MedievalPOC is scamming you, here’s how and why:
For all that MedievalPOC railed against how “awful” periodization in this reblog, what they mostly did was prove they have ABSOLUTELY NO UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT PERIODIZATION IS OR HOW IT WORKS.
Which is okay! Not everyone does. But if you’re a history blog, trying to pass off Italian Baroque Art from the 1670’s as from the Georgian period is flat out wrong on every humanly possible level. How do I know it’s not Georgian, but Italian Baroque? Well, MPOC actually directly linked folks back to the original works and then bet NO ONE would check their facts.
Talk about incriminating receipts, right? It’s a mistake anyone could make….except this is a history blog, and it’s not an easy mistake to make when you’re in the wrong CENTURY. The last photo is my accurate to period examples that i found quickly.
Periodization, by the way: an act or instance of dividing a subject into historical eras for purposes of analysis and study. Periods are “named blocks of time” that can be geographically specific. They are often named for major historical events, famous people, or dates. Periods are useful for analyzing change, continuity, or advances over time. Examples: Meiji Japan, the Renaissance, the gilded age, the long 19th century, the 60’s.
So MPOC hates historiography because its fluid/changing, different from art history in many ways, and not always precise — and therefore wrong. Then proceeds to prove their point by suggesting that the United States experienced the Victorian Era.
Which, granted, the US did experience a multitude of influences from the “victorian era” but….it’s also no longer a part of the British empire in the 19th century.
MPOC is asking people to pay them…..to break the law and/or do things that you can literally do yourself, for free or are already available for a price. IE: selling art prints of POC in art owned by different resources (museums, galleries, private owners, etc) is actually really illegal and against copyright. It’s technically illegal to put these images online without permissions anyways, but you don’t make a profit off of selling the art that isn’t owned by you when you do it. Interested in prints? Well you can either print off the image yourself for free, or buy them from the actual museums and galleries themselves, furthering the support of the actual items! When you buy prints or postcards of art DIRECTLY from museums, you are funding museums. the money they get from giftshops is actually VERY IMPORTANT because museums and databases like the ones MPOC use are NON-PROFIT organizations AND this money will go to funding the museum, be that for outreach to children, conserving the art, paying their staff, publishing free educational materials, etc. It is an absolutely vital source of income for museums that serve their communities and want to keep their art accessible.
There are a few collections which are free for reproduction commercially, like the National Gallery of Art but this isn’t the norm across the board. Besides that? Well I realize buying a $95 art book may be out of the range for some people’s pockets (TRUST ME: having been someone required to buy a lot of these textbooks which are pricey because of the vast amount of copyright fees paid to publish them), there are cheaper or used similar books on amazon AND several museums and universities have published some of their older books online for FREE. Which includes The Met. Why are you going to pay someone else to read books for you when they don’t even give you the facts right??
they want $1,200 a month to make lesson plans and curricula about art and art history but can’t even differentiate between two separate countries in two different time periods. This isn’t “one mistake” I found. This is systematically getting things wrong, including the time they claimed that Queen Urraca of Spain might possibly be Muslim — despite the fact that Queen Urraca of Spain spent her career helping and advocating the Reconquista - AKA the murder of muslim people in Spain. Uhhhh…
Which of course: These lesson plans? Stuff like this already exists! By (surprise) Museum educators whose JOB it is full time to make this stuff. It’s almost like this stuff is ALREADY free online [The Met, The Getty, Asian Art Museum… pretty much any major museum on the planet….] AND THIS STUFF IS AVAILABLE AND READY TO BE USED. A LOT OF IT IS FREE. How do I know this magical stuff??? because (and I’m guessing here) UNLIKE MPOC I have actually taken a class on museum education.
MPOC is offering to write a book. a really real published book. SPOILER ALERT: in the art history world, you GENERALLY have a PhD before you publish a book. Why? Because the PhD certifies you as an expert in the thing you study and it is an academic topic. No university/academic publisher alive would risk this. Is it maybe an ivory tower elitist thing? hell yeah it is. Would any editor in their right mind publish a book as riddled with basic factual errors as much as the MPOC blog? Hell no they would not. What about those publishers who publish psuedo-historical books like “PS ‘everything was made by aliens’” ? Well unless they want their asses sued to hell and back over copyrights, they probably won’t be able to foot the necessary bills for these images. Independent publishing doesn’t make any of it LESS illegal. They want to cover the license costs with crowd funding???
GREAT EXCEPT:
According to Linda Downs, executive director of the College Art Association, image permissions and licensing costs for a 200-page art-history book average $7,000 to $10,000. Authors usually have to cover those costs themselves. Scholars in disciplines that aren’t so visual might jump at the chance to publish in both print and online formats, Ms. Downs told me in an e-mail. But “art historians will choose one or the other” because they might get hit with two sets of permissions fees and other restrictions. Good luck with that. In order to recoup those kinds of costs the books will NOT be cheap.
MPOC has been called out by several NDN bloggers regarding the fact that they have been caught lying about their Native/POC heritage. Although the days of stupid_free and fandom_wank have long past, now we have other ways to collect receipts and here AND ALSO HERE REALLY IMPORTANT and know that they are white, white, white — and lied about who they were. Like here’s a hint there are NO Lakota reservations in AZ. If you really miss livejournal, however, you can see the call out on SF_DRAMA. The internet will never forget a white girl co-opting POC to garner cash.
they also have ZERO UNDERSTANDING of how to treat jewish people in europe in history. which is called out here better than I ever can or could because I am not jewish. they also fumble with the Roma (which they claim to be) and that + the judaism issue is also called out here.
don’t send this person harassment but don’t give them money holy shit y’all you are being scammed. SCAMMED. do not PAY people to feed you half-assed poor researched bullshit that is available free online.
- a poc who is tired of the “best diversity in history” blog being wrong about pretty much everything
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