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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:

• “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.

Brice Marden; The Seasons; 1974-1975. Image and original data provided by The Menil Collection, Houston; © 2014 Brice Marden / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Artstor and the Menil Foundation have just released nearly 200 images of highlights from the Menil Collection in the Digital Library.

The Menil Collection opened to the public in June 1987 to house, exhibit, and preserve the art collection of John and Dominique de Menil. Assembled over the course of many decades by the Houston philanthropists, the collection is recognized not only for its quality and depth but also for its distinctive presentation and eclecticism. An actively collecting institution, the Menil Collection contains diverse holdings representing many world cultures and thousands of years of human creativity, from prehistoric times to the present. Today, the collection comprises over 16,000 objects.

Editor’s note: this post was updated to include accurate information about Artstor’s platform changes in June 2018.

Photo by Natali Wiseman

Traci Timmons, Librarian at the Seattle Art Museum, shares with us the story of the completion of their first digital collection.

The Seattle Art Museum only began issuing its annual reports digitally in 2007. Prior to that, for 74 years, if you needed to find something, you had to locate the printed reports and skim through them to find what you were looking for. If you had a good idea about the approximate time period for your inquiry, you might only have to pull one or two reports. If you had no idea about an approximate date, you may have had to block out your afternoon.

Vittore Carpaccio; Vision of Saint Augustine, detail showing dog and signature; c. 1502. (c) 2006, SCALA, Florence/ART RESOURCE, N.Y. Image and original data provided by SCALA, Florence/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.; artres.com; scalarchives.com

Learn how you can share links to images and image groups in the Artstor Digital Library with a special URL! There are two options available: one links to the Image Viewer and one links to the thumbnail page. Here’s how to access them:

Open your image group, then from the Share menu, choose “Generate image group URL.” Copy and paste the first link to share the group in the Image Viewer, or copy and paste the third link to share the group thumbnail page. After all, happiness is sharing (and a warm puppy, as Charles Schulz liked to say).

Learn more about sharing Artstor content with others at your institution on our Support site.

–Gretchen Witthuhn, User Relations Manager

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