The Public Collections in Artstor are a library of freely accessible images, documents, and multimedia files generously made available by JSTOR Forum-subscribing institutions. To help users navigate the wide variety of collections available, we’ve created a Public Collections LibGuide.
Did you know you can upload your own images to Artstor? You can then work with them seamlessly alongside our collections. Learn how on our support site to manage your presentations in one place and access them from anywhere.
You can also use your Personal Collection images to help your students study: Share the URL to your image groups–complete with your own images–via email or your course management software. Your students can then view the group and use Artstor’s built-in flashcard feature (also known as “quiz mode”) to study the images for exams.
JSTOR users at institutions that also subscribe to Artstor may encounter a colorful surprise: some search results on JSTOR are now displaying image results from the Artstor Digital Library.
Good news! Artstor has made more than 1 million image, video, document, and audio files from public institutional collections freely available to everyone—subscribers and non-subscribers alike–at library.artstor.org. These collections are being shared by institutions who make their content available via JSTOR Forum, a tool that allows them to catalog, manage, and share digital media collections and make them discoverable to the widest possible audience.
Artist/maker unknown, Chinese. Woman’s Dress (Cheongsam). Early 20th century. Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Guest post by Raymond Pun
Raymond Pun is the first-year-student success librarian at the Henry Madden Library, Fresno State. He coordinates and organizes the first year information literacy program and student engagement activities across campus. He holds an M.L.S. from City University of New York – Queens College, M.A. in East Asian Studies, and B.A. in History from St. John’s University.
May is Asian-Pacific American (APA) Heritage Month. It’s an opportunity for all to reflect on and celebrate the cultures, traditions, achievements, and contributions of Asian and Pacific Americans in the United States. It’s also a chance to have meaningful conversations about important issues that affect APA communities, such as cultural appropriation–one critical topic of discussion that affects all ethnic groups. This concept is defined as the adoption of features from one culture, often minority ones, by members of the dominant or another culture. In APA experiences, we find that there are a number of examples of misappropriations occurring today in popular culture, music, images, performances, food, and clothing.
Isidore of Miletus, Anthemios of Tralles. Hagia Sophia, interior: Apse. 532-537, image: July 2013. Photography by Media Center for Art History, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University.
Have you ever wanted a better understanding of how an artwork or architectural detail was originally intended to be viewed?
Artstor’s Virtual Reality Panoramas are a wonderful option for viewing works in situ–no travel required. These 360-degree panoramas of world architecture allow you to navigate the interiors of cathedrals, mosques, palazzos, libraries, castles, and more. Using Comparison Mode, you can study artworks alongside panoramic views of the spaces in which they are installed.
I recently found myself exploring the amazing world of netsuke using Artstor’s new comparison mode to perform that timeless task: double-slide projection. Boy, has it ever gotten easier!
The new image viewer allows you to project up to 10 images together, with the ability to zoom in on details of any of the images and add or remove images as needed. You can view detailed brushstrokes, or pan across large blocks of text in one of the primary source documents in Artstor. Try this yourself by opening a lecture image group, viewing the first image full screen, and clicking “compare.”
George Jones. “Punch” Bowl. 1870-1880. Image and original data provided by Majolica International Society.
“Majolica” is the word used to denote the brightly colored, low-fired earthenware commercially introduced by the Minton Company at the 1851 London Exhibition of All Nations. This was in accordance with Herbert Minton’s long-held desire to capture the market of the newly emergent Middle Class. Majolica, a Victorian phenomenon, was a huge success at the Crystal Palace and soon became a worldwide fad, with factories on three continents and Australia to satisfy the buying craze it had inspired. Deborah English, Librarian, The Marilyn Karmason Majolica Reference Library of the Majolica International Society (MIS), has provided a history of the wares to celebrate the addition of the MIS collection to the Artstor Digital Library.
Staffordshire potters first developed lead glazes of green and brown in the 18th Century, but it was not until Herbert Minton of Stoke-on-Trent brought the French chemist Leon Arnoux to England, that more vibrant colors began to appear. This was possible, thanks to Mr. Arnoux’s previous work with the sumptuous porcelain glazes of Sèvres. Mr. Arnoux also persuaded several prominent French sculptors to join him at Minton, including A.E. Carrier-Belleuse, Paul Comolera, and Pierre Emile Jeannest. They joined the already formidable staff that Mr. Minton had built, including Alfred Lord Stevens, Baron Carlo Marochetti, John Bell, A.W.N. Pugin, and others. Mr. Minton formally introduced his new ware at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851, even though English potters and English-born potters in the USA had been working on the formulas for some time. Arnoux’s saturated colors were the radical boost the new material needed. It soon happened that an astonishing number of forms evolved, sometimes in bizarre combinations.
Elliott Erwitt. USA; NYC; Candice Bergen dancing at the Truman Capote B&W Ball at the Plaza Hotel. 1966. ©Elliott Erwitt / Magnum Photos
Truman Capote’s fame transcended his literary status; he was famous for being, well, famous half a century before reality television and social media stars even existed. Also a uniquely gifted writer, Capote sought fame through publicity stunts, television appearances, and his friendships with both the social and Hollywood elite of the mid-twentieth century. Capote nurtured a persona based on being entertaining, rapier-witted, and eager to spread a rumor–attributes that would later haunt him.
Abdullah Frères. Cimitiere Turca, Sculari, Istanbul. 19th century. Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Did you know that nearly 20% of Artstor’s more than 2 million images are photographs? This summer we released a new collection of over 36,000 images from The Center for Creative Photography and we added 47,000 new images to existing collections from Magnum Photos, Panos Pictures, and Condé Nast, bringing our photography holdings to more than 350,000. These additions join major collections such as George Eastman House (the world’s oldest photography museum), Eyes of the Nation: a Visual History of the United States (Library of Congress), the Museum of the City of New York, and fine art photography from the Larry Qualls collection of contemporary art, among others. Photography collections in Artstor span many types, including photojournalism, art photography, social documentary works, carte de visites, stereographs, fashion photography, and even vernacular photography. In aggregate, these diverse collections can provide visual histories of people, events, cultures, and countries between the advent of photography in 1839 and the present day.