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Photographer: Robert Howlett | Isambard Kingdom Brunel, builder of the Great Eastern | ca. 1857-1858 | George Eastman House, eastmanhouse.org

Some stories we’ve been reading this week:

• To be honest, we weren’t aware of this “mystery,” but we’re glad it’s solved. Scientists finally figured out what caused a white smudge on the surface of Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
• You’re probably aware of photographer William Eggleston’s passion for color (take a look in Artstor if you need a refresher), but did you know about his passion for music?
• Facebook banned a very innocent drawing of a hand by Hans Holbein, so an art critic has helpfully come up with a list of more provocative hands in art.
• We dare you to resist clicking on this link: bookstore pets.
• We’d say it’s about time to bring back the lost art of custom-illustrating your favorite books.
• Very cool: new technology uncovers hidden pictures on “blank” pages of a pre-Colombian book.

Start off the school year with more than 2 million images! Here are some links to help you get started:

Students standing with bicycle. Colby College Special Collections

* 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 program, or save them as a text file.

* Find out how to share images and image groups! You can use them as flashcards on your mobile phone!

* Take a look at our new LibGuides at artstor.libguides.com – they have everything librarians, instructors, and students need to know to get started or become experts!

In a hurry? Download our Quick Start Guide! Having troubles? Browse through our troubleshooting articles.

Photographer: Robert Howlett | Isambard Kingdom Brunel, builder of the Great Eastern | ca. 1857-1858 | George Eastman House, eastmanhouse.org

Some stories we’ve been reading this week:

• Michael Heizer finally finished the monumental work he started in 1972. City, as it’s called, is about the size of the National Mall in D.C. and is made almost entirely from rocks, sand, and concrete that the artist mined and mixed on site.
• You’ll soon be able to buy your own copy of The Voynich Manuscript, a mysterious 500-year-old illustrated book no one has been able to decipher. In a hurry to solve it? Download it now!
• And on a somewhat-related topic, there have been a lot of crossovers between visual art and writing recently.
• Discover the secret libraries of history where writing has been hidden for centuries (including the Buddhist cave shrines in Dunhuang, available in Artstor!)

Southworth & Hawes, Early Operation Using Ether for Anesthesia, late spring 1847. Image and original data provided by The J. Paul Getty Museum

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 patient quickly lost consciousness and remained completely still as a surgeon removed a tumor from his neck. Upon waking, the patient declared to his astonished audience that he had felt no pain. This surgery marked the first time the effective and safe use of anesthesia was demonstrated publicly, ending centuries of agonizing pain during surgery. It would also quickly spiral into a dramatic controversy surrounding Letheon’s discovery.

Photographer: Robert Howlett | Isambard Kingdom Brunel, builder of the Great Eastern | ca. 1857-1858 | George Eastman House, eastmanhouse.org

Some stories we’ve been reading this week:

• “Use your blood to paint,” Yoko Ono wrote in her book Grapefruit. “Keep painting until you faint. Keep painting until you die.” Here’s a list of artists who have almost done just that.
• We all have things that keep us up at night. For this writer, it’s the possibility that Michelangelo’s David might have a fatal flaw.
• And for this designer, it was saving a 22-foot-tall fiberglass chicken.
• On the photographs of Lucia Moholy, the unsung heroine of the Bauhaus.
• Yet another reason we love the New York Public Library: Send them your favorite emoji and they’ll send you back a matching image from their archives.
• We might be living in the digital era, but art catalogs are not going away anytime soon–in fact, they’re thriving.
• We knew this blog post was for us from the moment we read its cautionary preface: “WARNING: this blog entry contains excerpts from a talk I gave at the British Museum called ‘Ancient Romans & their Poo’.”

OIV 4.1, the latest version of Artstor’s Offline Image Viewer, is now available for download here.

Major features:

• Launch image viewer icon is fixed, so you can launch the Artstor Digital Library viewer directly from slide or image palette presentations
• Non-administrative users can now launch OIV without admin permission
• Slide presentations no longer display slide numbers
• Additional images on zoomable slides remain clear when zooming into one image on the slide (Java version 1.6 is no longer needed)

Release notes are available on our support site. Need help? Contact us at userservices@artstor.org with any questions.

Some stories we’ve been reading this week:

• Using ground-penetrating radar, structures from the dark ages have been located, including–possibly–King Arthur’s birthplace?
• Is a light installation by Dan Flavin still art when the power is off?
• Bet you didn’t see this coming: How Viennese portraiture of the early 20th century can strengthen our understanding of the relationship between art and science.
• Can’t get to the Netherlands to celebrate the quincentenary of its native son Hieronymus Bosch? Brush up on your knowledge and explore “The Garden of Earthly Delights” from home!

Photographer: Robert Howlett | Isambard Kingdom Brunel, builder of the Great Eastern | ca. 1857-1858 | George Eastman House, eastmanhouse.org

Some stories we’ve been reading this week:

• “Art and drugs have been happy bedfellows since before recorded history,” maaan.
• And on a similar note, doping at the Olympics goes back to ancient times. (Not that that makes it okay!)
• Extreme metal logos abide by a strict and clear visual code that conveys to listeners exactly what they’re getting into.
• A reviewer calls Michel Houellebecq’s art exhibition a “terrible, terrible show,” and “pure self-parody”—except for the photos of the controversial French author’s late corgi, which brought tears to the critic’s eyes.
• Finally, an airline that understands us: Condor Airlines allows passengers one more kilogram of carry-on weight for books.

Photographer: Robert Howlett | Isambard Kingdom Brunel, builder of the Great Eastern | ca. 1857-1858 | George Eastman House, eastmanhouse.org

Some stories we’ve been reading this week:

• It started out as a joke… Meet the couple trying to sell their large collection of clown paintings. Sadly, there is not enough wall space in our office.
• Foamhenge is a one-to-one scale replica of Stonehenge–made of foam. For the past twelve years it’s been one of the biggest attractions to the town of Natural Bridge in Virginia, but the property will be repurposed as a state park and the sculpture needs a new house. Sadly, there’s not enough room in our offices.
• It goes without saying that we’re big supporters of digitization, but a professor in the history of cartography points out that no matter how detailed a scan is, “As soon as you turn a primary source into an image, you start to lose something.”

Photographer: Robert Howlett | Isambard Kingdom Brunel, builder of the Great Eastern | ca. 1857-1858 | George Eastman House, eastmanhouse.org

Some stories we’ve been reading this week:

• Sound Homer Simpson makes when he realizes his mistakes, three letters, starts with D. A 91-year-old woman has been questioned by police after she filled in the blanks in a piece of modern art based on a crossword puzzle.
• It’s not that we’re happy that Dr. Seuss suffered from insomnia, but we love the hundreds of artworks he created on those sleepless nights, many of which were kept private until his death.
• We’re finally coming to terms with the fact that we’re including a Van Gogh and/or Mona Lisa link pretty much every week. This time around we give you the newly revealed name of the mystery woman who received Van Gogh’s ear.