JSTOR Blog
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According to a 1985 Illustrated London News poll of artists and critics, Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas was voted the world’s greatest painting. Let’s take a close look at the painting, its history, and the emotions it elicits to pinpoint why.
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When it comes to modern warfare, we’ve seen so much through photographs: mass graves, explosions, the faces of soldiers the instant they’re shot. And we’ve also seen the aftermath of war–devastated landscapes, soldiers carrying their dead, and returning home to their families. We’ve become accustomed to a depth of visual coverage that has brought deep…
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Our friends at JSTOR Daily remind us that this year marks the centennial of the cacophonous beginnings of the Dada movement in Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire. An anarchic response to the ravages of World War I, the movement is notoriously difficult to pin down. Matthew Wills writes, “Dada combined absurdity and nonsense, radical politics and anti-politics,…
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Armistice Day became Veterans Day in the United States in 1954. While the holiday is also known as Remembrance Day in other countries and celebrates the end of World War I, the name change in the United States reflects its emphasis on honoring military veterans. The two objectives were mentioned in a speech on the…
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Take a deep breath, the presidential debates are finally over. But brace yourselves, we still have a couple of weeks of campaigning left until the actual elections. Why the negative tone? Well, the Washington Post reported that “59 percent of Americans are sick and tired of the election”–and that was way back in July! And…
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The world has lost a uniquely gifted leader and friend. Bill Bowen passed away peacefully at 83 on October 20, 2016. He dedicated his entire professional life to the world of education, and was founding chairman of JSTOR and ITHAKA and founding trustee of Artstor. We extend our heartfelt sympathies and deepest condolences to his…
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In 1862, amateur photographer William H. Mumler of Boston took a self-portrait in his studio, unaware of a ghostly apparition lurking directly behind him. It wasn’t until he viewed the resulting image of a pellucid arm draped casually across his shoulder that he realized the camera must have exposed the lingering spirit of his deceased…
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The Christian festival of Michaelmas, also known as the Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel, is celebrated in many parts of the world on September 29. Michaelmas celebrates the story of Saint Michael defeating Satan, which is often depicted in the motif of Saint George and the Dragon, Saint George being the Archangel Michael’s earthly counterpart. The earliest…
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An interview with the graduate student curators of Avery/GSAPP Architectural Plans and Sections To celebrate the completion of our two-year collaborative project with Avery Library and GSAPP on releasing a collection of 20,000 architectural plans, sections, and related materials in Artstor, Lisa Gavell, Artstor’s Senior Manager of Metadata & Content, spoke with five of the…
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Editor’s note: this post has been updated to reflect Artstor’s platform changes. We invited Stanton Belford, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology at Martin Methodist College, to tell us about his three Marine Biology collections in JSTOR Forum (formerly Shared Shelf): Red Sea, Trinidad, and Key Largo. Before describing the marine biology digital collections, I would…
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Start off the school year with more than 2 million images! Here are some links to help you get started: * Register for a free Artstor account – you’ll be able to download images, log in away from campus, share image groups, and more! * Learn how easy it is to download citations! Export to your favorite reference citation management…
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In 1846, dentist William T. G. Morton assembled a group of doctors in the operating theater at Massachusetts General Hospital, a sky-lit dome located on the hospital’s top floor. As the doctors watched from the dome’s stadium seating, Morton waved a sponge soaked in a mysterious substance called Letheon inches from his patient’s face. The…
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Editor’s note: this post was updated to include accurate information about Artstor’s platform changes in June 2018. Traci Timmons, Librarian at the Seattle Art Museum, shares with us the story of the completion of their first digital collection. The Seattle Art Museum only began issuing its annual reports digitally in 2007. Prior to that, for…
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It’s very easy to share links to images and image groups in the Artstor Digital Library. Here’s how: Open the group you wish to share. This can be a Private, Institutional, Artstor-Curated, or a group that has been shared with you. From the menu choose Share > Generate image group link. Click Copy to Clipboard…
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Professor David S. Efurd’s collection of nearly 10,000 photographs of Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain art and architecture was recently released in Artstor. We were particularly impressed by the variety and complexity of the rock-cut cave temples he photographed, and he was kind enough to answer our questions. Artstor: What is the importance of caves as the sites of some…
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Sculptor Benvenuto Cellini is best remembered for two things: his bombastic autobiography, the Vita, in which he confesses to multiple murders and a spectacular jailbreak, and for his salt cellar. Yes, that’s right—a dish for salt.
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We are introducing a new resource featuring more than 75 images on the topic of biomimicry. Find it in the Artstor Digital Library’s Teaching Resources area: Teaching Resources > Case Studies > STEM to STEAM > Stem to Steam: The Anatomy of Design Throughout history we have looked to nature to define and devise systems…
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Love LibGuides? We do too. We’re thrilled to announce our new LibGuides aimed at helping students, faculty, and even librarians get started–or become experts–using the Artstor Digital Library. View them on our home page at artstor.libguides.com, and please feel free to reuse them as you see fit; you have our permission! Our faculty guide covers…
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These photographs of six members of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) Paleontology staff sitting inside the massive jaws of a Carcharocles megalodon are the stuff of nightmares—and, of course, just the thing for Shark Week. Yet, as Brian Switek writes on ScienceBlogs, they’re the result of a miscalculation. “[T]he famous jaws were reconstructed by…
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Missed our #ColorMyArtstor postcards at the ALA conference? Not to worry, you can print your own! Visit the Promoting Artstor section on our Support site and download the full set of five! There you will also find downloadable posters, bookmarks, brochures, and logos to let everyone know that your institution subscribes to Artstor.
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We invited Barbara Anello to tell us about her photographs of graffiti in Lower Manhattan, newly released in the Artstor Digital Library. I photographed graffiti, stencil art, wall paintings, and murals on New York City streets during the 1980s and early ’90s in Lower Manhattan from about 14th Street south to Battery Park, and from the Hudson…
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Justin B. Makemson, PhD, assistant professor of art and the art education program coordinator at Belmont University in Nashville, TN, contributed this essay, part of a study of selective artistic self-identification. Creative action is defined largely by the artist’s relationship to significant artistic others. Even the youngest of emerging artists are acutely aware of images and objects…
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Did you know that you can easily customize any one of our image groups by adding or removing images to make it exactly what you need? Begin by opening an image group, such as Cities and Urban Planning from our Teaching Resources. From the Organize menu, choose Save image group as. Once you’ve named and saved your image group, you can then remove any images from the…
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You have questions and Artstor’s Support site has answers! Want to know how to log in from home? Or how to access the Digital Library on your smartphone? Start with our Quick Start Guide. Prefer to watch your instructions? We have you covered. We also have advice on approved image uses, troubleshooting, and much more. There’s no need to…
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Heading off for summer break? Did you know you can still access all the features and tools of the Digital Library remotely with a registered user account – it’s Artstor on the go! Create your user account and access our more than 2 millions images and your own image folders and groups. You can even…
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On May 5th, Merete Sanderhoff, curator and senior advisor at the National Gallery of Denmark (Statens Museum for Kunst), presented “Sharing is Caring” (you can see her slides here) at the Artstor offices for a group of professionals in the arts and cultural heritage fields, as well as members of the American Friends of SMK.…
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Editor’s note: this post was updated to reflect Artstor’s platform changes. In the 13th century, southwestern France gave birth to several hundred new planned towns, partly to replace villages destroyed in the Albigensian Crusades and partly to revivify a stagnating economy and tame areas of wilderness¹. Some were designed as fortress communities, while others were laid…
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Each May, around the world, almost twenty five thousand students sit for the AP® Art History exam. This year’s test falls on the third of May (a date not lost on many seasoned Art History teachers). It is also quite different from the AP® exam you or your children may have taken. This time, students…
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Editor’s note: this post has been updated to reflect the name change from Shared Shelf to JSTOR Forum. We invited Lisa Laughy, Web Services/Archives Assistant at St. Paul’s School’s Ohrstrom Library in Concord, New Hampshire to tell us about her experience as the first K-12 subscriber to JSTOR Forum (formerly called Shared Shelf), Artstor’s digital media management system. When I first started…
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On his famous three voyages to the South Seas, British explorer Captain James Cook charted the largely unexplored Pacific Ocean, achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, and completed the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand. But Cook’s nautical feats are only part of the story; of…
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