Blog Topic: Highlights

Happy Father’s Day! Every year on the third Sunday of June we celebrate our dads – whether or not they’re as stylish as the one in this portrait by Anthony van Dyke in the Musée du Louvre, courtesy of the Réunion des Musées Nationaux.

“I noticed that she wore her evening dress, all her dresses, like sports clothes—there was a jauntiness about her movements as if she had first learned to walk upon a golf course on clean, crisp, mornings.” –F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby The recent movie adaptation of The Great Gatsby has turned the spotlight on the […]

May is National Barbecue Month, allegedly. Why the hedging? Because the closest to an official citation we could find was this post on the USDA blog from 2012. But we’ll go with it because a) it gives us the excuse to post this mid-19th century watercolor from The Walters Art Museum, b) we like barbecue, and c) it’s close […]

Spring time is here and butterflies are already making their annual appearance, according to butterfliesandmoths.org. To celebrate, we’ve compiled a slideshow of selections from a wide variety of eras, regions, and fields of study, from science to art to costume design. Search the Artstor Digital Library for butterfl* to find more than 1,000 images with the keywords […]

For over twenty years, Panos Pictures has been using photography to communicate critical social issues and stories beyond the mainstream media landscape to new and diverse audiences. More than 30,000 of their images of contemporary global affairs are currently available in the Artstor Digital Library. In this Panos-produced video, Ami Vitale shares the story behind a photograph she took […]

Spring is here! The return of sunshine inspired us to look at Botticelli’s Primavera, a masterpiece of the early Renaissance and arguably the most popular artistic representation of the season, even if – as we shall see – its interpretation remains inconclusive. Botticelli painted Primavera sometime between 1477 and 1482, probably for the marriage of […]

As a feminist, I often wonder how to approach events like Women’s History Month. Is it a celebration? A time for reflection? This year, I thought I’d meditate on an issue that has been popping up everywhere, from The Atlantic to the Academy Awards. 2012 saw a series of publications on women’s shifting role in […]

March is Women’s History Month, the perfect time to highlight the work of Karen Finley, a world-renowned performance artist, author, and playwright whose work has addressed issues such as sexuality, abuse, and American politics from an uncompromising feminist perspective. Finley came to national attention when her 1990 grant application to the National Endowment for the Arts […]

For over twenty years, Panos Pictures has been using photography to communicate critical social issues and stories beyond the mainstream media landscape to new and diverse audiences. More than 30,000 of their images of contemporary global affairs are currently available in the ARTstor Digital Library. In this Panos-produced video, Stephan Vanfleteren talks about capturing a moment that he didn’t […]

Debris from a meteor streaked through the sky in western Siberia early this morning, causing a boom that damaged a large number of buildings, mainly in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. Some 1,000 people were reportedly hurt, mostly as a result of glass shattering when the meteor entered the atmosphere.