SF BAY AREA NON-PROFIT TRAINS WORLD-CLASS MUSEUMS ON CUTTING-EDGE IMAGING TECHNOLOGY FOR 21ST-CENTURY ART & ARTIFACT CONSERVATION

News Release -- For Immediate Release August 15, 2011
San Francisco -- Cultural Heritage Imaging (CHI), a San Francisco-based non-profit, is offering free training in high-tech imaging to local and national museum professionals at a series of workshops throughout the US. Museum staff use the imaging techniques to create beautiful, high-resolution, interactive media that reveal never-before-seen surface details and enhance research efforts and public education programs.

Check out an example of the imaging tech in this video shown during the exhibition, “The Japanese Print in the Era of Impressionism” at the Fine Arts Museums of SF (FAMSF) in 2010-11: vimeo.com/16942430 and on the FAMSF blog. (deyoung.famsf.org/blog/cutting-edge-photography-technique-comes-de-young)

The next training in mid-August takes place at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and includes participants from SFMOMA, the Asian Art Museum, the California Academy of Sciences, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the Georgia O’Keefe Museum (Santa Fe, NM), the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology (University of California, Berkeley), the Oakland Museum of California, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, and other institutions.

CHI obtained a federal grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS.gov), to conduct outreach and training and share important new imaging technologies with art conservation students, museum professionals, and others who care for items of cultural, artistic, and historic heritage and scientific interest.

CHI is training museum professionals in Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) techniques first developed at Hewlett-Packard Labs (www.hpl.hp.com/research/ptm/ri.html). The four-day SFMOMA class occurs August 15-18, 2011 with additional sessions happening in 2012 at the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute and the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

“By teaching people how to use RTI, we advance the adoption of this significant new technology and empower cultural heritage specialists and scientists to better care for their collections,” said Mark Mudge, CHI President and Co-Founder.

Earlier in 2011, CHI held workshops at the Worcester Art Museum, MA, New York University (NYU), and the Harvard University Art Museums. Participants included staff from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Yale University Museums, and other East Coast cultural institutions.

Find more training opportunities and great information on RTI and other topics at www.c-h-i.org. Visit www.c-h-i.org/21st_MP_apply for more details about the museum training program. Read first-hand accounts on the CHI blog. (culturalheritageimaging.wordpress.com/category/training)

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Cultural Heritage Imaging is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to the development and implementation of new imaging technologies for cultural, historic, and artistic heritage and scientific research. CHI is committed to the democratization of technology, relying on open source software and accessible methods and equipment. For more information on CHI, please see www.c-h-i.org.

CHI Contact: Carla Schroer, 415.558.8672 or carla@c-h-i.org

Cultural Heritage Imaging
2325 3rd Street
Suite #323
San Francisco, CA 94107

This release was published on openPR.