The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. is offering visitors the option to activate closed captioning when viewing an accompanying video for its new Arcimboldo, 1526-1593: Nature and Fantasy exhibition, featuring the work of Guiseppe Arcimboldo, Government Video reports.
Arcimboldo was one of the most playfully inventive and influential Italian painters of the 16th century. His bizarre portraits, which often featured heads made entirely of vegetables, fruits, animals and other various objects, inspired many surrealist artists such as Salvador Dali and Octavio Ocampo.
The National Gallery of Art recently acquired Arcimboldo’s Four Seasons in One Head, which will be a focus of the exhibition. Along with the painting, the gallery is also featuring an accompanying video to help visitors better understand the artist and his works.
Using a CPC MacCaption Player, the gallery feeds closed caption titles to its DLP overhead projector, enabling visitors with hearing impairments to access the narration of the video presentation. A button at the entrance of the auditorium allows visitors to turn on the subtitles, which will remain on the screen until the button is clicked again.
According to the gallery, the Four Seasons in One Head portrait is the only undisputed painting by Arcimboldo in a public collection in the United States.
