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Édouard Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass was the scandal of the year in France when it was exhibited in the 1863 Salon des Refusés, and Olympia was greeted with the same shock and indignation in the Paris Salon of 1865 (a journalist wrote, “If the canvas of the Olympia was not destroyed, it is only […]

I recently came across the BBC adaptation of Émile Zola’s The Ladies’ Paradise and, as a self-confessed Francophile, couldn’t wait to begin watching it. A few episodes in, though, my enthusiasm dimmed when it became clear that the series didn’t faithfully follow the book. Zola’s novel is, at heart, an acerbic commentary on consumer culture, […]

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has awarded Artstor and five collaborating institutions a three-year National Leadership Grant, with an award of $749,418. The funds will be used to support the development of free software to enable museums to contribute digital image collections for open access through the Digital Public Library of America […]

Yes, of course we’re watching Game of Thrones. The TV series based on a still unfinished (!) series of books by George R. R. Martin brings a new meaning to the word epic. With more than 40 main cast members and complicated storylines for each, it’s a wonder anyone can keep track of what’s going on. […]

I continue to be amazed by the possibilities for teaching the new Advanced Placement® Art History Curriculum with Artstor. As we gather images to place in our growing AP® Art History Teaching Resources and draft the accompanying essays and links, I sometimes pause to marvel at how the curriculum interconnects. Those key works of art and […]

Have you heard about Artstor’s Curriculum Guides project? Instructors around the world are curating sets of images from the Digital Library as an aid in teaching a variety of subjects. Would you like to share your work with colleagues at institutions around the world? We are looking for faculty collaborators who teach in areas such […]

We recently wrote about Slow Art Day, and were quite happy to finally try it ourselves this past weekend. To recap, a recent study estimated that museumgoers spend an average of just 17 seconds looking at an individual artwork. To combat this habit, Phil Terry, CEO of Collaborative Gain, started a movement in which a volunteer host […]

  Artstor has recently released more than 1,100 photographs of Central Park from the Foundation for Landscape Studies in the Digital Library. We celebrated the occasion by speaking with Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, who founded the organization in 2005 and serves as its president. Ms. Rogers is a pivotal figure in the history of Central Park. She […]

This post has been updated to include new information about Artstor’s public collections, formerly made available on Shared Shelf Commons. The Delmarva Peninsula gets its name from the three states it’s a part of: DELaware, MARyland, and VirginiA. You could say Delmarva is technically an island, since you have to cross one of five bridges […]

Easter is around the corner, and with it comes the inevitable barrage of images of the Easter bunny. The strange thing is that the only mentions of rabbits in the Bible are prohibitions against eating them in the Old Testament. So what gives? The underlying idea is that rabbits are connected to the idea of rebirth—not only […]