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Blog Category: Highlights

May 4, 2021

Spring into Artstor

Painting of field

Grant Wood. Spring turning. 1936. Oil on masonite. Image and data from Reynolda House Museum of American Art.

Welcome to all new participants and welcome back to old friends. For a quick refresher on tips and tools, new content, and our growth at Artstor, check out these handy resources to get the lay of the land:

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April 13, 2021

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.

Jon Schueler. Next Summer. 1966. Oil on canvas. Image and data from the Jon Schueler Estate.

“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.

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April 6, 2021

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

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March 3, 2021

Witnessing Women’s History

Young women with sign 'Self Supporting Women.'

Unknown. Young women with sign ‘Self Supporting Women.’ May, 1914. Gelatin silver print. Image and data from The Schlesinger History of Women in America Collection.

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.

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February 17, 2021

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.)

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December 10, 2020

Looking back at 2020

Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse. Father Time on a Globe; design for a clock. 19th century

Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse. Father Time on a Globe; design for a clock. 19th century. Image and data provided by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. CC0 1.0

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.

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December 1, 2020

Hilary Mantel and the court of Henry VIII: putting pictures to words

Painting of Henry VIII of England

Hans Holbein the Younger. Henry VIII of England. 1536. Oil on oak. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Image and data from Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

Painting of Thomas Cromwell

Hans Holbein the Younger. Thomas Cromwell. c. 1532-1533. Oil on oak. Image and data from The Frick Collection.

 

 

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.

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October 30, 2020

Vote!

“Someone struggled for your right to vote. Use it.”

— Susan B. Anthony

Sven Torfinn. People wait in line to cast their votes. 2011.

Sven Torfinn. People wait in line to cast their votes. 2011. On 9th January 2011 Southern Sudan’s people began voting in a referendum on whether to become independent from the North, part of a peace agreement which was signed in 2005. Image and data from Panos Pictures. © Sven Torfinn / Panos Pictures.

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.

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October 8, 2020

New: Open Artstor: Images from the History of Medicine (National Library of Medicine)

University of Virginia Hospital Operating Amphitheater. 1914.

University of Virginia Hospital Operating Amphitheater. 1914. Photoprint. Image and data from Images from the History of Medicine (National Library of Medicine). Public Domain Mark 1.0.

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.

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August 25, 2020

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

Tabernacle. Mexico, second half of the 18th century

Tabernacle. Mexico, second half of the 18th century. Image and original data provided Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros.

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.

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