im so tired of seeing AI writing on articles like this. We've been studying classical art for hundreds of years theres so many resources I beg readers to just pick up one of the countless books or articles written by a human and i beg the "author" of the site to please just write the copy yourself if you are knowledgeable on the topic.
Museum labels are supposed to be designed to deliver the take-away point that the curator wants to make. Asking museum goers to learn how to read paintings is a poor workaround.
The classic guide to writing interpretive exhibit labels is Beverly Serrell's book [1].
TFA has very little content and a terrible LLM stench. I work in this field, so I was attracted to the clickbait title. My advice is not to read TFA, just read a summary of Serrell's book if you can't get the book itself.
Oh this is disappointing isn't it — it could have been a labour of love and isn't.
The "insights" about Mona Lisa are shallow and quite telling.
What did the crowd miss? What did the AI miss?
No props? One of the most significant things people don't notice — and of course neither did this AI — is she's wearing a veil. And a very particular kind of veil with a very particular connotation.
All that AI guff about what people miss when they stand in front of it, all that suggestion that you zoom in and look, and not even the slightest nudge to look at her hair and forehead.
I really don't want AI-generated copy to walk me through how to understand various famous paintings by answering 8 boilerplate questions about each of them. If the answers were written entirely by a human who was an art expert, though, I think I would feel completely differently. There's an idea here that seems appealing (look at a collection of famous paintings, and learn the most interesting things about each one, what to notice, etc.), but the AI copy is a complete turn-off for me.
I've been playing around with a similar problem 'Can AI help me increase my literacy around Art & Design' but have taken a bit of a different approach, essentially:
1. Have a rough rubric around areas of knowledge and where I'm strong/weak
2. Every day an agent builds a ~30min task + short answer question and slacks it to me. Tasks are designed to have minimal AI writing and pull primary sources / courseware. Easy to do in downtime or during my commute.
3. Answers are picked up from Slack, are scored against the rubric, and progress is tracked day over day which influences the task for the next day.
Stack is dead simple, scheduled Claude Cowork task + state in Obsidian + Slack for messaging. Happy to share more details if people are interested but easy to replicate from the above.
One of the things it's opened my eyes up to is the sheer volume of high quality works/analysis/videos/courseware available online. You really don't need AI to process this, but it's helpful to have a wrapper that identifies/points you to the resources that will be the most helpful for you.
I like it- I don't care if it's all AI-generated, it's an interesting way to explore famous paintings. So I read through one, and at the end I got a popup asking me to drop my email and that "the next 4 ones are free too".
For me, asking “what else can I see?” has been useful. Some of my favorite works of art show me new things every time I look. Garry Winogrand’s 1964 is my favorite book of all time, I’ve gone through it dozens of times and always find a new photo to appreciate.
I also find it helpful to avoid labeling art as “bad” and instead say “I do not yet understand this work, but someday I might”. I didn’t get that Winogrand book at first, had I written it off I would have missed out. I still don’t get Cy Twombly, but I hope to figure his paintings out someday.
The more art you look at, the better you get at looking at art!
Oh, this might be my opportunity to tell HN about one of my nerdy recent hobbies, one that would terrify professionals! In fact one that professionals say is impossible for non professionals (which might be what attracted me to it).
I restore paintings as a hobby! It is not easy to get into. Watch Julian Baumgartner on YouTube. He carefully never tells you what glue, resin or solvent he is using. The appreciation this has given me for the paintings is phenomenal. I have been mostly restricted to removing varnish to date. AMA. I have lived the opportunities for research it has given me. I work on scrap paintings from charity shops or fb marketplace, if that scares you less.
I was not that bothered that this whole post was flagged until I saw this comment.
What a fabulous eccentric hobby to develop. I don't know you but I am fully happy for you that you've found this for yourself :-)
FWIW my own eccentric hobby is that I've decided to make my own art lenses for my cameras — simple lenses (meniscus lenses or doublets) in basic barrels that I 3D print with the right specifications to focus properly. One of the rabbit holes it sent me down is how the earliest lens designers figured out where the aperture goes — including a chap who designed a lens for work in a camera obscura, before photography. You know you have a niche hobby when you are reading academic research.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 63.5 ms ] threadAs it is, the generated prose telling you how to appreciate art is ghoulish.
The classic guide to writing interpretive exhibit labels is Beverly Serrell's book [1].
TFA has very little content and a terrible LLM stench. I work in this field, so I was attracted to the clickbait title. My advice is not to read TFA, just read a summary of Serrell's book if you can't get the book itself.
[1] Exhibit Labels, Beverly Serrell, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024 edition.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/exhibit-labels-9781538160459/
The "insights" about Mona Lisa are shallow and quite telling.
What did the crowd miss? What did the AI miss?
No props? One of the most significant things people don't notice — and of course neither did this AI — is she's wearing a veil. And a very particular kind of veil with a very particular connotation.
All that AI guff about what people miss when they stand in front of it, all that suggestion that you zoom in and look, and not even the slightest nudge to look at her hair and forehead.
1. Have a rough rubric around areas of knowledge and where I'm strong/weak
2. Every day an agent builds a ~30min task + short answer question and slacks it to me. Tasks are designed to have minimal AI writing and pull primary sources / courseware. Easy to do in downtime or during my commute.
3. Answers are picked up from Slack, are scored against the rubric, and progress is tracked day over day which influences the task for the next day.
Stack is dead simple, scheduled Claude Cowork task + state in Obsidian + Slack for messaging. Happy to share more details if people are interested but easy to replicate from the above.
One of the things it's opened my eyes up to is the sheer volume of high quality works/analysis/videos/courseware available online. You really don't need AI to process this, but it's helpful to have a wrapper that identifies/points you to the resources that will be the most helpful for you.
The gall!
I also find it helpful to avoid labeling art as “bad” and instead say “I do not yet understand this work, but someday I might”. I didn’t get that Winogrand book at first, had I written it off I would have missed out. I still don’t get Cy Twombly, but I hope to figure his paintings out someday.
The more art you look at, the better you get at looking at art!
I restore paintings as a hobby! It is not easy to get into. Watch Julian Baumgartner on YouTube. He carefully never tells you what glue, resin or solvent he is using. The appreciation this has given me for the paintings is phenomenal. I have been mostly restricted to removing varnish to date. AMA. I have lived the opportunities for research it has given me. I work on scrap paintings from charity shops or fb marketplace, if that scares you less.
What a fabulous eccentric hobby to develop. I don't know you but I am fully happy for you that you've found this for yourself :-)
FWIW my own eccentric hobby is that I've decided to make my own art lenses for my cameras — simple lenses (meniscus lenses or doublets) in basic barrels that I 3D print with the right specifications to focus properly. One of the rabbit holes it sent me down is how the earliest lens designers figured out where the aperture goes — including a chap who designed a lens for work in a camera obscura, before photography. You know you have a niche hobby when you are reading academic research.