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Erhard Schoen | Pi: Nude man with fishtails, 1527 | Retrospective conversion of The Illustrated Bartsch (Abaris Books) by ARTstor Inc. and authorized contractors

Happy Pi (∏)Day! Today is 3/14, the first three decimals of ∏ (3.14). To celebrate, here is a 16th-century woodcut of the Greek letter ∏ from The Illustrated Bartsch.

Too dry? Try these pies from Pop artist Wayne Thiebaud, courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art: Painting and Sculpture.

Not enough? Visit this site from the University of Exeter to see pi to the first 1,000,000 digital places!

Wayne Thiebaud | Cut Meringues, 1961 | Image and original data provided by the The Museum of Modern Art | Art © Wayne Thiebaud / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY | This work of art is protected by copyright and/or related rights and may not be reproduced in any manner, except as permitted under the ARTstor Digital Library Terms and Conditions of Use, without the prior express written authorization of VAGA, 350 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2820, New York, NY 10118. Tel.: 212-736-6666, fax: 212-736-6767, email: info @vagarights.com

Francesco Pesellino | King Melchior Sailing to the Holy Land, ca. 1445-1450 | Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute | Image and data was provided by Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.

The Artstor Travel Awards are back! Five winners will receive $1,500 each in support of educational and scholarly activities, such as flying to a conference. The contest is open to graduate students, scholars, curators, educators, and librarians in any field.

To apply, submit one or more Artstor image groups and a single accompanying essay that creatively and compellingly demonstrates why the image group(s) is useful for teaching, research, or scholarship. The five winning submissions will be determined by Artstor staff and featured in the Digital Library.

Need some inspiration? Check out last year’s winners.

[Please note that this award is not intended to sponsor new photography for the Artstor Digital Library.]

Judy Chicago |Wing 2 of The Dinner Party; Detail, 1974-79 | Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art; Collection of the Brooklyn Museum of Art | ©Judy Chicago, www.judychicago.com

March is Women’s History Month! The Artstor Digital Library offers a variety of excellent resources to support Women’s Studies, from historical photographs to the history of fashion, and from canonical artworks to modern and contemporary art by female practitioners.

Burt Glinn | Writer Jack Kerouac reads at Seven Arts Café, New York City, 1959 | Image and original data provided by Magnum Photos, magnumphotos.com | ©Burt Glinn / Magnum Photos

While the 1950s are popularly remembered as a decade of “button down” conformity, the postwar era saw the rise of two groups of American writers and artists who broke with tradition and social norms in an exaltation of unfettered personal expression.

The Beat Generation scandalized the country with their licentious lives and confessional writings. Allen Ginsberg’s rousing poem Howl (1956), Jack Kerouac’s semi-fictional novel On the Road (1957), and William S. Burroughs’s acerbic satire Naked Lunch (1959) spurned materialism, reveled in sexuality, and celebrated the use of illegal drugs. The writers were in turn reviled as “beatniks,” conflating the popular conception of bohemia with juvenile delinquency, another perceived social threat of the times.

Burt Glinn | A back table at The Five Spot. From left to right: sculptor David Smith, painter Helen Frankenthaler (back to camera), art guru Frank O’Hara, painter Larry Rivers, painter Grace Hartigan, unidentified man, sculptor Anita Huffington, and poet Kenneth Koch, New York City, 1957 | Image and original data provided by Magnum Photos, magnumphotos.com | ©Burt Glinn / Magnum Photos

The Abstract Expressionists, a loose group of modern artists that included Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman, were breaking boundaries in the visual arts at roughly the same time. While they did not make their equally unconventional personal lives public, their work elicited the same type of shocked reactions from the media and the public as the Beats did, such as Pollock being called “Jack the Dripper” in a famous 1956 article in Time titled “The Wild Ones” (partly in reference to “The Wild One,” a film about motorcycle gangs starring Marlon Brando).

By Lera Boroditsky, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Stanford University

Paul Gauguin | Life and Death, 1891-1893 | Musée Khalil | Image and original data provided by Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives/ART RESOURCE, N.Y. http://www.artres.com

How do artists decide whether time, death, or liberty should be personified as male or female? One suggestion comes from linguistics.  For example, Roman Jakobson (1959) reports: “The Russian painter Repin was baffled as to why Sin had been depicted as a woman by German artists: he did not realize that ‘sin’ is feminine in German (die Sünde), but masculine in Russian (грех).” Does the grammatical gender of nouns in an artist’s native language indeed predict the gender of personifications in art?

Anonymous Artists | St. Valentine, published 5 December 1488 | The Illustrated Bartsch

February 14 is Valentine’s Day! Of course you know it’s the day in which you are supposed to express love for your sweetheart with flowers, candy, or greeting cards. And you probably know that it’s purportedly a holiday to honor an early Christian saint named Valentine. But did you know that there was more than one Saint Valentine? Valentine’s Day honors two martyrs: Valentine of Rome, a priest, and Valentine of Terni, a bishop. Maybe most surprising is that neither of them had much to do with romance. In the 13th century, Jacobus de Voragine’s The Golden Legend reported that St. Valentine (without clarifying which one) was executed after refuting Roman Emperor Claudius II’s attempts to convert him to paganism. Over time, the story was embellished to specify that Valentine’s arrest and execution resulted from performing Christian marriage ceremonies against Claudius’s edict.

Anonymous Artists | St. Valentine, published 5 December 1488 | The Illustrated Bartsch

Medieval Italian | Stele of Saint Valentine | Image and original data provided by SCALA, Florence/ART RESOURCE, N.Y. http://www.artres.com http://www.scalarchives.com | (c) 2006, SCALA, Florence / ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

Unidentified Artist | "My heart shall be thine alone" ("Das hertze mein soll din allein o Jesu, 1804 | Museum of Fine Arts, Boston | Image and data from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Winslow Homer | St. Valentine's Day--The Old Story in All Lands, 1868 | Image and data was provided by Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.

Venetian Titian | Cupid with the Wheel of Fortune, c. 1520 | The National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.) Gift of The Samuel H. Kress Foundation | National Gallery of Art

Workshop of Raphael, probably Giovanni da Udine | Cupid on a Wagon Drawn by Snails, 1516| Image and original data provided by SCALA, Florence/ART RESOURCE, N.Y. http://www.artres.com http://www.scalarchives.com | (c) 2006, SCALA, Florence / ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

We don’t see many images of St. Valentine on his holiday, possibly because martyrdom won’t put your sweetheart in a romantic mood (though you’re welcome to test it out by showing them the 15th century woodcut from The Illustrated Bartsch above). Instead, in addition to hearts, we often see images of cupid, the god of desire, affection, and erotic love from Roman mythology. Cupid was a popular motif in Medieval and Renaissance art, and a keyword search in the Artstor Digital Library results in more than 1,000 images. The whimsical image included in our slide show of “Cupid on a Wagon Drawn by Snails” by the workshop of Raphael (from Italian and other European Art (Scala Archives)) seems to encourage love to move slowly, while Titian’s contemporaneous “Cupid with the Wheel of Fortune” (from the National Gallery of Art ) strikes a gloomy note, capturing the downside of the vagaries of romance. More happily, Winslow Homer’s illustration from Harper’s Weekly (courtesy of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Collection), rife with cupids, reminds us that love transcends all eras and cultures.

We wish you a happy Valentine’s Day with a lovely watercolor of a heart that reads “My heart shall be thine alone,” courtesy of an anonymous romantic (from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).

Unidentified Artist | “My heart shall be thine alone,” 1804 | Museum of Fine Arts, Boston | Image and data from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Black History Month is observed every February in the United States and Canada. What better time to remind our readers of the many excellent resources on the topic available in the Artstor Digital Library?

Jacob Lawrence, American, 1917-2000 | In the North the Negro had better educational facilities | The Museum of Modern Art | © 2008 Estate of Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Black history:

Image of the Black in Western Art A systematic investigation of how people of African descent have been perceived and represented in Western art spanning nearly 5,000 years.

Magnum Photos: Contemporary Photojournalism Some of the most celebrated and recognizable photographs of the 20^th century and contemporary life, documenting an astounding range of subjects, including hundreds of major figures and events in contemporary black history.

Eugene James Martin Vibrant abstract works by African American artist Eugene James Martin, including paintings on canvas, mixed media collages, and pencil and pen and ink drawings.

The Schlesinger History of Women in America Collection Professional and amateur photographs documenting the full spectrum of activities and experiences of American women in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, including a significant amount of portraits of African American women.

Smithsonian American Art Museum Works of art spanning over 300 years of American art history, including selections from a collection of more than 2,000 works by African American artists.

Jacob Lawrence | In the North the Negro had better educational facilities; The Migration of the Negro panel no. 58, 1940-41 | The Museum of Modern Art | © 2008 Estate of Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Johannes Segogela, Apartheid's Funeral, Sculpture, 1994. Fowler Museum (University of California, Los Angeles)

James Conlon, Photographer | Dogon Dance of the masks (2008) | Sangha (Dogon Region), Mali

Bruce Davidson | Gordon Parks, 1970 | Image and original data provided by Magnum Photos | ©Bruce Davidson / Magnum Photos

Unknown Artist | Frederick Douglass, ca. 1855 | Image and Data from The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Eugene James Martin | Untitled, 1980 | Image and original data provided by Suzanne Fredericq | © 2008 Estate of Eugene James Martin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

African art and culture:

Richard F. Brush Art Gallery (St. Lawrence University) West African textiles from Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, and Cape Verde.

Herbert Cole: African Art, Architecture, and Culture (University of California, Santa Barbara) Field photography of African art, architecture, sites, and culture from Nigeria, Ghana, the Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, and Kenya, as well as photographs of African objects in private collections around the world.

James Conlon: Mali and Yemen Sites and Architecture Images of sites and architecture in Djenné, Mopti, Bamako, Segou, and the Dogon Region in Mali.

Fowler Museum (University of California, Los Angeles) The arts of many African nations, including Angola, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Republic of Benin, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. The museum also has significant holdings of African diaspora arts from Brazil, Haiti, and Suriname.

Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University Images of African art, such as textiles, costumes, basket and beadwork, weapons, tools, and ritual objects.

Christopher Roy: African Art and Field Photography Images of West African art and culture, including ceremonial objects and documentation of their social context, use, and manufacture from the rural villages and towns of the Bobo, Bwa, Fulani, Lobi, Mossi, and Nuna peoples in West Africa—primarily in Burkina Faso, but also in Ghana, Nigeria, and Niger.

Thomas K. Seligman: Photographs of Liberia, New Guinea, Melanesia, and the Tuareg people Images of the Tuareg people, a nomadic people of the Sahara who live in countries such as Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso, as well as photographs of sites and people in Liberia, New Guinea, and Melanesia.

James Conlon, Photographer | Dogon Dance of the masks (2008) | Sangha (Dogon Region), Mali

For more teaching ideas, visit the Digital Library and click on “Teaching Resources,” where you can search for image groups that include Art History Topic: African Art and Interdisciplinary Topics: African and African-American Studies, as well as a case study, “Sweet Fortunes: Sugar, Race, Art and Patronage in the Americas” by Katherine E. Manthorne, The City University of New York. Also, visit Artstor’s Subject Guides page to download a guide to African and African-American Studies in Artstor.

New: Artstor and Black History Month, featuring additional resources!

Sir John Lavery | Lila Lancashire | Museum of Fine Arts, Boston | Image and data from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Two things have been tearing through the Artstor staff recently – a nagging cold that seems to be felling us department by department, and a fascination with the British television show Downton Abbey.

Landscape architect: Gertrude Jekyll, and architect: Edwin Lutyens, | Le Bois des Moutiers | Image and original data provided by the Foundation for Landscape Studies | © Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, Foundation for Landscape Studies

Designer: Mervyn Macartney and manufacturer: W. Hall for Kenton and Co | Desk, 1891| Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

William Morris | Tudor Rose Pattern Printed Fabric Mfr. No. 23591, design date: unknown | Image and data from The Museum of Modern Art

Left: Callot Soeurs and Madame Marie Gerber | Evening Dress, 1914 | The Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Right: Evening Dress, 1909-1911 | The Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sir John Lavery | Lila Lancashire | Museum of Fine Arts, Boston | Image and data from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

J. & J. Slater | Evening Shoes, ca. 1910 | Image and original data from the Brooklyn Museum | Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Robert Adam | Culzean Castle; south façade, 1777-90 | Maybole, Strathclyde, Scotland | Image and original data provided by Brian Davis

The series follows the lives of an aristocratic family and their servants in a fictional Yorkshire country estate. The first season is set before the outbreak of World War I, beginning with news of the sinking of the Titanic, while the second series opens with the Great War. The Artstor Digital Library has enough relevant images to keep us busy until the next episode: The Metropolitan Museum of Art has an impressive collection of turn of the century furniture and household accessories, such as this mahogany desk designed by Mervyn Macartney, as well as dazzling examples of dresses, hats (including a “motoring” cap!), shoes, and accessories from the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Brooklyn Museum Costumes, including these ever-so-tasteful satin evening shoes; the Foundation for Landscape Studies features images of Le Bois des Moutiers, an extraordinary Edwardian era-garden designed by English landscape architect Gertrude Jekyll and architect Edwin Lutyens; the Museum of Modern Art, Architecture and Design Collection gives us this beautiful printed fabric from William Morris; and of course there are countless examples of art from the period (we chose a painting of Lila Lancashire by Sir John Lavery from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston because it reminds us of Lady Edith Crawley). And while we weren’t able to find Downton Abbey itself (actually the Highclere Castle in Hampshire), a search for castle within Brian Davis: Architecture in Britain leads to a satisfying selection of similarly imposing buildings.

Let us know if you find anything else in the Artstor Digital Library that reminds you of Downton Abbey or its characters – but please, no spoilers!

Left: Callot Soeurs and Madame Marie Gerber | Evening Dress, 1914 | The Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Right: Evening Dress, 1909-1911 | The Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Martin Luther King, Jr., Selma, Alabama March, 1965 | Photograph by Bruce Davidson, image and original data provided by Magnum Photos | ©Bruce Davidson / Magnum Photos

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was a pivotal figure in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. Among his many achievements, King led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott that ended racial segregation on all Montgomery public buses; planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of African-Americans as voters; and directed the 1963 march on Washington of 250,000 people, to whom he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, calling for racial equality and an end to discrimination.

King was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963, and the following year he became the youngest person (at the age of thirty-five) to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and discrimination through nonviolent means. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968 while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee as he readied to lead a protest march in sympathy with the city’s striking garbage workers.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986. It is observed on the third Monday of January each year, near King’s birthday, January 15.

A search for Martin Luther King leads to hundreds of images in the Artstor Digital Library, most notably dozens of photographs of King from Magnum Photos, including marches and speeches in Georgia, Alabama, Maryland, and Washington, DC. You will also find images of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington from the Contemporary Architecture, Urban Design, and Public Art (ART on FILE Collection).

Shi Rui, Greeting the New Year, 15th Century. Data from: The Cleveland Museum of Art

The Year of the Dragon begins January 23rd, marking the end of the winter season. The traditional Chinese calendar is based on a combination of lunar and solar movements; the year begins with the night of the first new moon of the lunar New Year and ends on the 15^th day. This year is signified by the dragon, the bringer of rain and good luck, and the only mythical animal in the Chinese zodiac.

Great Luck in the New Year (Zhong Kui, the Demon Queller), late 19th—early 20th century, Zhengzhou, Henan Province. Muban Foundation Collection. Image and original data from Asian Art Photographic Distribution Project (AAPD), University of Michigan.

The Chinese New Year is a time for family unity and reconciliation. Chinese families gather on New Year’s Eve for a feast to celebrate harmony and honor the spirits of ancestors. Other traditions include cleaning the house to sweep away bad luck and make way for good luck, decorating windows and doors with red cut paper decorations, and giving family children money in red paper envelopes (red, corresponding with fire, symbolizes happiness and good fortune). The last day is celebrated with the Lantern Festival, a tradition that includes hanging lanterns outside each house to help the dead find their way home.

Li Shida, New Year’s Day in a Village at Stone Lake, 1609. Data from: The Cleveland Museum of Art

The images illustrating this post include a woodblock print of Zhong Kui, the Demon Queller, called “Great Luck in the New Year,” from the Asian Art Photographic Distribution (AAPD) (University of Michigan), and a 17^th century painting of New Year’s Day in a village by Li Shida and a calligraphic 15^th century painting greeting the New Year by Shi Rui, both from the Cleveland Museum of Art. For more information on the ARTstor Digital Library’s extensive collections of Chinese art, architecture, and culture, view our ARTstor Is… Asian Studies post.