All Things Visual: The University of Chicago Visual Resources Center

University of Chicago users now have trial access to the Paley Center for Media iCollection until February 28th. Please contact us for login information. The iCollection includes 15,000+ programs from the Paley Center’s collection. They are adding hundreds of new radio and television programs and advertisements each week as the collection is digitized.

The Prometheus Image Archive is also available to University of Chicago users on a trial basis until March 7th. See “Campus Login” at left and accept the Terms of Use for access.

prometheus is a digital image archive for Art and Cultural Sciences. prometheus enables the convenient search for images on a common user interface within different image archives, variable databases from institutes, research facilities and museums.

Please send feedback about these databases to the Visual Resources Center or to Nancy Spiegel, Bibliographer for Art and Cinema at Regenstein Library.

Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951 is the first authoritative study of sculptors, related businesses and trades investigated in the context of creative collaborations, art infrastructures, professional networks and cultural geographies. This database is the main outcome of the research and contains over 50,000 records about sculptural practice. The information has been entered so that the numerous connections between different areas of practice can be explored. To read more about the research programme click here or to view some sample searches click here.

A mobile interface is also available.

In 2006, the Met, MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Frick Collection teamed up to create NYARC: the New York Art Resources Consortium, a system which unites the resources and libraries of these institutions and makes them more accessible to both scholars and the general public. Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, NYARC seeks to extend library and archive resources, services, and programming to a wider audience, and to facilitate collaboration between leading art research institutions.

Through NYARC’s website you can access the 800,000-record ARCADE database, which serves as a cohesive online source for the combined holdings of the Frick, MoMA, and the Brooklyn Museum. There is also a portal for WATSONLINE, the online catalog for the Museum of Modern Art. Finally, links to news posts alert you to current projects like the JSTOR Auction Catalog Pilot Project and new holdings in the NYARC museums.

To view the New York Times’ profile of NYARC, refer to this article from March 14th, 2010.

This blog post was contributed by student staff member Emilia Mickevicius.

The Database of Virtual Art seeks to document and ultimately preserve the evolving field of digital installation art. The database is intended for both researchers and artists, and digital media artists are encouraged to post content themselves. The web-based resource is free and allows browsing by artist name as well as keyword. Works, literature, people, events and institutions may also be searched.

Pictured: The Living Web by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, 2002.

The first-ever English version of the Musée du Louvre Collections Database, Atlas, is now available online.

Atlas allows the direct online consultation of 35,000 works of art exhibited in the Louvre. Online visitors can access the basic information displayed on labels accompanying works in the museum, together with authoritative commentary and analysis by the curators and staff. Visitors can carry out simple or advanced searches by keyword, artist, title, inventory number, medium, technique, department or room. Recent acquisitions are also highlighted. Atlas allows visitors to create a personalized album. When printed, the selected works are grouped by location within the museum (wing and floor number).