JSTOR Blog
-
May 1st, or May Day, celebrates the beginning of summer. The tradition has been manifested throughout different eras and cultures as the Roman festival of Flora, the Germanic Walpurgisnacht festival, and the Gaelic Beltane. It is also International Workers’ Day, in commemoration of the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago. This painting of May Day in…
-
Happy Mother’s Day! The holiday is celebrated in May in dozens of countries around the world. In honor of mothers everywhere, we have assembled our favorite mother and child images from the Digital Library spanning a wide variety of cultures and eras.
-
May is the month to celebrate the heritage of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States. The cultures, history, religion, architecture, and art of the continent of Asia are well represented in the Artstor Digital Library, and you can find a full guide in our Artstor Is… Asian Studies post; resources for Asian-Pacific content…
-
Twin brothers Romulus and Remus founded Rome on April 21, 753 B.C. on the site where they were suckled by a she-wolf as orphaned infants. According to the legend, the twins were the sons of Rhea Silvia and the war god Mars. Fearing that they would claim his throne, Rhea’s uncle Amulius ordered them drowned…
-
Everyone knows that Friday the 13th is an unlucky day, right? According to Wikipedia, there is no record of this superstition existing before the late 19th century, and different cultures ascribe the unfortunate day to Tuesday the 13th or Friday the 17th. Meanwhile, many superstitions popular in the Middle Ages did not make it to our era. Visit…
-
On April 12, 1861, Confederate shore batteries opened fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina; in response, President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to quell the Southern insurrection, marking the beginning of the American Civil War. The conflict had been building up for some time before the attack: Following Lincoln’s election the previous…
-
From those fabulous poems by Roman bad-boy Catullus (84-54 BC) to today’s contemporary poet rock-stars like Billy Collins, poetry might not enjoy the same mass popularity as it did in ancient times, but when you dive in, poetry is its own universe of aural, oral, and cerebral pleasures. Poetry and art are intertwined—two art forms…
-
Happy Jazz Appreciation Month! While the attributes of jazz are difficult to describe without getting technical, the key element that ties together its many sub-genres, from swing to bebop to avant-garde, is improvisation—or as Louis Armstrong put it, “Jazz is music that’s never played the same way once.”
-
The Artstor water cooler is abuzz with excitement about the premiere of The Hunger Games this weekend. The books by Suzanne Collins have made their way around the offices over the past couple of years, and the movie was a good excuse to do some “research” in Artstor for somewhat-relevant imagery.
-
Pioneering modern artist Josef Albers was born on March 19, 1888. Albers was an influential teacher, writer, painter, and color theorist best known for the Homages to the Square series and the groundbreaking book The Interaction of Color. In partnership with the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, the ARTstor Digital Library features 2,100 images of…
-
Julius Caesar, “dictator in perpetuity” of the Roman Empire, was murdered by his own senators on the Ides of March (March 15), 44 BC. Caesar had raised the ire of his already-resentful Republican senators after he appointed loyal members of his army to rule the Empire while he was away from Rome to fight in a…
-
Happy Pi (∏)Day! Today is 3/14, the first three decimals of ∏ (3.14). To celebrate, here is a 16th-century woodcut of the Greek letter ∏ from The Illustrated Bartsch. Too dry? Try these pies from Pop artist Wayne Thiebaud, courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art: Painting and Sculpture. Not enough? Visit this site from the University of…
-
The Artstor Travel Awards are back! Five winners will receive $1,500 each in support of educational and scholarly activities, such as flying to a conference. The contest is open to graduate students, scholars, curators, educators, and librarians in any field. To apply, submit one or more Artstor image groups and a single accompanying essay that…
-
March is Women’s History Month! The Artstor Digital Library offers a variety of excellent resources to support Women’s Studies, from historical photographs to the history of fashion, and from canonical artworks to modern and contemporary art by female practitioners.
-
While the 1950s are popularly remembered as a decade of “button down” conformity, the postwar era saw the rise of two groups of American writers and artists who broke with tradition and social norms in an exaltation of unfettered personal expression. The Beat Generation scandalized the country with their licentious lives and confessional writings. Allen…
-
By Lera Boroditsky, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Stanford University How do artists decide whether time, death, or liberty should be personified as male or female? One suggestion comes from linguistics. For example, Roman Jakobson (1959) reports: “The Russian painter Repin was baffled as to why Sin had been depicted as a woman by German artists:…
-
February 14 is Valentine’s Day! Of course you know it’s the day in which you are supposed to express love for your sweetheart with flowers, candy, or greeting cards. And you probably know that it’s purportedly a holiday to honor an early Christian saint named Valentine. But did you know that there was more than one…
-
Black History Month is observed every February in the United States and Canada. What better time to remind our readers of the many excellent resources on the topic available in the Artstor Digital Library? Black history: Image of the Black in Western Art A systematic investigation of how people of African descent have been perceived…
-
Two things have been tearing through the Artstor staff recently – a nagging cold that seems to be felling us department by department, and a fascination with the British television show Downton Abbey. The series follows the lives of an aristocratic family and their servants in a fictional Yorkshire country estate. The first season is…
-
The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was a pivotal figure in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. Among his many achievements, King led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott that ended racial segregation on all Montgomery public buses; planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of African-Americans as voters; and directed the 1963 march on Washington…
-
The Year of the Dragon begins January 23rd, marking the end of the winter season. The traditional Chinese calendar is based on a combination of lunar and solar movements; the year begins with the night of the first new moon of the lunar New Year and ends on the 15th day. This year is signified…
-
The Horrible and Terrifying Deeds and Words of the Very Renowned Pantagruel King of the Dipsodes, Son of the Great Giant Gargantua (better known as simply Pantagruel) was the first in a series of five satirical books by the Franciscan monk and physician François Rabelais chronicling the outrageous adventures of the giants Gargantua and Pantagruel…
-
Happy 87th birthday to former New York City Mayor Ed Koch from ARTstor and artist Dmitry Borshch! Mayor Koch recently posed for this portrait, which is now included in the Catalog of American Portraits maintained by The National Portrait Gallery. View more of Dmitry Borsch’s work in the ARTstor Digital Library.
-
In The Elementary Structures of Kinship, French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss noted that we often reserve rich foods for celebrations: “These are some of the delicacies which one would not buy and consume alone without a vague feeling of guilt.” And guilty we would feel if we were to celebrate the passing of another year without…
-
“I’m trying to capture the architecture, the play of light on stone, and the beauty of the church. I try to find a way to express the spirit of the church. Sometimes I’m just moved by the shapes and the patterns.” PJ McKey “I’m trying to find hints of what moved the people who built…
-
The Artstor staff is hurrying to wrap up projects before the long Thanksgiving weekend that starts this Thursday. The holiday is officially celebrated in the United States every year on the fourth Thursday of November.
-
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, widely known as the father of photography, was born on November 18, 1787, France. Dauguerre, also a painter and theatrical designer, was already a celebrated figure for his invention of the Diorama, a spectacle featuring in-the-round theatrical painting and lighting effects. He eventually partnered with Joseph Nicéphore Niépce to make lasting images using…
-
On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered a brief, powerful speech at the dedication of the military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He addressed the country’s civil war, reminding weary Americans of the values they were fighting for. Its closing words were: “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining…
-
Many countries throughout the world celebrate Armistice Day on November 11 to commemorate the effective end of World War I on the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918. A common custom dictates a two-minute moment of silence at 11:00 AM as a sign of respect for those lost in…
-
Continuing our spooky Day of the Dead/Halloween theme, we now present you with a slide show of the Danse Macabre. The Dance of Death was an allegory that began in the Middle Ages (possibly in response to the ravages of the black plague) in which death dances with people from all walks of life; it…
Sign up for updates
Never miss a thing. Get updates from JSTOR delivered straight to your inbox.
By signing up you agree to our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the provided link on any marketing message.
"*" indicates required fields