Douglas Dodds

Not funny - hundreds died

Observer review of Tennyson biography, with large colourised photo of the poet

Colourising classic photos is a travesty, especially in a serious newspaper. Today’s Observer has a review of the latest Tennyson bio, with an uncredited colour photo of the poet, “photographed in 1869”. The original is by Julia Margaret Cameron, of course, and it’s in black & white.

Great to catch up with Adrian Wilson, Kim Mannes-Abbott and Micha Riss at the British Art Fair today. Adrian and his colleagues are doing a fantastic job of promoting the importance of the Quantel Paintbox in the history of digital art! @quantelpaintbox.bsky.social

Christie’s Reportedly Closes Digital Art Department Christie's is closing its digital art department, and has let go of Vice President of Digital Nicole Sales Giles, according to reports.

And this from ARTnews - Christie’s Reportedly Closes Digital Art Department www.artnews.com/art-news/mar...

Christie's Quietly Deletes Digital Art Department | Artnet News Christie's has closed its digital art department after several years of shaping the growing market for the category.

Christie’s Quietly Deletes Digital Art Department -Artnet News news.artnet.com/market/chris...

Photo of England women football players Kelly and Bronze, celebrating winning Euro 2025

Kelly - Bronze - well done!

I’ve passed this stunning building near Selkirk many times, hoping that someone would finally restore it. Designed by Peter Womersley for Bernat Klein, the studio is now in a bad way. At last, a coalition of heritage organisations are hoping to buy it at auction. Please donate if you can!

Interesting idea! Seems to me the V&A’s accession numbers aren’t fit for purpose any more - a year followed by a running number for the entire museum would be much easier to handle. We could have introduced a new system from say 2000 onwards, but didn’t…

AI Scraping Bots Are Breaking Open Libraries, Archives, and Museums "This is a moment where that community feels collectively under threat and isn't sure what the process is for solving the problem.”

AI bot scrapers are hitting every site on the web in search of training data. This report is the first good attempt to evaluate the impact of these AI scrapers, especially on smaller institutions that are trying to make their collections open to the public www.404media.co/ai-scraping-...

Edwin Heathcote on the revamped Chelsea Hotel, where “Rooms start at $605” - a night that is. You could have stayed for about 3 months in the ‘60s. @edwinheathcote.bsky.social

There are still five days left to submit something for SOUND+PURPOSE hosted in Lund in November. Some really great proposed contributions so far showcasing the strength and variety of research in sound. Come and join our discussions of the *why* of sound and the *purpose* of sound research!

Interior of the V&A’s new Storehouse, with many objects stacked on shelving over several floors

View of part of an office designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for Edgar Kaufmann. The orange and brown room is filled with wood arranged in horizontal and vertical lines

Installation view of a huge stage backdrop designed by Pablo Picasso, showing two figures in a blue and green landscape

Interior shot of many museum objects stacked on shelving

Wonderful visit to V&A East Storehouse - an amazing project that really transforms public access to the Museum's stored collections. It's great to see some old favourites back on display too.

Huge congratulations to everyone involved in making all of this happen - quite an achievement!

‘The national museum of absolutely everything’: new V&A outpost is an architectural delight Poison darts, a dome from Spain, priceless spoons and Frank Lloyd Wright furniture … our architecture critic is wowed by how the V&A East Storehouse lets visitors ‘breathe the same air’ as its 250,000...

The National Museum of Absolutely Everything… an architectural delight, by Oliver Wainwright www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Fancy a masterpiece? Just pop one in your basket! V&A’s new open-access outpost will thrill art-lovers The Victoria & Albert’s new warehouse boasts a mind-boggling 250,000 artefacts. Our art critic tries its ‘order an object’ service and gets intimate with some national treasures – including ‘the bigge...

Great review of the V&A’s new Storehouse in the Guardian, plus an excellent write-up by their architecture critic too. I’m looking forward to visiting the Museum’s collection at the Olympic Park on Friday! www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

If I were a museum anywhere that had loaned anything to anyone in the US I would ask for it back immediately and I would already have ceased any upcoming loans. Not as a punitive measure, merely pragmatic.

I knew next to nothing about his life in wartime until I found his records in the National Archives recently. Thankfully he survived, and the records did too!

Dad was in charge of a detachment at the Oflag VI-C PWX camp at Osnabrück - Eversheide from April - May 1945, but he may have been at Lüneburg on 8 May.

Four sergeants in the British Army's Pioneer Corps 73 Company, including Albert Dodds (right). The photo was probably taken in Lüneburg or Lübeck, Germany, in mid to late 1945.

On #VEDay80, remembering my father Albert Dodds (right), a sergeant in the British Army's Pioneer Corps. He was evacuated from France 3 weeks after Dunkirk, then took part in the Sicily, Salerno & Normandy landings. Most of his company was at Lüneburg in May 1945, when the Nazi forces surrendered.

CFP: What Do (Digital) Images Want? A Decade of Data, Power, and Visual Knowledge in Art History — DAHJ The International Journal for Digital Art History (DAHJ) marks its 10th anniversary at a crucial moment when digital images are not only omnipresent in daily life, but are generated by active agents...

New CFP: What Do (Digital) Images Want? Join us in exploring a decade of data, power & visual knowledge!
dahj.org/cfp/11

TANK vs TESLA

"We've crushed fascism before and we'll crush it again"

- ⁠WW2 veteran Ken, 98, in the tank

In other news, rubber ducks are migrating to Canada, where they won’t be subject to Trump’s tariffs on Mandarin goods

Digital Dickens Notes Project The Digital Dickens Notes Project is an exploration of Charles Dickens's Working Notes

Last night I had the pleasure of hearing @annagk.bsky.social talk to our Dickens postgraduates about www.dickensnotes.com - a fantastic open access resource showing Dickens's working notes for his novels. Highly recommended!

Sunlit swimming pool with bright blue water, art deco arches and clerestory windows above

Another beautiful art deco pool ticked off my to-do list! This is Mounts Baths, Northampton - a water-filled cathedral for swimming worshippers

That’s me, bottom right

Opinion | The Trump Administration’s Data Purges Weaken America The Trump administration has started purging the government’s digital memory. Democracies die without proper archiving and public records.

The deletion of websites and other government data is a dangerous attack on knowledge, harming democracy. My colleague @nannathylstrup.bsky.social & I contribute a guest essay in @nytimes.com today: www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/o...

Cover of Italian open access journal Engramma, issue 222, March 2025

Online article 'Museums and the Enclosure of the Public Domain in the Digital Age', by Douglas McCarthy, available at https://lnkd.in/eUm6nzY8

NEW 🐣

The editors of the Italian open access journal Engramma invited me to contribute an article for a special issue on copyleft and internet piracy.

'Museums and the Enclosure of the Public Domain in the Digital Age' is now online at engramma.it/eOS/index.ph...

#museums #copyright #publicdomain

A mockup of two magazines and a phone. The magazines are open, revealing two spreads with both text and data visualizations. The phone features the digital version of the article.

I wrote my latest piece for Anthropology News to not only draw attention to the fragility of digital data, but highlight the work being done by those at The Internet Archive (@archive.org) and independent archivist like Jason Scott (@textfiles.com).

www.anthropology-news.org/articles/bit...

#generativeart and #aiart didn’t just come out of nowhere - “A Computer in the Art Room: the origins of British Computer Arts 1950-1980” is now available as an ebook @amazonkindle.bsky.social & Apple books £5.99 & $4.99

Are you interested in the history of art & tech in Britain? My newest book features George Mallen, pioneer of creative computing since 1964, cybernetics and Gordon Pask, artist Stephen Willats, the Royal College of Art & the history of the Computer Arts Society in 1960s-1970s bit.ly/3xdOE58