berlage. In contrast, the decorative style considered the ornament of an object its focal point, not function and construction. A flowing pattern of lines often obscures the construction. This style is more closely related to the famous international style often seen in, amongst others, Belgium and France. In the Netherlands, Jan Toorop was one of the artists who worked in this style.
