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Blog Category: Highlights
Pleasurable and daunting: A wife’s work on her late husband’s archive
Art Historian Magda Salvesen, author of Artists’ Estates: Reputations in Trust, writes about the emotional aspect of her work as the curator of the estate of her husband, the American painter Jon Schueler.
“Art must take reality by surprise,” the writer Françoise Sagan said in a 1965 interview. With the arrival of Covid-19, however, I have frequently found myself considering the reversal of these terms.
The sudden closure of a Jon Schueler exhibition in March 2020, two postponements of other shows, the absence of studio visits by potential clients or gallery reps, and the inability of my assistants to return any time soon ironically created what I had long desired: open time, month after month, to work on the Jon Schueler Archive.
A is for Animal: A is for April and the prevention of cruelty
JSTOR is offering up a beastly alphabet in observance of this month, dedicated by the ASPCA to the prevention of cruelty to animals. You may be surprised at the creatures we can conjure.
A is for Anteater long in the nose
B is for Bear who wanders the globe
C is for Cat, because it must be
Witnessing Women’s History
In 1909, we honored the first International Women’s Day. That day has extended from a week to a month in many countries – the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia. In celebration of this hopeful rite of March, we have identified some of the resources, both licensed and public, that JSTOR provides on the inspiring topic of women.
The secret lives of cats
Throughout the months of lockdown our beloved felines have enhanced the quality of our diminished lives, and we, in turn, have come to know them a little better. My colleagues have generously shared portraits of their best feline friends and we have taken the liberty of juxtaposing them to works represented in JSTOR. (Be sure and check out the canine version of this post designed to honor our dog friends.)
Looking back at 2020
Needless to say, 2020 has been a year like no other, and it’s marked everything we did at Artstor. We tried to help institutions and students meet the challenges of remote teaching, released new content — with a strong emphasis on freely accessible Open Artstor collections — and tried to brighten things up on our blog. Here are some of our highlights from a very difficult year and one thing we look forward to next year.
Hilary Mantel and the court of Henry VIII: putting pictures to words
More than 3 million of the images in Artstor are now discoverable alongside JSTOR’s vast scholarly content, providing you with primary sources and vital critical and historical background on one platform. This blog post is one of a series demonstrating how the two resources complement each other, providing a richer, deeper research experience in all disciplines.
The Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel presents the Tudor court in arresting, vivid prose1. Nonetheless, the temptation to illustrate Mantel’s account is irresistible given her invocation of the painter “Hans” (the actual historical figure of Hans Holbein the Younger, 1497/8-1543). He appears frequently in her narrative and is her acknowledged muse: Simply put, in the author’s own words: “He [Holbein] peoples the early Tudor court for us.”2 Since Holbein the Younger was so prolific and precise as a portraitist,3 his likenesses provide a visual Who’s Who to Mantel’s narrative. Below, we have coupled some of Holbein’s most penetrating portrayals of the key players with the descriptions of the author.
Vote!
“Someone struggled for your right to vote. Use it.”
— Susan B. Anthony
As the United States holds its 2020 presidential elections, we rounded up a selection of images that reflect the importance of voting–throughout history and around the world. We encourage you to cast a vote and make your voice heard.
New: Open Artstor: Images from the History of Medicine (National Library of Medicine)
Artstor has published nearly 42,000 images from the U. S. National Library of Medicine’s Images from the History of Medicine, freely available to all for reuse under the Creative Commons Public Domain mark. Open Artstor: Images from the History of Medicine (National Library of Medicine) is part of an initiative to aggregate open museum, library, and archive collections across disciplines on the Artstor platform.
Teaching Hispanic Heritage Month with Artstor
September 15 to October 15 is Hispanic Heritage Month in the U.S. While the name might be the focus of some debate, we welcome the reminder to explore and celebrate the vibrant cultures of Mexico, Central and South America, and the Hispanic Caribbean. The Artstor Digital Library offers many collections that specialize in or are substantially devoted to Latin American topics; here is a selection to get you started.
Art
Not surprisingly, Artstor is strong in collections concentrating on the arts of Latin America, such as Jacqueline Barnitz: Modern Latin American Art (University of Texas at Austin) (Artstor | JSTOR) which features modern art from Mexico and ten other Caribbean, Central, and South American countries; and Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (Artstor), including colonial, modern, and contemporary Latin American art.