Has_not_been_viewed_much

This feels like I am violating something that is sacred.

The last time I felt the same was when I accidentally found a Japanese Youtube channel that had tons of clips of konbini storefronts, a few seconds long each, most of them with zero views.

I used to borrow the books which had "to be disposed if not lent in the next 3 months" slip in them. Never regretted reading them. The best one included a very odd short story by Flann OBrien about a carpenter who walls himself inside the oak panelling of a build he is working on, and a woman convinced Sago farming will cure Ireland's famine.

How can we reconcile "viewed fewer than 200 times since 2010" with the absurd number of crawlers overloading the entire internet from every AI company out there?

I thought this was lovely, and was surprised by the date: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/196937/summer-moon-at-miyajim...

There used to be a site called Forgotify that would only play songs from Spotify that had zero listens. So each song played, of course, removed that song from the set that could ever be played by Forgotify. Doesn't look like it's around any more, sadly.

The irony is, that by drawing attention to these, especially on HN, they are likely to have the view numbers artificially increased, to a point where they no longer has_not_been_viewed_much

A new field is required…

I remember reading a post by soneone who really liked imusic, i think, and the filter options it used to have.

They had a playlist that was "all songs with four or five stars that i haven't listened to in 4 years or more" or something like that. This person apparently had a massive music collection, so there were always a few nostalgic hits to listen to.

This was my favourite of the ones I saw:

https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/813984c9-f0a6-c340-5e89-f1c00af...

Really moving piece. Great idea on the part of the API devs!

This is awesome. It's interesting to me how it messes with my incentives. At first I was just pulling the lever on the slot machine, then I went back and clicked on the pieces I really liked (to mark them as "viewed" for the Art Institute and show some love), but finally realized that I was systematically working to remove my favorites from the pool of images people would see.

In the end I just clicked on the "refresh" button a few more times.

My first art work was a drawing of a bunch of couches flying. I loved it. I came back here to comment about it without noticing I’d lose track of it. I tried searching in the collection but I couldn’t find it, so if anyone finds a sketch of a bunch of couches, I’d appreciate a link.

Somehow this made this experience even more wonderful.

How many of these images are there? I cycled through a few and ended up hitting at least one duplicate [1] that I do actually enjoy (but I can't find the name of it now that I refreshed the page, I know it had the verrazzano narrows bridge in the title)

Is there a chance a site like this could ruin their metric by inflating all the views for these lowest viewed items? Or do these not count?

[1] https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/67395c18-c83c-865f-b0db-4736574...

I enjoyed this one. Their other work was quite somber and then this title threw me for a loop https://www.artic.edu/artworks/151439/uranus-8

Kudos to whoever put this in the response, honestly what a fun idea.

I got a bunch of great ones and then I got this: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/91654/blackware-spouted-vesse...

I think I have an interest in Peruvian blackware now!! I mean... Look at this guy: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/6911/stirrup-spout-vessel-in-...

Awesome user interface here: navigate away from the page and come back, and you will never see the thing you were looking at before.

Is this person trying to get hired at Google?

That cheesy Renaissance marble table not only hasn't been viewed much, but all the views were from a White House IP address 2017-2021 and 2025 to present.

it keeps saying "failed to load" for me. through the magic of the developer console, i can see that the api calls are working but the actual image requests are not. it seems that this is a case of an overzealous cloudflare turnstile setup since if i open the image links in a new tab and pass a challenge i can view them.

Cool project, it's actually a shame if it gets popular enough then it won't return anything

I wish I could click the picture to pop out scale to full 1x

there’s probably some decent arguments on how to implement this.

Wow, some of these are super cool

Reminded me of least viewed pages on wikipedia collections or neglected articles...

See:

In search of the least viewed article on Wikipedia (2022)

https://colinmorris.github.io/blog/unpopular-wiki-articles

(Some discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31524943, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37955600)

did it get hug of death?

But why? Seems like there's way more art than people need, just as there's way more music than people need. As a consequence, most artists aren't earning much (just as it's always been). Why would author welcomes us to artificially inflate click counts? For example, e-commerce stores don't like artificial reviews.

I remember reading a post by soneone who really liked imusic, i think, and the filter options it used to have.

This was my favourite of the ones I saw:

https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/813984c9-f0a6-c340-5e89-f1c00af...

Really moving piece. Great idea on the part of the API devs!

In the end I just clicked on the "refresh" button a few more times.

Awesome user interface here: navigate away from the page and come back, and you will never see the thing you were looking at before.

Is this person trying to get hired at Google?

That cheesy Renaissance marble table not only hasn't been viewed much, but all the views were from a White House IP address 2017-2021 and 2025 to present.

I wish I could click the picture to pop out scale to full 1x

there’s probably some decent arguments on how to implement this.

This site is vaguely addictive in a dopamine feeding sense. What will the next image be? ...One more click won't hurt... :-)

I thought this was lovely, and was surprised by the date: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/196937/summer-moon-at-miyajim...

There's a couple of those for YouTube.

https://vid404.com/ is for videos with zero views. It generates search queries for finding them.

For videos with low views there's https://petittube.com/ (loads a random video with low view count) and http://astronaut.io/ (which has an "automatic stream" of videos).

Seems likely that Spotify is stuffed full of "songs" with zero listens now.

Somehow this made this experience even more wonderful.

Is there a chance a site like this could ruin their metric by inflating all the views for these lowest viewed items? Or do these not count?

[1] https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/67395c18-c83c-865f-b0db-4736574...

The site calls the API directly (www.artic.edu), so yeah, probably it will ruin^W change the metric. It's probably the creator's idea?

Some, ahem, video sites, have "Popular videos". Of course the videos that end up there get more views and get even more popular...

If the views are all real views it's hardly "inflating" anything.

I enjoyed this one. Their other work was quite somber and then this title threw me for a loop https://www.artic.edu/artworks/151439/uranus-8

...I can't work out what this is.

Kudos to whoever put this in the response, honestly what a fun idea.

Opposite of a 429 right!

if i turn off my vpn, it works, but the vpn is cloudflare's own WARP. strange

Cool project, it's actually a shame if it gets popular enough then it won't return anything

A shame but maybe also the point? If the under appreciated art is being viewed, that sounds great.

Wow, some of these are super cool

Reminded me of least viewed pages on wikipedia collections or neglected articles...

See:

In search of the least viewed article on Wikipedia (2022)

https://colinmorris.github.io/blog/unpopular-wiki-articles

(Some discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31524943, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37955600)

did it get hug of death?

There's a couple of those for YouTube.

https://vid404.com/ is for videos with zero views. It generates search queries for finding them.

For videos with low views there's https://petittube.com/ (loads a random video with low view count) and http://astronaut.io/ (which has an "automatic stream" of videos).

Seems likely that Spotify is stuffed full of "songs" with zero listens now.

The site calls the API directly (www.artic.edu), so yeah, probably it will ruin^W change the metric. It's probably the creator's idea?

Some, ahem, video sites, have "Popular videos". Of course the videos that end up there get more views and get even more popular...

There's no real way to know that they really are that popular or just what the streamer wants viewers to think they are

If the views are all real views it's hardly "inflating" anything.

...I can't work out what this is.

Opposite of a 429 right!

if i turn off my vpn, it works, but the vpn is cloudflare's own WARP. strange

A shame but maybe also the point? If the under appreciated art is being viewed, that sounds great.

Gauguin, Manet, Rembrandt and Whistler sketches, Weston nudes, Harry Callahan photos, amazing things indeed.

People generally seem quite uninterested in preparatory sketches/studies/maquettes by famous artists, which is absolute madness, to my mind. Unfinished and transitory work is much more interesting to me. Photographers' contact sheets especially.

This site is vaguely addictive in a dopamine feeding sense. What will the next image be? ...One more click won't hurt... :-)

200 clicks later...

I often find myself drowning in things like the Qld state library photo archives of the suburbs of Brisbane. They name street junctions which still exist, you pull up a modern photo in google maps, you look at the old one with Trams and wooden houses.. And another..

If they're using a static threshold of 200 views and there aren't many of these left it could pull them all out of that category.

It could obviously be fixed but I was more curious than anything

There's no real way to know that they really are that popular or just what the streamer wants viewers to think they are

It's more that they then go to the "low view" threshold then are no longer viewed and because the date is hard coded then it will never show any more.

I agree it's the point of the project but it's a bit of a shame someone could go to the site and see no art.

Gauguin, Manet, Rembrandt and Whistler sketches, Weston nudes, Harry Callahan photos, amazing things indeed.

200 clicks later...

  Ni bheidh ar leitheidi aris ann.

A line much abused in Myles na gCopaleen's (aka Brian O'Nolan's, aka Flann O'Brien's) An Béal Bocht (trans: The Poor Mouth)(1947)

It translates as "Our likes will not be there again." and is originally from An toileánach (1929) - https://archive.org/details/toileanach0000ocro about remote island life.

If they're using a static threshold of 200 views and there aren't many of these left it could pull them all out of that category.

It could obviously be fixed but I was more curious than anything

It's more that they then go to the "low view" threshold then are no longer viewed and because the date is hard coded then it will never show any more.

I agree it's the point of the project but it's a bit of a shame someone could go to the site and see no art.

  Ni bheidh ar leitheidi aris ann.

A line much abused in Myles na gCopaleen's (aka Brian O'Nolan's, aka Flann O'Brien's) An Béal Bocht (trans: The Poor Mouth)(1947)

It translates as "Our likes will not be there again." and is originally from An toileánach (1929) - https://archive.org/details/toileanach0000ocro about remote island life.

I’m not sure what’s happening in this thread, but so happy to see Myles mentioned on HN. Every time I post one of De Selby’s research papers, it gets downvoted to oblivion for some reason.

There's two kinds of dark suckers. you've met the second kind. It's always saddened me I've been to Dublin 3 times and never made it to Dalkey.

I want to pay a courtesy caul..

There's two kinds of dark suckers. you've met the second kind. It's always saddened me I've been to Dublin 3 times and never made it to Dalkey.

I want to pay a courtesy caul..

I got a bunch of great ones and then I got this: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/91654/blackware-spouted-vesse...

I think I have an interest in Peruvian blackware now!! I mean... Look at this guy: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/6911/stirrup-spout-vessel-in-...

This feels like I am violating something that is sacred.

The last time I felt the same was when I accidentally found a Japanese Youtube channel that had tons of clips of konbini storefronts, a few seconds long each, most of them with zero views.

I love stumbling upon these kinds of things, especially if they've been long abandoned. I feel like an archaeologist digging up artifacts of a forgotten tribe, or perhaps an explorer in an abandoned hospital

As a konbini enthusiast whenever I leave my continent… Link for the konbini storefront channel?

The irony is, that by drawing attention to these, especially on HN, they are likely to have the view numbers artificially increased, to a point where they no longer has_not_been_viewed_much

A new field is required…

There is no irony. Drawing attention to these works is likely the reason this bool was introduced in the first place.

Is it really an artificial increase? Presumably the humans of HN are naturally viewing these artworks.

They could monetize it by having a Pay-Per-Unview button that lets you pay to unview things you liked and want others to see.

How can we reconcile "viewed fewer than 200 times since 2010" with the absurd number of crawlers overloading the entire internet from every AI company out there?

Perhaps a quirk of the implementation - maybe the site doesn't server-side render links that lead to these items (though many bots run a full browser now), maybe they only track usage client-side or only in their mobile app.

Congratulations Citizen, you have complied with the mainthink.

We don't care about click counts. We just want people to see art.

As a konbini enthusiast whenever I leave my continent… Link for the konbini storefront channel?

Is it really an artificial increase? Presumably the humans of HN are naturally viewing these artworks.

There is no irony. Drawing attention to these works is likely the reason this bool was introduced in the first place.

They could monetize it by having a Pay-Per-Unview button that lets you pay to unview things you liked and want others to see.

We don't care about click counts. We just want people to see art.

Congratulations Citizen, you have complied with the mainthink.

April 14, 2026

The Art Institute of Chicago's API includes a has_not_been_viewed_much field on artwork. It's a boolean that describes whether an art piece hasn't been visited on their website very much.

More specifically, per the source code , has_not_been_viewed_much means the art piece has been viewed fewer than 200 times on the website since January 1, 2010.

Of course, that still begs the question: what are these artworks? Why aren't they being viewed? I can't answer the latter, but, if you have a moment for the former, please take some time to browse.

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Has_not_been_viewed_much

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