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Frank Cancian. Shooting back, Juan Vásquez (Pig) family (Another Place). 1971. Black-and-white photograph. © Frank Cancian. Image and data provided by University of California Irvine Libraries.

Photographer and anthropologist Frank Cancian has been documenting international communities for more than fifty years. His recent contribution to the Artstor Digital Library, in collaboration with University of California Irvine Libraries, traces his fieldwork from the Italian hill town of Lacedonia during the 1950s to the Maya of Zinacantán, Chiapas during the ’60s and ’70s, and to domestic workers in Orange County, California from 2000 to 2002.

Frank Cancian. In the piazza 3 (Lacedonia Photos). 1957. Black-and-white photograph. © 2001 Frank Cancian. Image and data provided by University of California Irvine Libraries.

Frank Cancian. Shooting back, Juan Vásquez (Pig) family (Another Place). 1971. Black-and-white photograph. © Frank Cancian. Image and data provided by University of California Irvine Libraries.

Frank Cancian. Victoria Rua (Orange County Housecleaners). 2001. Black-and-white photograph. © 2001 Frank Cancian. Image and data provided by University of California Irvine Libraries.

What’s new in the Artstor Digital Library?

Collection:
Frank Cancian Documentary Photograph Archive

Contributor:
University of California Irvine Libraries, Photographer/anthropologist Frank Cancian, Professor Emeritus, UC Irvine

Content:
Approximately 175 photographs spanning Cancian’s career:
The work documents communities in California, Mexico, and Italy, including house cleaners in Orange County (2001-2002); the Maya of Zinacantán, Chiapas (1960-1971), and the townspeople of Lacedonia, a hill town in Avellino (1957).

Relevance:
Economic Anthropology and Social History, Immigration and Human Geography, Photography

*Image totals may vary from country to country, reflecting Artstor’s obligation to address the specifics of international copyright.

Carleton E. Watkins. Los Angeles. 1876. Image and data courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Artstor will be attending the 2019 VRA conference in Los Angeles, California. Join us at our user group meeting to learn the latest updates on Artstor and JSTOR Forum:

Artstor/JSTOR Forum User Group Meeting
Thursday, March 28
3:45 – 4:45 PM
Room TBD

You can also say hello at the Community Partnership Event on Wednesday, March 27 from 2:15 – 4:00 PM.

We look forward to seeing you in Los Angeles!

Artstor will be attending the 2019 ARLIS conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. Here’s where you can find us–stop by and say hello!

Artstor + JSTOR Forum User Group Meeting
Friday, March 29 12:10-1:45 PM
Savoy room, Level 1
(Please RSVP to the event on Sched if you plan to attend)

Booth #72, Exhibit Hall (Level 1)
Thursday, March 28 and Friday, March 29
9:00AM – 5:00PM

Attributed to Jean de Touyl. Reliquary Shrine from the convent of the Poor Clares at Buda. ca. 1325-50. Image and data courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Cloisters Collection.

Relics—bits of bone, clothing, shoes or dust—from Christian martyrs became popular in Western Christianity in the Middle Ages. The cult of relics dates back to the second and third centuries, when martyrs were persecuted and often killed in ways that fragmented the body, which was taboo in Roman society. The intention was to desecrate the body through execution and burning. But, Caroline Walker Bynum and Paula Gerson state that by the “late third to early fourth centuries the fragments of the martyrs had come to be revered as loci of power and special access to the divine” and, by the Second Council of Nicea in 787, relics were required for the consecration of altars.

Beadnet dress. Egyptian. c 2551-2528 BC. Image © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Estate Figure. Egyptian. c. 1981-1975 BC. Image and data courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Norman Norell. Evening dress. c. 1963. Image and original data from the Brooklyn Museum. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Caryatid of the Canopus. Roman. c. 420 - 413 BCE. Image and original data provided by SCALA, Florence/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

Madame Alix Grès. Evening dress. 1937. Image and original data from the Brooklyn Museum. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It may come as a surprise that the Artstor Digital Library is flush with fashion. For a dose of glamour, how about a stroll down the red carpet, exploring designs through the ages?

Let’s begin with the ancients: In early dynastic Egypt, the beadnet sheath dress is often depicted in paintings and statuary. A faience (sintered-quartz ceramic) dress from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, reconstructed from thousands of beads found in a burial site, is our oldest surviving example from approximately 2551–2528 BC (this particular garment was used to dress a mummy). In life, these decorative nets were probably worn over plain linen sheaths, giving an effect that approximates the elegant lines of a deftly carved offering figure from the tomb of Meketre (c. 1981-1975 BCE). A similar silhouette is achieved five millenia later in an evening gown by the pioneering American designer Norman Norell through the layering of a peach satin under slip and black rhinestone beaded netting (c. 1963).

The CRAFT: Babka and Beyond public collection features 28 interviews conducted with people connected to the production and use of grain within the Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area in Western Pennsylvania. The stories feature bakers, bakery owners, farmers, and even a Benedictine Monk talking about how grains contribute to larger themes of identity, community, and social capital — whether in agriculture, bread making, or baking.

In the summer of 1675, Madame de Sévigné, a doyenne of letters, protested from Paris: “It is horribly cold… we think the behaviour of the sun and of the seasons has changed,” prescient witness to the phenomenon now referred to as the Little Ice Age. Over the last century, scientists and historians have gathered evidence of a prolonged period of global climatic volatility from the thirteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, culminating in a cooling trend in Northern Europe during the 1600s — frigid winters and wet, cold summers. As we bear our share of winter hardships, it might be comforting to gain some historical and pictorial perspective on the polar vortex.

Andy Warhol. Car. Ink and Dr. Martin’s Aniline Dye on Strathmore paper. Artwork and Image © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Thanks to an additional contribution from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, we are now able to present a fuller picture of the artist’s early career in New York City. 

René Magritte. Golconda (Golconde). 1953. Image and data provided by The Menil Collection, Houston. © 2019 C. Herscovici, Brussels / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Katharina Fritsch. Händler [Dealer]. 2001. Polyester and paint. Image and original data provided by Glenstone. © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Peter Doig. Gasthof zur Muldentalsperre. 2000-2002. Oil on canvas. Image and original data provided by The Art Institute of Chicago. © Peter Doig. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2019

Vera Lutter. San Marco, Venice XX: December 3, 2005. 2005. Gelatin silver prints. Image and original data provided by The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. © 2019 Vera Lutter / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Unknown, Chinese. Yongle Period, Ming Dynasty. Bowl. Early 15th century. Porcelain. Image and original data provided by the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Hemba People. Mwisi Wa So'o (Chimpanzee-Human Mask). 20th Century. Wood. Image and data provided by Williams College Museum of Art

Unidentified Artist, Indian. Icon of Jain Goddess, probably Jvalamalini. c. 17th-19th century. Copper alloy. Image and data provided by Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Charles Herbert Woodbury. Marine. c. 1910. Watercolor and gouache on paper. Image and original data provided by Bowdoin College Museum of Art

Sirhind, Fatehgarh Sahib, Punjab, India. Mughal. Tomb (12) of Khwaja Muhammad Naqsband, Rauza Sharif Complex. 1702. Image and data provided by American Institute of Indian Studies. Photographer: D.P. Nanda

Hadım Atik Ali Pasha, commissioner. Atik Ali Pasha Mosque. Dome and eastern half-dome. 1496-1497. Istanbul, Turkey. Photographer: Gabriel Rodriguez, 2013. Image and data provided by the Media Center for Art History, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University

Over the past year we have enriched Artstor’s resources with global selections that travel through time and meander from Ming ceramics to Mughal palaces, illuminating history from the tells of Ancient Iraq through to contemporary installations. We have released 30 additional collections in the Artstor Digital Library (enhanced and new), including notable contributions that target the highly sought areas of Asian and contemporary art.