Art Nouveau on Europeana
The Europeana database already contains Art Nouveau objects, as part of the millions of objects linked through the portal. A current search for "Art Nouveau" results in over 2000 images. There may be more relevant images in the system - but they may not be adequately labelled. Partage Plus will greatly increase this number, and will introduce objects to Europeana with a structured system of metadata, making search results more precise and relevant. As a result of Partage Plus the amount of Art Nouveau material accessible through Europeana will increase greatly. With over 74 thousand new items Europeana will become the one of the world’s greatest online resources for Art Nouveau (and related movements).
Rarely if ever in the history of art has a style had a similar distribution to that known as Art Nouveau. The area it covered was the whole of the European continent, including Russia and extended beyond, especially to the United States.
Art Nouveau had a particular application in architecture and applied arts. In architecture it used new technologies such as the steel structure in an open plan. In the decorative arts it formed a drive for innovation, radically breaking with the past by developing new typologies and a new artistic vocabulary. The style also offered a response or a reaction against the ever-changing society of the Industrial Revolution. There was a deliberate break with the past and these are evident in the names in different countries: Art Nouveau (Belgium & France), Modern Style (UK), Secessionstil (Austria), Jugendstil (Germany), and Modernista (Spain) to name a few. Art Nouveau has a huge legacy of material culture throughout the European continent. Yet it combines not simply the material remains that tell us something about the social context. On top of that it concerns a legacy with a huge cultural and art historical value. This legacy, with social, political, geographical and artistic variations, expressed in many aspects of material culture like architecture, applied arts, art and design seems to have been waiting for an infrastructure like Europeana, to be understood and appreciated at its merits.
The importance of this movement has already been recognized by Europeana, as evidenced by the hugely successful "Wiki Loves Art Nouveau" project. This was Europeana's first user-generated exhibition which explores some of the finest examples of Art Nouveau architecture from across Europe.
The "Wiki Loves Art Nouveau" exhibition features 50 photographs representing some of Europe’s best examples of Art Nouveau architecture. These photographs were submitted by people around Europe for the Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest, where Europeana sponsored a special Art Nouveau Category. With over 2,700 submissions, the Europeana team shortlisted 343 photographs. Users then voted for their favourites on Flickr, after which the 40 most popular photographs were assembled into this new exhibition. The photograph of the interior of the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest by Csaba Attila Kontar received the most votes and was crowned the winner of Wiki Loves Art Nouveau. Along with these top 40 images selected by users, the exhibition features 10 other photographs hand picked by the Europeana team.
