The Artstor Digital Library is replete with images from nature: arks of animals, a plethora of plants, and the dazzling spectacles of the earth. Meticulous renderings of animal and botanical species from classical times through the onset of photography may be studied alongside striking contemporary photographs. Illustrations of animal, plant and mineral specimens are also available as well as records of scientific fieldwork, and larger ecosystems.
What’s new in the Artstor Digital Library?
Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields
Contributor:
Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields
Content:
The Museum has contributed 4,254 additional images of its encyclopedic collection, bringing the total in Artstor to nearly 6,400.* 5,000 years of global history illustrated by works of art, design, and ritual objects, as well as views from the Newfields campus: gardens, landmarks, and contemporary installations.
Relevance:
Art, culture, and history from around the globe, notably Africa, America, Asia, and Europe
*Totals may vary depending on domestic or international release.
Frank Cancian. Shooting back, Juan Vásquez (Pig) family (Another Place). 1971. Black-and-white photograph. © Frank Cancian. Image and data provided by University of California Irvine Libraries.
Photographer and anthropologist Frank Cancian has been documenting international communities for more than fifty years. His recent contribution to the Artstor Digital Library, in collaboration with University of California Irvine Libraries, traces his fieldwork from the Italian hill town of Lacedonia during the 1950s to the Maya of Zinacantán, Chiapas during the ’60s and ’70s, and to domestic workers in Orange County, California from 2000 to 2002.
What’s new in the Artstor Digital Library?
Collection:
Frank Cancian Documentary Photograph Archive
Contributor:
University of California Irvine Libraries, Photographer/anthropologist Frank Cancian, Professor Emeritus, UC Irvine
Content:
Approximately 175 photographs spanning Cancian’s career:
The work documents communities in California, Mexico, and Italy, including house cleaners in Orange County (2001-2002); the Maya of Zinacantán, Chiapas (1960-1971), and the townspeople of Lacedonia, a hill town in Avellino (1957).
Relevance:
Economic Anthropology and Social History, Immigration and Human Geography, Photography
Attributed to Jean de Touyl. Reliquary Shrine from the convent of the Poor Clares at Buda. ca. 1325-50. Image and data courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Cloisters Collection.
Relics—bits of bone, clothing, shoes or dust—from Christian martyrs became popular in Western Christianity in the Middle Ages. The cult of relics dates back to the second and third centuries, when martyrs were persecuted and often killed in ways that fragmented the body, which was taboo in Roman society. The intention was to desecrate the body through execution and burning. But, Caroline Walker Bynum and Paula Gerson state that by the “late third to early fourth centuries the fragments of the martyrs had come to be revered as loci of power and special access to the divine” and, by the Second Council of Nicea in 787, relics were required for the consecration of altars.
It may come as a surprise that the Artstor Digital Library is flush with fashion. For a dose of glamour, how about a stroll down the red carpet, exploring designs through the ages?
Let’s begin with the ancients: In early dynastic Egypt, the beadnet sheath dress is often depicted in paintings and statuary. A faience (sintered-quartz ceramic) dress from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, reconstructed from thousands of beads found in a burial site, is our oldest surviving example from approximately 2551–2528 BC (this particular garment was used to dress a mummy). In life, these decorative nets were probably worn over plain linen sheaths, giving an effect that approximates the elegant lines of a deftly carved offering figure from the tomb of Meketre (c. 1981-1975 BCE). A similar silhouette is achieved five millenia later in an evening gown by the pioneering American designer Norman Norell through the layering of a peach satin under slip and black rhinestone beaded netting (c. 1963).
The CRAFT: Babka and Beyond public collection features 28 interviews conducted with people connected to the production and use of grain within the Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area in Western Pennsylvania. The stories feature bakers, bakery owners, farmers, and even a Benedictine Monk talking about how grains contribute to larger themes of identity, community, and social capital — whether in agriculture, bread making, or baking.
Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Return of the Hunters. 1565. Oil on oak panel. Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna. Image and data provided by Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives/ART RESOURCE, N.Y. Photo Erich Lessing.
In the summer of 1675, Madame de Sévigné, a doyenne of letters, protested from Paris: “It is horribly cold… we think the behaviour of the sun and of the seasons has changed,” prescient witness to the phenomenon now referred to as the Little Ice Age. Over the last century, scientists and historians have gathered evidence of a prolonged period of global climatic volatility from the thirteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, culminating in a cooling trend in Northern Europe during the 1600s — frigid winters and wet, cold summers. As we bear our share of winter hardships, it might be comforting to gain some historical and pictorial perspective on the polar vortex.
Andy Warhol. Car. Ink and Dr. Martin’s Aniline Dye on Strathmore paper. Artwork and Image © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
Thanks to an additional contribution from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, we are now able to present a fuller picture of the artist’s early career in New York City.
Bob Gore. Woman with gourd, Kwanzaa celebration. 2006. Image and data provided by Bob Gore.
Our thanks to New York photographer Bob Gore, who contributed approximately 300 images from his portfolio to the Artstor Digital Library, documenting diverse expressions of faith across the United States and in the Caribbean region.*
