All Things Visual: The University of Chicago Visual Resources Center

ARTstor and the Guggenheim recently released more than 5,000 installation views from some of the Guggenheim’s landmark exhibitions from the 1990s to the present. In addition, 1,000 installation views from the Guggenheim locations in Bilbao and Venice will be added. 200 contemporary and historic images of the three museums’ architecture will join the installation views.

Search Tip: There are many other installation and exhibition views available in ARTstor, and to search for them, try adding different keywords to your search terms, including “installation view” or “exhibition [and the exhibition's title].”

Via ARTstor Blog

ARTstor recently added a feature to save searches within the  ARTstor Digital Library. The theory behind this feature is that with ARTstor’s growing collections of content, it’s highly likely that additional results for your search parameters will become available in the future. By saving your search, you can quickly get an updated pool of results when you run it again.

In order to use this feature, you must be logged into your ARTstor account.  For more information on creating an ARTstor account, click here. ARTstor describes how to save your searches:

After you perform a search, you will see an option to Save this search in the upper right of the thumbnail page of search results. Click on it, then click Save and enter a name for your saved search. You can save up to 30 searches.

To run a saved search record, click My saved searches near the search box on the front page of the Digital Library or on a search results page.

Done with a particular saved search? To delete it, click on My saved searches, then click on the X next to the search you want to delete. You’ll see a prompt asking if you want to delete it; click Yes and you’re finished.

Via ARTstor Blog

From ARTstor:

Please be advised that we will be performing an upgrade to the ARTstor Digital Library on Tuesday, April 16th between 6:00 AM and 1:00 PM EST. During this time, users will be able to access the Digital Library but may experience some slowness. This upgrade will eliminate the need for Java in the ARTstor Digital Library and single image downloads will be delivered in Zip files (find out why here).

If you have any difficulty with ARTstor on Tuesday morning, we suggest using LUNA for your image needs. If you are having problems with ARTstor after 1 pm EST, please contact userservices@artstor.org.

Good news for ARTstor image users! ARTstor has eliminated the need for the Java plugin to download images from their digital library. ARTstor writes:

After our update, users who download single image files will receive a zip file that contains a JPEG image and an HTML file with the associated metadata. In addition to removing the need for Java, using zip will allow ARTstor to pursue other feature enhancements, such as additional options for image group downloads.

Mac users should have a problem, but PC users might have to install software to unzip the image folder. ARTstor suggests using 7Zip if you’re one of the affected users. Please feel free to contact the VRC if you’re having any issues downloading images from ARTstor.

Via ARTstor Blog

From ARTstor:

Please be advised that ARTstor will be performing an upgrade to our systems beginning on Saturday, January 26th at 11:00 PM EST and concluding on Sunday, January 27th at 1:00 PM EST. While the upgrade is being performed, users will not have access to the ARTstor Digital Library.

During the outage, please consider using LUNA instead for your image needs. If you experience difficulties with ARTstor after 1:00 PM EST on Sunday, try clearing your cache. If that doesn’t work, please contact userservices@artstor.org.

Welcome back to campus! During winter quarter 2013, you may notice some differences in available ARTstor image collections. Due to changes in the structure of the ARTstor image hosting program, the University of Chicago will not continue hosting its Visual Resources Center or Archivision Library collections there at this time. Hosted images previously saved to image groups and folders will no longer appear in those places. However, all images from the Visual Resources Center Collection and Archivision Library Base Collection remain active in LUNA. The university’s subscription to the 1-million+ images in ARTstor’s main digital library will continue without interruption.

Please contact the VRC with any questions.

It’s been reported that Mac users are having problems downloading images from the ARTstor Digital Library due to an outdated or disabled version of Java.

If you are using Apple OSX 10.7 or later, you will need to install the latest version of Java and enable it on your browser. If you are using Mac OXX 10.5 or 10.6 and are unable to download images, Java may have been disabled, so all you have to do is re-enable it.

If you are encountering problems downloading images from ARTstor and these solutions aren’t helping, please do not hesitate to contact us!

Last summer we announced that the Renaissance Society Archive was made publicly available through LUNA, and now we are pleased to announce that as of this week, it is now available in ARTstor as well.

ARTstor and the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago are sharing nearly 2,400 images of contemporary art and exhibition installation views in the Digital Library. This collection features painting, sculpture, installation, video, performance, and multi-media work by seminal contemporary artists who exhibited at the Renaissance Society, including Nancy Spero, Raymond Pettibon, Francis Alÿs, Eva Hesse, Kerry James Marshall, Shahzia Sikander, and others.

From its opening in 1915, the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago has been a leading space for innovative contemporary art and programming, exhibiting important and challenging work by leading contemporary artists, often early in their careers, before they are shown in major museums and galleries.

You can view the collection in ARTstor or LUNA, and click here for more information on the ARTstor collection or about the Renaissance Society generally.

Via ARTstor Blog

Above image: Thomas Struth. Hörder Brückenstrasse, Dortmund, 1985. Exhibited at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago.

Did you know that you can export citations from ARTstor and import then into EndNote’s desktop citation management software? You can!

If you don’t already have EndNote desktop, you can download a trial license or purchase it through University of Chicago’s IT Services Solution Center at a discounted prince.

After you’ve installed EndNote and created a new citation library, you’ll need to download the ARTstor filter from  in order to install it in EndNote. Once the filter is installed, open the image group that you’d like to cite, and then go to Tools > Save citations for image group.

Next, go to Tools > View and Export Citations. Under Export Options, select “Directly Export Citations into EndNote.” At this point, you can choose to export all of the citations from the image group or make a selection. Click Go.

A small window will open asking whether you would like to save or open the file. Click Open. This will launch EndNote.

EndNote will ask if you want to save the citations to an existing library or create a new one. Select your choice. Another window will open, asking you to choose a filter—select the ARTstor filter you just installed so that the metadata from ARTstor will fall into the right fields in EndNote’s program. Your EndNote library will open with the newly imported citations.

You can add thumbnail images to EndNote records: After you’ve exported images from ARTstor, open a citation record, and click on the symbol for Charts to upload the image file. (If you attach the image file to the PDF section of the record, the file will be saved with the record but no thumbnail will appear).

For more information, visit the ARTstor page on Citing Images. If we can help with anything, or if you have any questions about managing image citations, please don’t hesitate to contact the VRC!

ARTstor has signed an Online Art Agreement (OLA) with Artists Rights Society (ARS) on behalf of six additional international visual arts organizations covering more than 10,000 new artists from six countries. This substantially expands the ARTstor Digital Library’s modern and contemporary artworks for subscribers.

The agreements cover the following affiliates of ARS:

VISCOPY – Australia

SODRAC – Canada

VBK – Austria

KUVASTO – Finland

SOMAAP – Mexico

AUTVIS – Brazil

Dr. Theodore Feder, President of the Artists Rights Society, said “We are very pleased to further expand our collaboration and to contribute to the many authorized images offered by ARTstor for the important purposes of teaching, research, and study.

Above: Jose Clemente Orozco, one of the artists to be included in this new agreement, photographed by Edward Weston.