JSTOR Blog

  • Artstor is introducing curriculum guides–collections of images from the Artstor Digital Library based on syllabi for college courses–compiled by faculty members and experts around the country. Learn more here. Introduction to Philosophy Carl Hammer, Lecturer, Communication Studies, University of MN, Twin Cities This curriculum guide introduces the student to the basic problems, methods and theories of…

  • Artstor is introducing curriculum guides–collections of images from the Artstor Digital Library based on syllabi for college courses–compiled by faculty members and experts around the country. Learn more here. Colonial Latin America curriculum guide Rachel Moore, Associate Professor, History, Clemson University This curriculum guide explores a wide range of perspectives on the colonial period in Latin America.…

  • Navigating the tremendous number of images in the Artstor Digital Library can be daunting, particularly to those in fields outside of art history. Where to start looking for images for, say, an Introduction to Philosophy class? To address that hurdle, we are introducing curriculum guides – collections of images from the Artstor Digital Library based…

  • “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?” So asks the title character in Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus upon seeing the radiant ghost of Helen of Troy. Marlowe was not the only artist to be captivated by Helen and her fabled beauty. Indeed, for millennia, painters, sculptors, poets and playwrights have been inspired by…

  • Jacob Lawrence painted “The Migration of the Negro,” a series of 60 small panels describing the passage of African-Americans from the rural South to the urban North, in 1940 and 1941. The works combined the vibrancy of modernism, the content of history painting, and the urgency of political art. The electrifying results catapulted the young artist into fame…

  • Start the school year off right by registering for a free Artstor Digital Library account. Among the many benefits: you can organize images into groups, export these groups as PowerPoint presentations or download them in zipped files, share them with other users at your institution, add searchable annotations to individual images, and access the Digital Library away from campus or…

  • From James Shulman President, Artstor I’m writing to announce a call for collection-building proposals focused on at-risk archives of individual scholars. The Artstor Digital Library includes many image collections from individual scholars who have built important archives in support of their work.  Now, we are launching a project to preserve and increase the availability of these…

  • Aubrey Beardsley was born on August 21, 1872. Despite dying of tuberculosis at the young age of twenty-five in 1898, the artist managed to have a brilliant career full of controversy and scandal. He shot to fame with his illustrations for Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur in 1893, and then became notorious for his illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s…

  • Often, it is the unconventional details that lend a building its sense of character. This is certainly true of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, a monument striking for its tilt of approximately 4 degrees. The tilt was even more pronounced before modern efforts at stabilization began, and by some accounts has reached 8-10 degrees in…

  • Ah, the problems of having 2.5+ million images to choose from: your keyword search might get you too many results! Not to worry—just filter your results! Refine your search results by clicking on collection type, geographic area, classification (i.e. media), contributor, or date range on the filtering panel on the left of the page with…

  • On July 14, we celebrated the storming of the Bastille, the momentous day in 1789 that marked the beginning of the French Revolution, and the beginning of the end of the monarchy. While it is a day revered by the citoyens of France, it has come to symbolize the declining fortunes of the king and…

  • Bryn Mawr College’s free and open Albert Winslow Barker Collection brings back to light the work of an unfairly neglected American lithographer of the 1930s and uncovers his little-known photographs. And there is much to admire.

  • No matter where you were in the U.S. this Fourth of July, you probably had the opportunity to enjoy the Independence Day fireworks. Now it’s our friends’ turn in France to enjoy their revolution celebration with fireworks. Bastille Day, or Le quatorze juillet, commemorates the storming of the Bastille prison in Paris on July 14, 1789. The capture of the prison marked the beginning…

  • By all accounts, Americans are becoming enthusiastic about soccer in unprecedented numbers. Rumor even has it that a handful of Artstor employees may have sneaked into a conference room yesterday to watch the US team confront Germany (though, when asked about the story, everyone seemed too busy with work to comment). Of course, the game…

  • Visiting the Museum of Natural History was high on my list of priorities on my first trip to New York City. This was in big part due to its mention in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye—even if, to be honest, I didn’t quite remember the role it played in the book.

  • When the weather starts getting unbearable New Yorkers—Artstor staff included—flock to the boardwalks of Brooklyn’s Coney Island or Rockaway Beach in Queens. This ritual is nothing new and was, in fact, one of the pet subjects of Reginald Marsh (1898 –1954), an American artist famous for his paintings of New York City in the ’20s…

  • “It’s in the reach of my arms, / The span of my hips, / The stride of my step, / The curl of my lips. / I’m a woman/ Phenomenally. / Phenomenal woman, / That’s me.” – Maya Angelou Women have long been used as inspiration for art. They have served as muses to both…

  • This post was edited to reflect the change from Shared Shelf to JSTOR Forum. We invited Lee T. Pearcy of Bryn Mawr College’s Department of Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies, to discuss the Classicizing Philadelphia project. One way to think about America’s relationship with ancient Greece and Rome is to imagine a dialogue. Listen carefully as you wander around Philadelphia.…

  • July 1, 2014 will mark ten years since the Artstor Digital Library became available for educational use. Today, nearly half a million registered users at more than 1,500 educational institutions around the world use the Library for their research and teaching. We are always fascinated by the work being done using Artstor – from Lois…

  • This post has been updated to include new information about Artstor’s public collections, formerly made available on Shared Shelf Commons. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the prevailing medical belief that “the more dangerous the disease, the more painful the remedy” meant that bloodletting, purging, and blistering were often prescribed. Not surprisingly, this led…

  • As we get close to Easter, you’re sure to run into at least a few mentions of the renowned Fabergé eggs. And rightly so, as these decorative objects are ingenious and rich with history. But did you know there is much more to Fabergé than just eggs?

  • Since its opening in 2011 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the haute couture and prêt-à-porter designs in “The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: from the Sidewalk to the Catwalk” have been electrifying audiences in Montreal, Stockholm, Brooklyn, and Dallas—and now, London. I had the opportunity to see the exhibit at the Brooklyn…

  • Saint George’s Day is celebrated on April 23. I know this because as a child I was obsessed with the world of make-believe. While my sister was collecting books on the natural sciences, I had a whole shelf devoted to children’s versions of Greek mythology, fairy tales, and folklore. The stories I loved best involved…

  • Travelers to ancient Babylon were met with an astonishing sight: a gate nearly 50 feet high and 100 feet wide made of jewel-like blue glazed bricks and adorned with bas-relief dragons and young bulls. Dedicated to Ishtar, goddess of fertility, love, and war, the main entrance to the city was constructed for King Nebuchadnezzar II…

  • One hundred years ago today, suffragist Mary Richardson walked into the National Gallery, London and attacked Diego Velázquez’s The Toilet of Venus (AKA The Rokeby Venus) with a meat cleaver. Richardson was protesting the arrest of fellow suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst the previous day. You can see the impressive results of the National Gallery‘s restoration by searching…

  • Albrecht Dürer created his famous woodcut of a rhinoceros in 1515 based on a written description and an anonymous sketch of an Indian rhino that had arrived in Lisbon earlier that year. The animal was intended as a gift for Pope Leo X from the king of Portugal, but it never reached its destination, perishing…

  • We are delighted to announce that Artstor is collaborating with the Franklin Furnace Archive to introduce videos in the Digital Library in the coming months. Franklin Furnace has been championing performance and other ephemeral arts for more than three decades. Martha Wilson, Franklin Furnace’s founding director, elaborates on the significance of this collaboration: While there…

  • The mission of Aalto University is to create a new science and arts community. In this video, chief information specialist Eila Rämö explains how Aalto uses Artstor.

  • In an unusual event, temperatures dropped below freezing in all 50 states Tuesday after a polar vortex swept southwards. As NBC New York explains, “The polar vortex forms every year to the north, but large blocks of high pressure over Greenland and the Southwest weakened the jet stream in recent days, allowing part of the polar vortex to break off…

  • By Ayesha Akhtar, User Services Assistant What winter in the Northeast means for most is being able to get away with wearing black and gray, staying home in lieu of going out for fear of catching a cold, and wearing a troublesome amount of layers. But for me, grey winter skies provide the perfect backdrop…