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Persepolis (Takht-e Jamshid), Iran, Sculpture, bull head, 6th-5th century BC. Image and original data provided by Bryn Mawr College. Image © Bryn Mawr College

Extending from Morocco and North Africa to Turkey and Iran, the Middle East is interesting and complex economically, socially, politically, and culturally. The Artstor Digital Library offers many collections that document the rich history of the region that gave birth to the world’s earliest civilizations and major religions such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Islamic, Qur’an stand, 1360. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Explore these collections which focus mainly or exclusively on the Middle East and jointly feature approximately 100,000 related images: Islamic Art and Architecture Collection (Sheila Blair, Jonathan Bloom, Walter Denny): digital images of the art and architecture of Islam from the personal archives of a team of leading scholar photographers; Mellink Archive (Bryn Mawr College): archaeological excavations of ancient sites in Turkey and the Near East; Shangri La, Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art: Syrian and Persian furniture, doors, and ceilings; Persian and Turkish tile panels and portable ceramics; and Central Asian, Persian, and Turkish textiles; Pattern in Islamic Art from David Wade: images illustrating patterns and design features found throughout the Islamic world; Barbara Anello: Photographs of Southeast Asia and Morocco: images of Morocco’s traditional earthen architecture in Ait Ben Haddou and Skoura, and the ancient Roman ruins in Volubilis; James Conlon: Mali and Yemen sites and architecture: includes contemporary photographs depicting architecture and cultural sites and objects in Tarim and many other cities, monuments, and sites in Yemen’s Hadramaut Valley; Dura Europos and Gerasa Archives (Yale): images of papyri, artifacts, and structures unearthed during the excavations of the ancient sites of Dura-Europos in Syria and Gerasa (modern Jerash) in Jordan, along with historical documentation of the expeditions; Egyptian and other Ancient Art (Arielle Kozloff Brodkey): images of the art, architecture, and archaeology of ancient Egypt, with special strengths in Theban tombs; Giza Archaeological Expedition Archive (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston): visual documentation of the Giza pyramids, workers at dig sites, interiors of excavated monuments, objects, and human remains in their original find spots, individual finds and artifacts, and Egyptians in modern-day Giza and Cairo; Plans of Ancient and Medieval Buildings and Archaeological Sites (Bryn Mawr College): site plans for key ancient and medieval architectural monuments and archeological sites relating to the Classical and Ancient Near East; and Sites and Photos: broad and in-depth documentation of the ancient world, including Classical, Megalithic, Islamic, Crusader, and Gothic archaeology and architecture, with a focus on religious and Biblical sites.

Abdullah Freres, Mosquée de Kaid Bey, 1850s – 1890. This image and data was provided by The Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

In addition, there are dozens of collections that feature images related to the Middle East in their wide-ranging content, such as Magnum Photos, which covers events like the establishment of Israel as an independent state, the Iranian Revolution, and the Iraq War, and George Eastman House, which features 19th century travel and landscape photography of the Middle East by photographers such as Abdullah Frères and Félix Bonfils. You can find tens of thousands further images by browsing by individual country: Choose Browse > Geography > and then pick the Middle Eastern country you are researching. You can choose a Classification to further narrow your results.

For teaching ideas, see our Sample Topic on Middle Eastern Studies. To view all our Sample Topics, visit the Digital Library and click on “Featured Groups.” Also, read Colette Appelian’s 2011 Travel Award-winning essay, “Online Teaching and Architectural Solutions to Climate Problems in the Islamic World.” For more interdisciplinary ideas, download Artstor’s Subject Guides.

Tapestry Square with the Head of Spring, Egyptian , 4th–5th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art

We welcome our United States users back to their desks after the Independence Day holiday weekend with a pointer: The Digital Library provides thousands of images related to American Studies ranging from colonial times to the present, including photography, architecture, decorative arts, graphic design, painting, and sculpture.

The Forbes Co. | Buffalo Bill: Cowboys Ride Texas Longhorn | The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art: Circus Collection

The Artstor Digital Library is rich with collections that cover general American history. Notable ones include: Eyes of the Nation: A Visual History of the United States (Library of Congress): pictorial overview of American history, including images of prints, posters, maps, manuscript pages, photographs, design, movie stills, and cartoons; Native American Art and Culture (National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution): historic photographs documenting Native American subjects (portraits, scenes, etc.);  Schlesinger History of Women in America Collection (Harvard University): portraits of women’s work, key participants in the women’s suffrage movement and larger women’s rights movement, as well as women involved in organized labor and vocational training; Richard F. Brush Art Gallery (St. Lawrence University): photographs documenting the Vietnam War and protests and demonstrations it engendered in the United States; George Eastman House: early photographs of the American West by William Henry Jackson and Carleton Watkins, and portraits by Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes, widely considered the first masters of photography in the United States; The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art: Circus Collection: images documenting the history of the circus in America; Historic American Sheet Music Covers (Minneapolis College of Art and Design): sheet music covers in this collection date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries (1898-1923); The Rogovin Collection: social documentary photography of the poor and working class, and his depictions of their lives, communities, and working conditions; Century Magazine Illustrations of the American Civil War (Minneapolis College of Art and Design): images depicting Civil War battle scenes and camp life, as well as details of weapons and uniforms; and Tenniel Civil War Cartoon Collection (Minneapolis College of Art and Design): John Tenniel’s full-page cartoons of the American Civil War in British humor magazine Punch.

Andy Warhol | Andy Warhol | The Minneapolis Institute of Arts Collection | © Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

The Digital Library also offers many resources on American art and architecture. Among the highlights: Carnegie Arts of the United States: history of American art, architecture, visual and material culture; Ralph Lieberman: Architectural Photography: architecture and public sculpture in the United States, particularly museum architecture in the Midwest and New England; Dov Friedman: American and European Architecture: historic and contemporary architecture in the United States; Community Murals (Timothy Drescher): contemporary community murals in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.; Carnegie Survey of the Architecture of the South (Library of Congress): a systematic record of early buildings and gardens in the American South; and Terra Foundation for American Art: art of the colonial era through 1945.

Christopher Anderson | Barack Obama at a rally, 2008 | Image and original data provided by Magnum Photos | © Christopher Anderson / Magnum Photos

Also of note, Magnum Photos features iconic photographs documenting the history and culture of the United States from the 1940s to the present. Cornell Capa covered major political events, such as the electoral campaigns of Adlai Stevenson, John Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy. Following Robert Kennedy’s assassination in 1968, Paul Fusco captured fleeting images of the thousands of mourners who lined the tracks as Kennedy’s body was carried by funeral train from New York to Washington, DC. Throughout the 1960s, Magnum photographers chronicled the struggles of African-Americans to achieve racial equality, photographing demonstrations, protests, marches, and speeches by prominent leaders of the civil rights movement, especially Martin Luther King, Jr. The Magnum collection includes images of current events in the United States, from on-the-ground photographs of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City, to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans in 2005, to Barack Obama’s election in 2008.

Find hundreds of thousands of further American images by choosing Browse > Geography > United States. Choose a Classification to narrow your results.

For teaching ideas, see our Sample Topic on American Studies. To view all our Sample Topics, visit the Digital Library and click on “Featured Groups.” For more interdisciplinary ideas, download Artstor’s Subject Guides.

Franklin Furnace was founded in 1976 by artist Martha Wilson to champion ephemeral art forms neglected by mainstream arts institutions. The organization provided a much-needed forum for artists’ books, temporary installation art, and performance art, and launched the careers of artists whose work has greatly influenced art and cultural discourse in this country.  After 35 years, Franklin Furnace continues its mission to present, preserve, and advocate on behalf of ephemeral art. In 2008, Franklin Furnace partnered with ARTstor to digitize and publish on the web documentation of events it presented and produced.

To celebrate the most recent addition of images and documentation of Franklin Furnace events in the Digital Library, Artstor invited Founding Director Martha Wilson to share a history of the renowned venue.

If I had known 35 years ago how much work it was going to be to establish a not-for-profit organization in my living loft at 112 Franklin Street in TriBeCa, I probably would not have done it. Several times I was tempted to fold the tent. Yet the vacuum in the art world that need to be filled (with hot air!) was obvious, and kept me going: none of the major institutions in town were paying attention to what artists were doing. Artists were publishing cheap stuff, artworks masquerading as books. Around the same time, Printed Matter was being formed (as a for-profit corporation at first) by a collective of artists and activists, to publish artists’ books; soon we divided the pie such that Franklin Furnace took on the exhibition and preservation of artists’ books, Printed Matter, Inc. took on their publication and distribution.

Dolores Zorreguieta "Wounds" (November 11 - December 10, 1994). Photograph by Marty Heitner.

Laurie Anderson reading (May 3, 1977). Photograph by Franklin Furnace.

Dara Birnbaum "(Reading) Versus (Reading Into)" (April 11 - April 27, 1978). Photograph by Franklin Furnace.

Karen Finley, "A Woman's Life Isn't Worth Much" (May 18 - June 16, 1990). Left to right: Karen Finley, Martha Wilson. Photograph by Marty Heitner.

Jenny Holzer, "Truisms" (December 12 - December 30, 1978). Pictured: Mike Glier. Photograph by Franklin Furnace.

Tehching Hsieh, "One Year Performance" (February 16 - March 12, 1983). Photograph by Franklin Furnace.

Tina Keane, "Playpen" (March 17, 1981). Photograph by Franklin Furnace.

Leslie Labowitz, "Sprout Time" (March 20, 1981). Photograph by Franklin Furnace.

Ana Mendieta, "Body Tracks" (April 8, 1982). Photograph by Franklin Furnace.

Shirin Neshat, "Unveiling" (April 2 - May 1, 1993). Photograph by Marty Heitner.

William Pope.L, "How Much is that Nigger in the Window?" (June 1 - August 31, 1991). Photgraph by Franklin Furnace.

William Wegman, Reading from War and Peace with Man Ray (February 15, 1977). Photograph by Jacki Apple.

In the early days, I asked artists to read from their published works; this immediately became the performance art program. To complement the cheap stuff we were archiving, Franklin Furnace began exhibiting artworks in book form; this soon turned into the temporary installation program. Franklin Furnace often premiered artists in New York who later emerged as art world stars: Ida Applebroog, Eric Bogosian, David Cale, Patty Chang, Willie Cole, Sue de Beer, Nicole Eisenmann, Karen Finley, Kate Gilmore, Guillermo Gomez-Peña, Ann Hamilton, Murray Hill, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Sherrie Levine, Liza Lou, Taylor Mac, Robbie McCauley, Rashaad Newsome, William Pope.L, Emily Roysdon, Dread Scott, James Sienna, Theodora Skipitares, Michael Smith, Annie Sprinkle, Krzysztof Wodiczko, and Paul Zaloom, among hundreds of others. Franklin Furnace has had an indelible impact upon art by launching the careers of artists whose work has influenced art and cultural discourse in this country.

Franklin Furnace occupied the ground floor and then the basement of 112 Franklin Street for 20 years. In the wake of the Culture Wars, we decided to “go virtual” to give artists the freedom of expression they had enjoyed in the loft during the 1970s. We moved to the Financial District until 9/11 made it depressing and archivally challenging, then responded to an RFP to move to 80 Arts in the BAM Cultural District, where we live today with collegial organizations like Bang on a Can, Bomb Magazine, Sound Portraits, and Witness.

Franklin Furnace collaborated with the Abrons Art Center of Henry Street Settlement to present “The History of the Future: A Franklin Furnace View of Performance Art” during the Performa 07 biennial. We presented live performance artists interspersed with historical video footage of performance art works from the last three decades. At the end of the evening, audience members were invited up on stage to enjoy drinks, and have their pictures taken with Marina Abramović. A couple approached me to say, “Hi, we’re Julie and Glenn Gribble and we live in your old loft at 112 Franklin Street.” We made a deal to throw a party someday. As our 35^th birthday party appeared on the horizon, the plans took shape: We held our celebration not only in our original loft, but on our actual 35^th birthday. Ame Gilbert and Deena Lubow of Communal Table prepared spectacular food, and got spinach pie from the nearby Square Diner, where many a lunch was eaten back in the day. Marja Samsom, who had performed as “Miss Behave” at Franklin Furnace in 1980, returned as the “Dumpling Diva” to make her signature mushroom dumplings. And Vince Bruns, proprietor of Westfield Seafood (and my partner of 18 years) provided shrimp and crab cakes.

As part and parcel of the entertainment at the party, we showed slides of artists’ installation and performance artworks which also showed the loft in all its gritty glory. These slides were harvested from a project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Booth Ferris Foundation to digitize Franklin Furnace’s first decade of event records, to publish them on our website, and to contribute them to ARTstor’s database so they might be used in art and art history classrooms.

During the last 35 years, Franklin Furnace’s mission has remained constant—to make the world safe for avant-garde art—but the implementation of our purpose has evolved from presenting space to research resource. Instead of 75 people sitting on hard folding chairs, now our online audience is a worldwide mix of artists, students, scholars and regular folk from 65 countries. If I had had unlimited resources, I probably wouldn’t have taken Franklin Furnace into the virtual realm; and I occasionally feel nostalgic for the loft space at 112 Franklin Street. Yet I’m not sorry history turned out like it did!

–Martha Wilson, April 2011

State Capitol, Montgomery, AL. Photographer: Frances Benjamin Johnston, 1939. Image and original data from Library of Congress, Carnegie Survey of the Architecture of the South Collection

Artstor just launched the Carnegie Survey of the Architecture of the South (Library of Congress), architectural photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston’s systematic record of early American buildings and gardens in the South. Johnston’s masterly portrayals of the exteriors and interiors of houses, mills, churches, mansions, plantations, and outbuildings transcend their purpose as records, and her prints have been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Baltimore Museum of Art, among other institutions. Johnston was a pioneer photographer—she was given her first camera by George Eastman, the inventor of roll film—and she continued to work at her craft until her death in New Orleans at the age of 88. She was named an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects for her work in preserving old and endangered buildings.

The Carnegie Survey is the latest of the many excellent resources available for architectural studies in the Digital Library, which features more than 50 collections and 300,000 images documenting architecture and the built environment, including monuments, buildings, drawings, models, plans, and QuickTime Virtual Reality (QTVR) panoramas.

TWA Terminal (Trans World Airlines Terminal), exterior, entrance from the north. Eero Saarinen and Associates, with Kevin Roche, Cesar Pelli, Edward Saad, and Norman Pettula, architects. Photographer: Ezra Stoller, 1962. Ezra Stoller © Esto

Highlights include: The Museum of Modern Art: Architecture and Design, which features architectural drawings, models, and photographs; SAHARA (Society of Architectural Historians Architecture Resources Archive), images of architecture, landscape design, and the built environment; Ezra Stoller: Modern Architecture (Esto), modern architecture from the archive of the celebrated architectural photographer; Architecture of Venice (Sarah Quill), Venetian architecture and architectural sculpture; Hal Box and Logan Wagner: Mexican Architecture and Urban Design (University of Texas at Austin), architecture and outdoor communal spaces in Mexico; Carnegie Survey of Architecture of the South (Library of Congress), a systematic record of early buildings and gardens in the American South; Brian Davis: Architecture in Britain, British and European architectural and garden sites from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century; European Architecture and Sculpture (Sara N. James), Italian and English architecture, with an emphasis on sites in England; Dov Friedman: American and European Architecture, historic architecture of New York City, as well as sites in Central and Eastern Europe; Hartill Archive of Architecture and Allied Arts, the architectural history of the Western world from antiquity through the present, and from the Middle East to the Americas; Historic Campus Architecture Project (Council of Independent Colleges), the first national architecture and landscape database of independent college and university campuses; Historic Illustrations of Art & Architecture (Minneapolis College of Art and Design), engravings, line drawings, and plans; Christopher Long: Central European Architecture (University of Texas at Austin), sites in Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland; Wilfried Wang: Modern Architecture (University of Texas at Austin), modern European and American architecture, with a special focus on museum architecture.

Tomb Complex of Muhammad Adil Shah, 1656 Bijapur, Karnataka, India. Photographer: Alka Patel, 2008. © 2008 Alka Patel.

The collections in the Digital Library also include several devoted to non-Western architecture. Among the most notable are Islamic Art and Architecture Collection (Sheila Blair, Jonathan Bloom, Walter Denny), architecture of the Islamic world; Alka Patel: South Asian and Cuban Art and Architecture, fieldwork photography focusing on the Islamic architectural history of South Asia from 12th to the 18th centuries, and Cuban architecture of the 18th through early 20th centuries; Mellon International Dunhuang Archive, Buddhist cave shrines in Dunhuang, China; Sites and Photos, archaeological and architectural sites in the Middle East and Europe; American Institute of Indian Studies, Indian art and architecture; Art, Archaeology, and Architecture (Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives), art and architecture in Asia and the Middle East; Herbert Cole: African Art, Architecture, and Culture (University of California, Santa Barbara), field photography of African architecture and sites from Nigeria, Ghana, the Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, and Kenya; and James Conlon: Mali and Yemen Sites and Architecture, earthen architecture and other traditions that link the two distant countries.

Arons & Gelauff; Animal Shelter; curving wall leads to courtyard and entry or receiving area, 2007, Ookmeerweg 270, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Image and original data provided by ART on FILE.

In addition to its many collections, Artstor collaborates with professional photographers documenting a wide range of architectural sites and monuments around the world. Colleen Chartier and Rob Wilkinson of ART on FILE document contemporary architecture, built environment projects, and landscape architecture throughout the United States, Europe, and the Middle East in ART on FILE: Contemporary Architecture, Urban Design and Public Art; Susan Silberberg-Peirce of Canyonlights World Art Image Bank photographed prehistoric and Native American sites in the Southwestern United States and Spanish Colonial missions, available in California Art, Archaeology, and Architecture (Canyonlights World Art Image Bank); art historian and photographer Ralph Lieberman is producing new images of contemporary museum architecture throughout the United States and Canada in Ralph Lieberman: Architectural Photography; and Columbia University has created thousands of QuickTime Virtual Reality (QTVR) panoramas of ancient to contemporary architecture that can be seen in QTVR Panoramas of World Architecture (Columbia University).

Buqshan family villa, stairway between structures; Wadi Du’an, Yemen. Photographer: James Conlon, 2008. For commercial use or publication, please contact: Caleb Smith, Director, Media Center for Art History, Columbia University

Furthermore, with the support of a three-year National Leadership grant by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Artstor, and The Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library at Columbia University are collaborating on the creation of a Built Works Registry (BWR), a community-generated data resource for architectural works and the built environment. The BWR’s goal is to create the system and tools to enable the gathering and widespread dissemination of a large and growing body of built works information. Some ideas about the challenges and benefits of creating the BWR can be found in Aaron Straup Cope and Christine Kuan’s paper, “Imagining the Built Works Registry.” See Built Works Registry Blog.

For teaching ideas, see our Sample Topic on Architecture and the Built Environment. To view all our Sample Topics, visit the Digital Library and click on “Featured Groups.” For more interdisciplinary ideas, download Artstor’s Subject Guides.

Have other suggestions for new architecture collections? Leave us a comment!

Congratulations to the five winners of this year’s Artstor Travel Awards! They will each receive $1,500 to be used for their teaching and research travel needs over the course of the next year.

• Colette Apelian, Fine Art faculty, Berkeley City College: “Online Teaching and Architectural Solutions to Climate Problems in the Islamic World”
• Keri Cronin, Department of Visual Arts faculty, Brock University: “Picturing Animals”
• Jacquelyn DeLombard, Beginnings Pre-School owner/teacher, Philadelphia Museum of Art Teacher Resource Center volunteer: “Teaching Shapes, Colors and Size to Young Children”
• Julia Reinhard Lupton, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, The University of California, Irvine: “A Shakespeare Gallery”
• Elizabeth Perkins, Columbia University graduate student: “Artstor: Making the Case for ‘Real’ Paintings in the Classroom”

Artstor would like to thank all of the participants for their wonderful submissions. We are very inspired by the ways our community teach and study with the Digital Library, and we have learned from you new ways in which we can grow our collections and services. Your continued use and support of the Digital Library in your daily work is vital to the Artstor mission.

We received more than 100 submissions that revealed the many creative ways that scholars, curators, educators, and students at universities, community colleges, museums, K-12 schools, and libraries are integrating Artstor Digital Library image collections into their interdisciplinary teaching and research.

Keri Cronin

Department of Visual Arts faculty, Brock University

Albrecht Dürer, Hare (A Young Hare), 1502. Source Image and original data prErich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archivesovided by /ART RESOURCE, N.Y. artres.com

In January 2011 I launched a new senior-level undergraduate course called “Picturing Animals.” This is a research-intensive course that explores the history of visual culture through a thematic focus on representations of nonhuman animals. From Albrecht Dürer to Damien Hirst, we take a critical look at how and why artists have chosen to represent the animal body at various points in human history. Through discussions, readings and presentations we then situate these art histories in a broader visual context by considering other related instances in which the animal body plays a dominant visual role, including science, natural history, religion, animal welfare activism, the entertainment industry, and fashion.

I often draw on Artstor in preparation for these classes, as the range of images available in this database is broad and interdisciplinary. For this class I need to go beyond “Fine Art”-type images and this is where I find Artstor to be particularly useful. In addition to Landseer, Bonheur, Stubbs and other famous animal painters, I can also find editorial cartoons, tapestries, circus posters and scientific images in Artstor. It is easy to bring these different kinds of images together for critical analysis and discussion using image groups and folders.

Giovanni Francesco Castiglione, A Congress of Animals, 1641-1710. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Pieter Boel, Views of a Porcupine, c. 1669-1671. Musée des Beaux Arts, Rennes, France. Photo Credit: Erich Lessing/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

Albrecht Dürer, Hare (A Young Hare), 1502. Graphische Sammlung Albertina. Photo Credit: Erich Lessing/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

Elsa Schiaparelli, Coat, Evening 1931-1932. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Eadweard J. Muybridge , Trotting; sulky; breaking to gallop; sorrel mare, Flode Holden, ca. 1884 - 1887. George Eastman House

One particularly interesting set of discussions we have had in this course is the use of the animal body as a component in the production of art and visual culture. Here, for example, we contrast the ways in which artists like Damien Hirst or Mark Dion incorporate animal bodies directly into their works with the history of animal bodies in artists’ materials (e.g.: dyes and pigments derived from cochineal insects). For this class I was delighted to find examples of clothing dyed with cochineal in the Artstor database.

In another instance we looked at the historical differences (and similarities!) that exist in the use of imagery by animal welfare/rights activists. We looked, for instance, at the ways in which groups such as the Victoria Street Society for the Protection of Animals from Vivisection or the Massachusetts SPCA recontextualized such well-known images as Sir Edwin Landseer’s A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society. In that same discussion, we analyzed some of the recent photographic campaigns produced by PETA.

One of the major assignments in this course is a 20 page research paper on some aspect of “Picturing Animals.” The students in the inaugural run of this course have done a phenomenal job of coming up with diverse research topics reflective of course themes. In many instances, the students were able to develop their topic through exploring imagery in Artstor, taking, for example, a term or an image from class discussions and using that as a keyword in the database to find related material.

In short, Artstor is a valuable tool for interdisciplinary courses because of both the range of material available in the database and the functionality of such features as “Advanced Search” and the ability to make image groups.

Elizabeth Perkins

Columbia University graduate student

While reading through conservation records at the National Gallery in Washington, I found many references to Giovanni Bellini’s fingerprints all over the faces in his portraits. I squinted and stared in the gallery, but despite my best efforts and the indulgence of a lenient security guard, I could not get close enough. Returning home and finding a fantastic image of Bellini’s Portrait of a Young Man on Artstor, I finally saw those fingerprints, and they took my breath away. As a developing scholar, the resources that Artstor provides allows me follow up in way that was not possible for earlier generations of art historians.

Giovanni Bellini, Portrait of a Young Man, c. 1490. The National Gallery of Art.

Giovanni Bellini, Portrait of a Young Man, c. 1490. The National Gallery of Art.

Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434. National Gallery, London. Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives. Photo Credit: Erich Lessing/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434. National Gallery, London. Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives. Photo Credit: Erich Lessing/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

Jan van Eyck, Man in a Red Turban, 1433. National Gallery, London. Photo Credit: Erich Lessing/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

Jan van Eyck, Man in a Red Turban, 1433. National Gallery, London. Photo Credit: Erich Lessing/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

Agnolo Bronzino, Ritratto di Lucrezia Panciatichi, c. 1540. Galleria degli Uffizi. (c) 2006, SCALA, Florence / ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

Agnolo Bronzino, Ritratto di Lucrezia Panciatichi, c. 1540. Galleria degli Uffizi. (c) 2006, SCALA, Florence / ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

When I began designing an undergraduate course on Renaissance portraiture for Columbia’s summer session in 2010, I was pleased to find a wealth of high resolution images to teach from on Artstor. Given the incredible quality of the images from collections like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, would the students avoid entering the actual museum? Would they be content with the images on their computer screens? I could not help but fear that I would have to make a case for looking at “real” paintings. My initial fears were soon put to rest, for Artstor itself made the case for me.

We met at Metropolitan Museum of Art on the second day of class. Each student chose two portraits for class presentations, and I instructed them to get to know their paintings, both in the museum and through the images on Artstor. The combination of in-person and at-home viewing produced extraordinary results. It engendered a number of aha! moments for the students, as the students were given two modes of accessing their works of art. They learned how to look closely and discern aspects of a painting’s history from its very surface. The ability to save a detailed view of an image was enormously helpful; at home students could save specific details to present in class. Rather than flipping quickly through slides, we moved slowly about the paintings, one inch at a time. Through close examination of the paint itself, we made connections between Italy and northern Europe, portraiture and religious works.

The students noticed how Antonello da Messina altered way he painted flesh in the dead Christ and the living; they observed how Giovanni Bellini changed his style from bold to a softly blended layers of oil. We confronted difficult issues of style, and were able to acknowledge how sometimes a damaged area can change the overall appearance of a painting. When we came to Giovanni Bellini, they were no less amazed than I was by the resolution of that image. In an interesting twist, the best images on Artstor encouraged a healthy and irreversible dissatisfaction with two-dimensional reproductions. Having seen a five-hundred-year-old fingerprint, my students could not wait to get out of my classroom and back to the museum, to the real things, and I could not have been happier about it.

Julia Reinhard Lupton

Professor of English and Comparative Literature, The University of California, Irvine

With its extraordinary image collection and sensitive search functions, Artstor has changed the way I teach Shakespeare. Images of the Globe Theater and panoramic maps of Elizabethan London set the stage for our engagement with the plays. When teaching The Merchant of Venice and Othello, I use paintings by Venetian artists to introduce students to this city of canals, carnival, and liturgical spectacle. Ignazio Danti’s full-color map provides an aerial view of the city in Shakespeare’s century. Veronese’s Wedding at Cana puts the cosmopolitan world of sixteenth-century Venice on extravagant display, with an African cup-bearer, turbaned Turks and Moors, court musicians, fantastical wedding costumes, and a stage-like setting. Gentile Bellini’s Procession in Piazza San Marco graphs the political and theological axes of public pageantry in Renaissance Venice. A thoughtful illumination of a man and woman dressed for carnival gives further insight into the Venetian theater of life. Jacob de Barbari’s woodcut map of Venice provides a detail of the Jewish ghetto, which I supplement with photographs of the ghetto today. Images of Epiphany kings represent noble Africans as members of a Pauline community, a theme tapped by Shakespeare in Othello.

Sandro Botticelli, The Third Episode of the Story of Nastagio degli Onesti, 1483. (c) 2006, SCALA, Florence / ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

Jacopo del Sellaio, Banquet of Ahasuerus, c. 1490. Galleria degli Uffizi .(c) 2006, SCALA, Florence/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

Venice: Map of City, 16th C

Globe Theatre (Southwark, London, England), Ref.: development 1580-90(i): possible intermediate steps in the early development of English theaters

Paolo Veronese, Marriage at Cana; detail, 1563. Musée du Louvre. Photo Credit: Erich Lessing/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

When I teach A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Winter’s Tale, I develop the extensive analogies between the metamorphic, seasonal, and amatory mythologies of Shakespeare’s plays and Botticelli’s Primavera. All three works display the glorious weave of holiday celebration, natural history, mythography, and courtship narratives in the Renaissance society of festival. I supplement Botticelli with examples of medieval and Renaissance calendar art. We also discuss the cassone tradition (marriage chests painted with mythological scenes) and their relevance to both the artistic output of Botticelli and the ways in which humanists and artisans in northern Europe wove classical mythology into the décor of daily life through tapestries, embroideries, and other household objects.

The Taming of the Shrew draws on falconry and animal husbandry discourses, which I introduce to students through medieval falconry guides. I also fill out Shakespeare’s bestiary with images of the hunt and animal social life.

I illuminate Richard II through the Wilton Diptych, a portable votive portrait depicting the coronation of the King by Mary and a host of angels. The painting demonstrates the power of political theology in Richard’s lifetime, tropes that Shakespeare both takes apart and rebuilds over the course of his play.

Banquets figure as settings for key scenes in plays as diverse as Romeo and Juliet, Timon of Athens, and The Taming of the Shrew. At court, Shakespeare’s plays were performed in banqueting houses. Images of Renaissance banquets bring to life the intimate relationship between hospitality, commensality and theater in the Renaissance.

Finally, in addition to these more historical and illustrative uses of visual art, I design backdrops for student readings of scenes from Shakespeare using Artstor images (often updated in Photoshop). By projecting the images against a screen, I can create instant environments for our in-class performances, greatly enhancing student learning and experience.

Colette Apelian
Fine Art faculty, Berkeley City College

As the Islamic art historian in the Art Department of Berkeley City College (BCC), I explain how North African to South Asian art and architecture are relevant to design students less familiar with pre-modern and non-western material cultures. Course logistics add to the challenge. Art 48VR, Introduction to Islamic Art History, is one of the few, if not the only online survey of Islamic art presented to a community college audience. To better address student needs, I organize the class thematically rather than chronologically, and focus upon a carefully chosen combination of fine and utilitarian objects and buildings. Presentations must be compressed so that BCC’s course management system, Moodle, properly stores and displays them. An example of how I use Artstor in Art 48VR can be viewed in one image group for the lecture “Architectural Solutions to Climate Problems in the Islamic World.”

Reed building screen, detail, Morocco. Image: 1982. Image and original data provided by Walter B. Denny

Bagh-e Fin, exterior, through screen of entrance portal, toward court. Image: 1978. Image and original data provided by Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom

Alhambra Palace - (Partal Gardens), Granada, Spain, Main construction 14th century. Image and original data provided by Shmuel Magal, Sites and Photos

'Alawi Abu Bakr al-Kaf, Dar al-Salam, Exterior, Image: 2005. Tarim, the Hadramaut Valley, Yemen. James Conlon: Mali and Yemen Sites and Architecture

Alhambra Palace - (Generalife Market Garden),Granada, Spain. Begun in the early 14th century, redecorated in 1313-1324. Image and original data provided by Shmuel Magal, Sites and Photos

In addition to illustrating specific motifs, pictures in the group show technology, materials, and plans that naturally temper hot and dry conditions. There are reed, mud brick, stone, and wooden screens (musharabiyya and jails, among other terms), which are used to mitigate the sun’s glare and heat in North African, Middle Eastern, Central Asian, and Indian contexts. Screens also allow air to flow freely while preserving privacy and demarcating private and religious spaces from public and secular locales. There is an Iranian badgir (wind tower) at Mir Chaqmaq (1436-37 CE) that, without electricity, circulates fresh and cool air through multi-story structures. An example from the United Arab Emirates indicates how the idea spread. The image group additionally has historic to contemporary mud brick architecture from Egypt and Yemen. Mud brick insulates interiors from excessive heat and cold, uses inexpensive local resources, and can been crafted into a multitude of styles, including quasi-Rococo and neo-Classical in some Yemeni examples. Images of the Alhambra in Spain, Bagh-e Fin in Iran, and the Sahrij Madrassa in Morocco display architects’ and engineers’ use of water channels, pools, and fountains to cool and hydrate. Medieval waterwheels and a recent qanat demonstrate more methods to harness natural power and supply water. In Egypt and Morocco, central courtyard planned structures and narrow urban streets flanked by windowless buildings cool private and public spaces while providing light, seclusion, and ventilation.

Artstor has helped me create digital bridges between students, subject matter, and Moodle in other ways. I have most appreciated the ability to create presentations in OIV 3.1. After organizing and downloading an image group to my laptop, OIV allows me to create a slide show quickly complete with captions and copyright information. The opportunity to choose compression levels means few size problems when uploading to the course website. Artstor’s varied content has also helped me be more efficient. I can find most of the images I need in one location without additional searches, imports, and scans.

Jacquelyn DeLombard

Beginnings Pre-School owner/teacher, Philadelphia Museum of Art Teacher Resource Center volunteer

Several weeks ago, the pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children from Beginnings Learning Center were at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) for one of the five lessons they attend during the school year. For the program, “Museum Looks and Picture Books,” PMA had sent the book, A Chair for my Mother, to school for the children to read prior to their visit, and now the class was following the guide to the American Wing to look at and discuss chairs. All of a sudden a child yelled, “Look! There’s Chuck Close! I want to go look at the rectangles and squares!”

Mark Rothko, No. 13 (White, Red on Yellow)1958. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Jean (Hans) Arp, Objects Arranged According to the Law of Chance, 1930. The MoMA. © 2009 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

ordered by Sultan Mehmed II, Topkapi Palace; Outer Court; Tiled Kiosk interior,Istanbul, Turkey, 1473. Image and original data provided by Walter B. Denny

Various quiltmakers, Surprise Quilt Presented to Mary A. Grow, 1856. American Folk Art Museum

Obviously the children not only knew their shapes, but also were very familiar with Chuck Close, who had previously been the artist of the month in their classroom, and thanks to Artstor’s zoomable images were very aware of the shapes he used in his work.

Children are taught to recognize and classify objects around them according to the attributes of shape, size, and color. These are the basics for nearly all learning that follows: writing, reading, mathematics, and even common household tasks like matching their socks or putting away their toys. For years preschool teachers have collected picture files from magazines, calendars and discarded posters and artwork because, next to a concrete object, an image is the clearest way to teach a young child something new. With the images from Artstor, the teacher is able to use works of art to teach very young children the simplest concepts of shape, size, and color, and continue to the more complex as children are ready for additional attributes or combinations thereof. At the same time, the children are almost incidentally learning the names of the works of art and their creators.

With the images projected in front of them, they can create their own shapes in a variety of media: paint, shaving cream, chocolate pudding, or catsup. They can compare what they see in the images to things found in their own classroom: rectangular windows, circular tables, and the rhythm band triangle. On the way home they will see traffic signs and understand what they mean by the shape long before they can read the words. (Of course everything in the preschool environment is labeled, giving them the opportunity to compare the word to the object.) So when the children recognized the Chuck Close painting AND the shapes in it at the museum, the teacher knew they really understood what they had been taught.

This essay was a 2011 Artstor Travel Awards winner.