Easel - An Open Source Art Calendar

Over the past few years I’ve grown an appreciation for art history (mostly due to my beautiful wife). I thoroughly enjoy art museums and watching analysis videos of artists and painters. I wanted to bring that side of my interests to my website but I wasn’t sure of the best path forward. I realized that the Art Institute of Chicago had a fantastic, free, and open API that could be used in many different ways. Started out with a “art a day” page on my side that would fetch from the API on each request with a random painting each day, but I decided I wanted to turn it more into a calendar.

Shortly after, Easel was born! It’s a new addition to my Andromeda stack that will fetch a new artwork each day and store the information in the database. You have the option to backfill a set number of days, select certain subjects or mediums, and more. Includes an API which can be accessed through other sites, including my new /art-calendar page. And of course, it has RSS :)

Love slowly adding little pieces of software that make my website just a bit sweeter.