Artemisia Gentileschi, Self-Portrait as a Lute Player, c. 1615-18. Oil on canvas, 30 1/2 x 28 1/4 in. Charles H. Schwartz Endowment Fund, Wadsworth Atheneum Collection
It’s been exciting and inspiring working with the Wadsworth Atheneum on our latest augmented reality episode for the BLVRD Features app – released on August 21. Featuring the museum’s captivating “Self-Portrait as a Lute Player” (c. 1616), “Artemisia Gentileschi” gives users a window onto the remarkable world of this important Italian Baroque artist. It is the first of what we hope will be many experiences exploring fascinating stories about artists and aspects of the artistic process through the lens of historical and contemporary works from the Wadsworth’s premier collection. Indeed (thanks to a terrific suggestion by one of the curators), within this mini #AR episode, we were able to incorporate not one but two Wadsworth paintings – Artemisia’s “Self-Portrait” and the sumptuous “Judith and her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes”(1624-25) by her father, Orazio Gentileschi – keeping it all in the family, as it were.
Coming from curatorial and museum education backgrounds, our Boulevard Arts team respects the primacy of the object – of seeing and experiencing painting, sculpture, and architecture firsthand, on site, whenever possible. But, we also believe strongly in immersive technology’s ability to make art encounters accessible to anyone, anywhere, while delivering incredibly rich and compelling content. This is the impetus behind BLVRD Features.
The Wadsworth Atheneum re-opens to the public on September 5. We hope that you will be able to visit this fall, or at some point soon! Whether you make the trip in person, or digitally via the museum’s website, let us know if there are specific paintings from their collection that you would like to see contextualized and brought to life in augmented reality.