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Katsukawa Shunsho | The actors Ichikawa Danjuro V as a skeleton, spirit of the renegade monk Seigen… | Edo period, 1783 | The Art Institute of Chicago | Photography © The Art Institute of Chicago

Some blocks in my neighborhood are getting downright spooky – front yards are filling with spider webs and tombstones, and ghosts peek through the bushes. Along with the piles of pumpkins and inevitable candy corn appearing in the supermarket, they are a reminder that Halloween is just around the corner. Americans celebrate Halloween on October 31 by trick-or-treating, displaying jack-o’-lanterns (carved pumpkins) on their porches or windowsills, holding costume parties, and sharing scary stories.

Halloween stems from the Celtic harvest festival of Samhain (roughly, “summer’s end”) held on October 31–November 1, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off roaming ghosts. The festival was integrated into All Saints Day, a Catholic holiday observed on November 1 to honor saints and martyrs. The evening before All Saints Day was referred to as All Hallows’ Eve, which eventually became Halloween.

Day of the Dead figurine, skeleton dog | 2002 ca. | Mexico | Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology

In countries with Roman Catholic heritage, All Saints Day and All Souls Day (November 2) have long been holidays in which people commemorate the departed. The tradition in my native Mexico is known as Día de los Muertos, “Day of the Dead,” and celebrations take place on the first two days of November, when family and friends gather to remember loved ones who have died. Similar to the evolution of Halloween, the celebration conflates the Catholic holidays with an Aztec festival dedicated to a goddess called Mictecacihuatl, the “Lady of the Dead.” I have fond memories of visiting the cemetery with my family to clean my grandfather’s grave and play with the children of other visiting families. People in Mexico often build altars using brightly decorated sugar skulls, marigolds (popularly known as Flor de Muerto, “Flower of the Dead”), and the favorite foods and beverages of the deceased. I was particularly fond of the sugar skulls; I always tried to bite into them, but they tend to be so hard that I would have to ask my father to break mine with a hammer.

Multiple Carvers | John Sanders; Hannah Saunders, 1694 | Salem, Massachusetts | Image and data From: The Farber Gravestone Collection, American Antiquarian Society

Many Latin American countries hold similar celebrations, with some colorful regional differences:  In Ecuador, the Day of the Dead is observed with ceremonial foods such as colada morada, a spiced fruit porridge, and guagua de pan, a bread shaped like a swaddled infant; in addition to the traditional visits to their ancestors’ gravesites, Guatemalans build and fly giant kites; and in Brazil, Dia de Finados(“Day of the Dead”) is celebrated on November 2.

German School | Dance of Death | 16th century | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

To help you celebrate the season, there are thousands of suitably macabre images in the Artstor Digital Library. A great starting point is the Farber Gravestone Collection (American Antiquarian Society), which contains more than 13,500 images of early American grave markers, mostly made prior to 1800. You can also do a search for “Day of the Dead” to find images of calacas, skeleton toys from Mexico. There are also some artists who were great at portraying the dark side: You may be familiar with Henry Fuseli’s famous “Nightmare,” but a simple search of his name leads to several equally scary works, including a different version of the painting and several prints with the same theme; a search for caprichos will lead you to Francisco Goya’s legendary series of prints, rife with witches, demons, and gloomy owls, and a search for Goya witches to a set of his most unsettling paintings and etchings; similarly, search Baldung witches to see a number of the German Renaissance painter Hans Baldung’s ghoulish drawings, or search for his name to see his famous “Death and the Maiden”; and a search for Jose Guadalupe Posada will result in the Mexican artist’s famous “Calaveras,” satirical engravings of skeletons popular during the holiday.

Is this getting a little too dark for you? Try Hine pumpkin to see cheerier photographs by legendary documentary photographer Lewis W. Hine.

–  Giovanni Garcia-Fenech

Book of Hours. Use of Rome; Folio #: fol. 072r | 16th century, second quarter | Image and original data provided by the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

What are you afraid of? Find something to keep you up at night with this list of our spookiest posts:

• Friday the 13th
• Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s Ghosts
• Danse macabre
• Restless spirits and hungry mouths
• Vanitas: a very literal nature morte
• Send in the clowns
• Holding dolls at arm’s length
• Unwinding mummies

Dorothea Lange | Migratory Cotton Picker, Eloy, Arizona, 1940 | George Eastman House

This installment of our Focus series presents an account of the Great Depression illustrated with selections from the numerous collections in the Artstor Digital Library that center on history.

The Great Depression was the longest lasting and most severe period of low general economic activity and unemployment of the 20th century. Lasting approximately a decade, it devastated economies around the world, leaving as much as a third of the population in some countries without jobs, and slashing international trade by more than half.

Berenice Abbott | Wall Street, Looking West from no. 120, 1935-1938 | Museum of the City of New York

The Great Depression was triggered by the Wall Street Crash of October 29, 1929 (also known as “Black Tuesday”). The crash ensued from a speculative boom that began in the late 1920s in which hundreds of thousands of Americans invested in the stock market, many of them with borrowed money. As stocks started to tumble, investors rushed to sell, starting a panic. From Thursday, October 24 to Tuesday, October 29, stocks lost more than $26 billion in value. Prices continued to fall, and banks that had invested large portions of their clients’ savings in the stock market were forced to close, inciting another panic as people across the country rushed to withdraw money, which caused further banks to close. As a result of the crash, businesses had to lay off employees, cutting into consumer spending power, which in turn led to further businesses to fail, creating a severe downward spiral.

Reginald Marsh | Crowd of unemployed, ca. 1932 | Image and original data from: Virga, Vincent, and Curators of the Library of Congress

The situation was exacerbated by the Dust Bowl, a combination of drought and dust storms that decimated farmers. Small farmers typically borrowed money for seed and paid it back after the harvest; when the dust storms damaged the crops, famers went broke. Banks foreclosed on farms, leading to further unemployment and homelessness.

The slump in the American economy curtailed the flow of American investment credits to Europe, which particularly affected Germany and Great Britain, the two countries most deeply indebted to the United States after World War I. Unemployment rose sharply in Germany, reaching 6 million workers by early 1932, and Great Britain’s industrial and export sectors were badly bruised. A domino effect began to upset the rest of Europe’s economies. In an attempt to protect their domestic production, nations imposed tariffs and set quotas on foreign imports, halving the total value of world trade.

In the United States, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to the presidency in late 1932, and he instituted the New Deal: increased government regulation, such as the establishment of the Federal Depository Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the passage of the Securities Act of 1933, and the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, and massive public-works projects to promote recovery, such as the AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Administration), the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps), and the WPA (Works Progress Administration).

Moses Soyer | Artists on WPA, 1935 | Smithsonian American Art Museum | Art (c) Estate of Moses Soyer / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

Roosevelt’s efforts brought some relief, but approximately 15 percent of the work force remained unemployed in 1939. It’s commonly agreed that unemployment dropped rapidly in the US after war broke out in Europe thanks to the new jobs in armaments and munitions factories. Recently, Alexander J. Field disputes this assumption, arguing in “A Great Leap Forward” that productive capacity increased during the Great Depression, and that is what led to the post-World War II boom.

–  Giovanni Garcia-Fenech

Artstor Digital Library Collections:

Newman | A monthly check to you, ca. 1935 | Image and original data from: Virga, Vincent, and Curators of the Library of Congress

The Carnegie Arts of the United States documents the history of American art, architecture, visual and material culture; Eyes of the Nation: A Visual History of the United States (Library of Congress) is a pictorial overview of American history through images from the Library of Congress’ special collections; George Eastman House offers the history of photography, including many key figures from the 1920s and 1930s; Museum of the City of New York features documentation of the built environment of New York City and its changing cultural, political, and social landscape, including more than a thousand photographs from the 1930s; Georgia O’Keeffe Museum has hundreds of works from that period by the legendary artist; The Schlesinger History of Women in America Collection includes hundreds of images by professional and amateur photographers documenting the era; Smithsonian American Art Museum Collection features more than 600 works by American artists, famous and forgotten, from the decade of the Depression; and, similarly, the Terra Foundation for American Art Collection, which also includes more than one hundred images by American artists of the period.

Using the Advanced Search function, searches limited to dates between 1929 and 1940 are rich with pertinent materials. Search for “unemployed” to find suitable images from the U.S. and Belgium, Nazi propaganda, and social realist paintings by lesser-known artists; search for “depression” to find hundreds of documentary photographs, images of fashions and architecture of the era, and diagrams of relevant economic statistics; and search for “WPA” for artwork and propaganda posters made for the program.

You can also find dozens of images by characteristic artists of the period such as Reginald Marsh, Ben Shahn, and Thomas Hart Benton, and documentary photographers such as Lewis W. Hine, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Berenice Abbott by searching for their individual names.

Siemens & Halske A.G., Munich, (Manufacturer), Telephone, 1955. Image and data from: The Museum of Modern Art

The initial entry of our new Focus series presents a chronicle of the telephone using some of the numerous collections in the Artstor Digital Library that center on history.

Autumn has arrived in New York City and there are signs of it everywhere. The leaves are turning shades of red, orange, and gold, and when I stroll under the trees I look out for acorns falling. Outside of the city the changes are more striking. Before long the leaves will be piling up.

Vincent van Gogh, Large Plane Trees, 1889. This image and data was provided by The Cleveland Museum of Art.

When I think of fall, I picture vivid colors and dramatic light. Different artists come to mind, but one of my favorites is Vincent Van Gogh because of his use of color and his bold brushstrokes. Last year I got the opportunity to see some of his works in person at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and I keep a few postcards of his work posted up next to my computer.

This particular work by Van Gogh was painted on a cold day in November in Sainte-Rémy in southern France. He painted the golden leaves of the large plane trees and the laborers working beneath them on a piece of cheap linen fabric; zoom into the image in Artstor to see the pattern of red diamonds on the linen showing through where the paint is thinner. It is fantastic to see these types of details in a work by an artist I truly enjoy.

What other images make you think of fall?

 – Lucy Sawyer, ITHAKA Marketing Enablement Manager

Bonnie Burnham, President of the World Monuments Fund (WMF), the leading independent organization dedicated to saving the world’s most treasured places, talks to Christine Kuan about the history and future projects of WMF. The Artstor Digital Library recently launched WMF’s images of architecture, sites, and monuments from around the world.

Jaisalmer Fort; Exterior, India. | Photographer: Mark Weber. | World Monuments Fund

CK: What is the mission of WMF?

BB: World Monuments Fund works globally to ensure that heritage sites of worldwide significance are preserved, protected, and play a meaningful role in the local and global community today.

CK: How many countries has WMF worked within since its founding in 1965?

BB: In our more than 45 years of serving the field of heritage conservation, WMF has conducted and supported field projects in more than 100 countries, at nearly 600 sites.

CK: What are the challenges of preserving world monuments in the 21^st century?

BB: Heritage sites face a range of threats, which have to do with changing ways of life, values, and the impact of a changing environment. Everything from the past cannot be saved as the world continues to reshape itself. In spite of their best efforts, governments cannot protect every site that is confronted with potential loss. Communities rally around the monuments that are most meaningful for them to save, but often they do not have the vision, the resources or the momentum to achieve their goals. This is where an international organization, the voice of an international concerned citizenry can help. The biggest challenge for the preservation field today is to preserve not only buildings themselves, but a meaningful context that will allow them to continue to play vital roles within the community where they exist.

CK: What is the most complex project you’ve worked on during your tenure at WMF?

BB: Sometimes projects are complicated from a technical perspective and sometimes they involve bringing together a diverse political consensus. It is the latter situation that is more complex. After the end of the Soviet period, WMF began to work extensively in eastern and central Europe. Many great heritage sites had been neglected for ideological reasons, especially sacred places and estates associated with the aristocracy. There was no prioritization or sense of how and where to start. Local authorities had no experience with how to make a monument economically self-sufficient. In the communist system the state had owned and paid for everything. Powerful officials made all the decisions. Our process of forging consensus about what to do and how to make it happen was a new idea to our counterparts in the former soviet bloc. It was a very exciting but often frustrating and complicated process. We never knew where we stood, and whether at the end of the day someone could stand in the way of all we were trying to achieve, simply because they had the power to do so. Working in postwar Iraq there is a similar feeling of uncertainty about whether the good alliances we have formed with our local counterparts will stand the test of time, as the government is still rapidly changing and evolving. Until things settle down and normalize politically, it will be difficult for people in the cultural sector to achieve lasting results that the society can embrace.

CK: How has Internet impacted the work of WMF?

Maya Sites of the Yucatan Peninsula, Yucatán, Mexico, ca. 600-900. Photographer: Bonnie Burnham. World Monuments Fund.

BB: The Internet has had a wonderful impact on our work in making it more widely accessible in ways we could not have imagined or planned for. When our World Monuments Watch list is announced every two years, the information reaches millions of people around the world in a matter of minutes. We get extraordinary responses from people everywhere who are moved by the places we are trying to defend. We can get a feeling for the local events they are organizing – a vigil, a rally, or a hearing. The connections are immediate.

Another way the Internet helps us is as a virtual environment for presenting the places we are trying to preserve, giving many people an opportunity to experience a real sense of place. With the development of other forms of new technology, such as laser scanning, we are now able to recreate monuments that are far away, inaccessible, or even lost, for a worldwide audience. This is a powerful new form of education.

CK: Part of WMF’s mission is education and training, what are some of the most critical education programs sponsored by WMF?

BB: We support many hands-on training programs at sites where we work. It is wonderful to see our trainees become personally involved with and committed to saving places that they might have been indifferent to prior to this opportunity, simply because they had not been able to see what we valued in those places. It’s very inspiring when a young person with no educational preparation comes to share and embody the values that inspire your own work. But my favorite educational program is one that WMF helped to establish at the Williamsburg High School for Architecture and Design in Brooklyn, NY. The curriculum at this school draws completely upon learning directly from experiences in the built environment surrounding the school and in the community. Every academic course curriculum at every grade is interwoven with experiential knowledge from local landmarks – whether it’s English, math, science or history. The students learn from the monuments around them. I believe it is a very good way to learn, and the academic success of the students in the school has borne that out. Sometimes their lives are transformed by this opportunity. I wish I had had a similar experience when I was growing up.

CK: Has digital photography been useful to the work of WMF?

BB: Digital photography has and will continue to transform our ability to understand places. So much can be done to work with these images, integrate them together, transmit them around the world, and keep them permanently as a record of a given place at a given time, that digital images have almost outdated traditional photographic means. Traditional photography has become as a consequence more of an art form, a way of recording a moment or a sensation or a sense of place. All that is wonderful and legitimate, but perhaps the two have different purposes and different uses today.

CK: You studied at the University of Florida and l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne and devoted your career to cultural heritage preservation. Are there notable different cultural approaches to the preservation of world monuments?

BB: Nothing in my academic training prepared me for my career in heritage conservation, unless it was the opportunity of international study, where I learned very quickly that there are completely different cultural perspectives and approaches to education itself. I continue to be educated by every new project, country, and cultural environment in which we work. There are indeed different ways of thinking about monuments, different aesthetic and ethical approaches to preservation, and different ways in which communities and authorities locally express their respect for these sites.

Preah Khan; Exterior, ca. 12th c. Siem Reap Province, Cambodia. Photographer: John Stubbs/World Monuments Fund

CK: Is there any site/monument that you’ve always wanted to work on but never had the chance?

BB: Yes. The Taj Mahal. We were able to do a little work there, but not enough to help transform the run-down area around the monument and improve the overall experience of visiting the Taj, which would have been our long-term goal.

CK: What is one of the most endangered sites/monuments now that everyone should be aware of?

BB: The most endangered monuments today may be those that are most appreciated by the public. It is very rare for a good system to be in place to help preserve and protect monuments in relation to their own public. That public, especially in the form of tourists, can completely change the nature of the place, without meaning or wanting to do so, just by their very presence. The most endangered monument that is being lost, probably irretrievably, today is Venice. This is because of a range of factors working together to produce a net loss, which is getting worse as the years go on. The environmental impact of rising water is ominous. The demographic changes of the city, with the Venetians leaving or being forced out because of rising property values, the unregulated numbers of tourists and the insensitive commercial decisions – from allowing oversized tour boats in the canals to selling huge space for advertising panels on key monuments – have degraded its sense of place, and it is steadily losing its appeal as a living community. The political powers of the city, and its citizenry, do not seem to have the will to save historic Venice as a vital city.

By Erin Giffin, University Of Washington

[The images in this post were selected to accompany the final exercise for the course “Introduction to Western Art — Ancient” (Art History 201) offered during autumn quarter 2010. This 300-student survey class balanced lectures by Professor Margaret Laird with meetings in smaller sections supervised by graduate student Teaching Assistants, one of whom was Ms. Giffin.]

Giovanni Battista Mercati, Colonna Traiana

Artstor was central to this assignment’s success. Professor Laird developed an exercise to teach independent research skills and the creative analysis of evidence. It challenged students to work in pairs to develop a 5-minute, illustrated oral presentation exploring how the Column of Trajan in Rome presented the enemy Dacians. Students were free to focus on any aspect of interest to them and to use any of the various art-historical methods they had learned in the course. Laird created an Image Group composed of forty-four slides showing episodes from the first Dacian War arranged in the order in which they appear on the column. Photographs of casts of the column (scanned from UCSD slides) clarified where each scene began and ended. Brief descriptions added to the “Instructor notes” tab explained the action in each scene. These slides introduced high-resolution color photographs of the same scenes from the column itself (made by Shmuel Magal for Sites and Photos). Students could consider figures across scenes or closely study individual sections in exquisite detail using the “zoom” feature.

It’s been several years since the attacks on 9/11, but the events refuse to be confined to history. They continue to shape life and discourse in New York City, the United States, and the world, and the subject touches on disciplines as varied as social studies, journalism, political science, international relations, religious studies, economics, and civics. The Artstor Digital Library offers extraordinary images that provide many angles through which this complex episode can be considered.

A dazed man picks up a paper that was blown out of the towers after the attack of the World Trade Center, and begins to read it. ©Larry Towell / Magnum Photos. Image and original data provided by Magnum Photos

Dozens of images of the attack on the World Trade Center are available in the Magnum Photos collection, which also includes photographs of New York City in the following days and subsequent commemorations such as the Tribute of Light at Ground Zero on the second anniversary of the attacks. The collection also features magnificent views of the World Trade Center from the 1970s to the 1990s.

The event and its ensuing developments brought forth a wide range of reactions; these are represented in the Digital Library with works by contemporary artists, from the elegiac National Tribute Quilt in the American Folk Art Museum to searingly critical pieces by renowned political artist Hans Haacke in Contemporary Art (Larry Qualls Archive).

There are also glimmers of wonder among the many solemn images. A particularly touching piece is a Mexican retablo commissioned in gratitude for the survival of a loved one who was working in the Twin Towers during the attack.

By Dr. Jennifer Zarro, Tyler School of Art, Temple University

John Lewis Krimmel, Pepper-Pot: A Scene in the Philadelphia Market, 1811. This image was provided by Philadelphia Museum of Art

Artstor makes possible what we know to be the best teaching practices in higher education. Using Artstor in my class, Race, Identity, and Experience in American Art, allows for multiple possibilities for teaching and learning. It is an especially important resource for this course which has unlimited approaches and no textbook. This class often confronts material that is new or uncomfortable for participants and implementing creative and supportive assignments is important for fostering open dialogue and deep learning opportunities.

We know that lifelong learning occurs when people engage in a personal way about something they find beautiful and interesting. Further, and most ideally, deep learning occurs when students decide their own course of study. Ken Bain tell us that the best learning environment is one in which students create authentic tasks that allow them to feel a sense of control over their education. Using Artstor supports these claims in several ways. An assignment that stems from these ideas is to have students curate their own image-group exhibitions in Artstor that they present to the class. Critiques and questions follow and students explain the ideas and materials that led to their choices. Students can create unique visual stories about an aspect of our course content – whiteness, immigration, identity self-fashioning – and share their story with diverse others. Research projects may also stem from this image group. Being a curator lets students be in charge of their learning in a creative and scholarly way. It allows for alternate ways to teach and learn art history that moves away from simply showing slides in a darkened room and expecting memorization of the material.

Caste Painting, 18c. Image and original data provided by The University of Texas at Austin, College of Fine Arts.

Caste Painting, 18c. Image and original data provided by The University of Texas at Austin, College of Fine Arts.

Caste Painting, 18c. Image and original data provided by The University of Texas at Austin, College of Fine Arts.

John Lewis Krimmel, Pepper-Pot: A Scene in the Philadelphia Market, 1811. This image was provided by Philadelphia Museum of Art

John Lewis Krimmel, Pepper-Pot: A Scene in the Philadelphia Market, Detail, 1811. This image was provided by Philadelphia Museum of Art

John Lewis Krimmel, Pepper-Pot: A Scene in the Philadelphia Market, Detail, 1811. This image was provided by Philadelphia Museum of Art

Jacob A Riis, Home of an Italian ragpicker, 1888-1889. Museum of the City of New York.

Another successful assignment is to have students work in groups much like a curatorial team in a museum. The team considers which image group or individual artwork should be part of an exhibition based on one of the themes of the course – 1970s Feminism or Chicano identity and culture, for example. Students grapple with ideas and history, consider together the importance of certain works, research items from an image group in order to support their decisions, and learn about works of art and artists all while engaging in vital interpersonal exchanges with peers. The finished product is an image group exhibition that we post to our online learning site. The images illustrate some of the major themes of my course and how American identity is complex, varied, and ultimately changeable.

The examples mentioned above allow students to take control of their learning in ways that foster deeper involvement with artworks and cultural ideas. These projects let students do the work of creating course materials. They allow students to interact with peers and in groups, give them opportunities to think critically and to find something beautiful, foster debate and discussion, and may even lead to shifts in thinking. In the best case scenario, students bring these important ways of being into the real world.

Moche peoples, Peru, Pair of Earflares, 3rd-7th century. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Artstor Digital Library offers many excellent resources to support Latin American Studies, encompassing materials from the Pre-Columbian era through the Spanish conquest, and from Cuba’s revolution in 1959 to images of Carnaval in Brazil in 2008.

Guatemala, Maya, Vessel with Mythological Scene , 8th century. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

A history of the region can be illustrated with images from the encyclopedic collections available in the Digital Library. An excellent start can be The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, which includes hundreds of pages from Aztec codices that provide excellent primary sources for Pre-Columbian culture. The Codex Mendoza (ca. 1541), for example, illustrates the history of Aztec rulers and their conquests, the tributes paid by their provinces, and a fascinating general description of daily Aztec life. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Brooklyn Museum Costumes contains examples of 19^th and 20^th century costumes from different Latin American countries, providing a glimpse of the culture after the region’s independence from Spain. Revolutions, civil wars, elections, and other events in Chile, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, and other countries from the 1950s to current times are amply documented in Magnum Photos.

Artstor also features many collections that specialize in or are substantially devoted to Latin American topics. Some concentrate on the arts, such as Jacqueline Barnitz: Modern Latin American Art (University of Texas at Austin): modern art from Mexico and ten other Caribbean, Central, and South American countries; and Latin American Art (Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros): colonial, modern, and contemporary Latin American art.

Grand Pyramid at Tenayuca. Masonry ‘Serpent’ sculptures surrounding the base. Photographer: Josef Albers. © 2008 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Bethany, CT/Artists Rights Society, NY. Photograph by Tim Nighswander.

Others collections focus on archaeological sites and Pre-Columbian arts, including Carnegie Institution of Washington Photographs of Mayan Excavations (Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University): archaeological excavations throughout Central America, images from the excavated sites at Chichen Itza and Copán; Ferguson-Royce: Pre-Columbian Photography (University of Texas at Austin): magnificent aerial views and ground photographs of many of the major Pre-Columbian sites in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras; and Josef and Anni Albers Foundation: the artists’ travel photographs taken between 1934 and 1967 during visits to cities and archaeological sites throughout Chile, Mexico, and Peru, along with personal photographs and photo collages.

Santa Maria, exterior detail, 18th Century. Image and original data provided by the School of Architecture Visual Resources Collection, The University of Texas at Austin

Architecture in Latin America is covered by Hal Box and Logan Wagner: Mexican Architecture and Urban Design (University of Texas at Austin): architecture and outdoor communal spaces in Mexico, focusing on Pre-Columbian and 16th-17th century Colonial sites, but also including Post Colonial structures from the 18th – 20th centuries; and Alka Patel: South Asian and Cuban Art and Architecture: field photography including a selection of Cuban architecture of the 18th through early 20th centuries.

A few collections present more unusual cultural artifacts, notably Cuban Heritage Collection (University of Miami Libraries): black and white photographs of Cuba from the early 1900s to the 1930s depicting various aspects of the life, architecture, and culture of Havana and other Cuban towns; and Mexican Retablos (Jorge Durand and Douglas Massey): contemporary examples of traditional religious folk art as a source of sociological data for the experiences of Mexican migrants to the United States.

Artstor is working on more collections, among them Diego Rivera (Detroit Institute of Arts): images of works by the influential Mexican artist; Mark Rogovin: Mexican Murals: 20th century murals in Mexico; The Jean Charlot Collection (University of Hawai’i at Manoa): including Mexican art and archaeology, particularly relating to the revolutionary artists and writers of the 1920s; and new QTVR panoramas from Columbia University that include Sacsayhuamán, the Inca walled complex north of Cusco, Peru.

For more interdisciplinary teaching ideas, visit the Digital Library and click on “Featured Groups.” Also, download Artstor’s Latin American Studies Subject Guide.

The Artstor Blog is the place to find new interdisciplinary teaching ideas with our new series: Teaching with Artstor. This week we feature “Re-historicizing Contemporary Pacific Island Art” by Marion Cadora, a graduate student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

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My research in the Department of Art and Art History at University of Hawai`i looks at contemporary Pacific Island artists who are using art as a tool to rewrite history through indigenous perspectives.

John La Farge, Girls Carrying a Canoe, Vaiala in Samoa, 1891. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Josiah Martin, Samoa type de chef de Samoa/Cliche J.Martin, ca. 1900-1919. George Eastman House

Tonga; Ha'apai Archipelago, Female Figure, Early 19th century. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Edward Steichen, Portrait of Hawaiian model Kaaloalakini, ca. 1937. George Eastman House

possibly Korewori, Female Figure, early to mid-20th century. Image and original data provided by Saint Louis Art Museum

I am interested in compositions of the “body,” both male and female, and from multiple time periods and perspectives. However, understanding ways in which “bodies” are imagined is incredibly complex. One scholar suggests that masculinities “have been formed in relation to, as much as resistance against, foreign hegemonic models and through such histories, hybrid hegemonies have emerged” (Jolly, 2008). That in mind, it is true that Oceanic bodies are best studied relationally and historically, between pasts, presents, and futures.  How then can we engage with and visualize Oceanic bodies within the wider frame of historiography? Interestingly, Artstor has been a powerful tool to assist with such inquiries.