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Learn how to improve student retention of essential knowledge at the AP® Conference

The Parthenon. Image and original data provided by Arielle Kozloff Brodkey

How can we confidently teach content that is new to both instructors and students? How can we avoid endless hours of preparation for a single hour of teaching? How can we achieve great outcomes with this new, globally focused course?

We invite you to join our presentation on how to improve student retention of essential knowledge through targeted activities by Dana Howard, Artstor’s Senior K-12 Relationship Manager and an experienced AP® Art History teacher:

Integrating Active Learning into the AP® Art History Classroom
Hilton Anaheim Hotel, Concourse, 4th Floor–Sunset
Friday, July 15, 3:30 PM

Learn how in our presentation on a balanced active learning approach to the 38 sacred spaces required in the AP® Art History Curriculum Framework.

We will demonstrate the intersection between disseminating content and guiding students in evaluating, synthesizing, retaining, and responding to these works of architecture with several active learning techniques. You will come away with guiding questions specific to the sacred spaces in the AP® Art History Curriculum.

AP® and Advanced Placement® is a trademark registered and/or owned by the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this website.

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On the beauty and variety of cave temples: an interview with David Efurd

Bhaja Caves, Caves 6 & 7; 2nd c. BCE-1st c. CE; Maharashtra, India. Image and original data provided by David Efurd © David Efurd

Professor David Efurd’s collection of nearly 10,000 photographs of Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain art and architecture was recently released in the Artstor Digital Library. 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 of these temples, as opposed to more typical, free-standing temples?

David Efurd: Regarding Buddhist caves, monks appear to have lived in natural caves and rock-shelters since the time of the Buddha. In fact, texts describe the Buddha as spending nights in caves at a variety of locations in northeastern India. Over time, simple shelters were enlarged by cutting away stone, and masonry walls may have been added to the front to make them more architectural.

In western India, these Buddhist sites are a bit later, perhaps dating from the second century BC at the earliest. Unlike the caves the Buddha lived in, they do not appear to be natural caves that were enlarged. Rather, they were carved deeply into outcroppings of stone or cliffs and tend to be architectonic, meaning that they resemble the interior spaces of architecture, despite being hewn into stone. Few free-standing buildings and monasteries from this period survive, so these caves provide crucial insight into a tradition of architecture that has all but disappeared. Rock-cut or cave architecture from this period draws upon both this early tradition of living in natural caves and the later monastic complexes consisting of residential buildings and places for instruction and worship.

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Friday Links: the Museum of Broken Relationships and the Tiger Balm Garden

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:

• Attribution is more complicated than we thought. An art dealer in Korea confessed to selling forgeries of Lee Ufan’s paintings, but the artist refuses to say they’re forgeries.
• Meanwhile, in Canada, painter Peter Doig is being sued for saying that a painting is not his.
• And in the UK, a new TV show seeks to slow down museum-goers by planting fake paintings and rewarding the visitors who correctly identify them.
• That concept wouldn’t quite work in L.A.’s new Museum of Broken Relationships, whose exhibits include a spare key never given to its intended recipient, a mirror that didn’t go with an ex’s decorating scheme, and a pair of silicone breast implants a woman got at her boyfriend’s urging.

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Benvenuto Cellini and the world’s most spectacular salt cellar

Benvenuto Cellini; Saliera (salt cellar), 1540-1543; Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien. Image and original data provided by Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.; artres.com

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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Friday Links: Van Gogh lookalikes, Park Avenue Cubists, and creepy dolphins

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:

• Hey red! This is your big chance: Douglas Coupland, the author of Generation X, is offering €5,000 and a trip to Vancouver to the person who most closely resembles Van Gogh.
• Jorge Luis Borges’s sister was a pioneering modernist painter. Must have been a very interesting household.
• The travel films of the artist couple known as “Park Avenue Cubists” are suitably kooky.
• And on the topic of films, Cubists, and kooky, here’s an animation of a bar brawl between Matisse and Picasso.
• Does dishware collecting sound like a tame hobby? Try radioactive uranium glass.
• And finally, a question that has long bugged us (really!): why did ancient dolphins look so creepy?

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STEM to STEAM: The Anatomy of Design

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

After Leonardo da Vinci; original design: c. 1488; Museo nazionale della scienza e della tecnica “Leonardo da Vinci”. Image and original data provided by (c) 2006, SCALA, Florence/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.; artres.com; scalarchives.com

Throughout history we have looked to nature to define and devise systems of design. Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man embodies the dominance of the concept of anthropomorphic balance during the Renaissance. The perfect proportions of man are contained within the ideal geometric shapes of the square and the circle, as if the artist had given graphic proof to the metaphysical declaration of the Greek philosopher Protagoras: man is the measure of all things. Consider our units of measurement, such as the foot and the cubit (from the Latin for forearm) established by the ancients, the braccio (Italian for arm), the pouce (French for thumb, meaning inch), whereby mathematical ratios in architecture were based on the proportions of the human figure.

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Announcing Artstor’s LibGuides

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 everything faculty need to know about presenting and teaching with Artstor Digital Library–from giving presentations using the tools within the database to sources for information about using primary source materials in the classroom. Also included are tips for faculty looking to support their students’ research habits, including links to the Library of Congress’ page on citing images, and in-resource tools like the citation generator and image download features.

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Now available: Japanese maps and prints from the University of British Columbia Library

Takashima Kazuyuki; Detailed map of the developed port of Yokohama; 1859. Image and original data courtesy of University of British Columbia Library, Rare Books and Special Collections

Artstor and the University of British Columbia are now making available approximately 350 Japanese maps and prints from the UBC Library’s Tokugawa collection.

The University of British Columbia Library (UBC Library) is one of the largest academic libraries in Canada and consistently ranks among the top university research libraries in North America. UBC Library has 14 branches and divisions, two campuses (Vancouver and Kelowna), one off-site hospital library, and the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre – a multi-purpose teaching and learning facility.

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Some reassuring news for Shark Week

Paleontology staff posing with Fossil Shark Jaws. Image and original data provided by Library, American Museum of Natural History, Anthropology Department, American Museum of Natural History

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 assuming that the teeth of the extinct shark would have had the same proportions to the jaw as in the living great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias), yielding a maw that would have fit a shark 100 feet long or more.”

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New: #ColorMyArtstor postcards!

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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