New CLIR/Mellon Report on Museum Policies for Open Access to Images

In June 2013, the Council of Library and Information Resources in conjunction with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation published the report Images of Works of Art in Museum Collections: The Experience of Open Access. The report, written by Kristin Kelly, examined the policies, websites, and procedures of 11 large museums to get determine the state of open access to images.

The report has been added to our web page about Copyright Resources for Academic Publishing, which provides a list of general guides and resources as well as lists repositories that have copyright-free or copyright-lenient policies towards letting users download high quality image files of works of art. We try to keep this web page up-to-date, so if you’re aware of any collections that should be included, please don’t hesitate to let us know!

Round-Up of Fashion and Textile Resources

The Museum at FIT has a comprehensive list of Costume and Textile Collections Online, with annotations about what you’ll expect to find in the database and other information about each particular collection. Their list includes collections from all over the world and highlights some of the best images of textiles and garments online.

In addition to these websites, there are several other collections and databases that could be useful for researching fashion, textile, and costume:

In LUNA:

In ARTstor:

At the University of Chicago Library

Image credit: Elsa Schiaparelli. Doll, Fashion (Evening Ensemble), 1949. Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of Syndicat de la Couture de Paris; Photographed by Lolly Koon. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

ICFA’s 16mm Film Collection Online

The Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington, D.C. recently digitized fourteen 16mm films from its collection. The 14 films include footage of the Dumbarton Oaks grounds from the mid-1920s to the 1940s, as well as films made by the Byzantine Institute during the 1930s and 1940s that document conservation efforts on site at the Red Sea Monastery of Saint Anthony (Egypt), Hagia Sophia (Istanbul), and Kariye Camii (Istanbul). Several of the films are in color, giving viewers a chance to see “the process of cleaning, restoration, and preservation in great detail, as well as the quality and visual impression of the mosaics in their most shining state.”

The digitized films have been made available through the video streaming service Vimeo, and can be embedded into websites.

For more information, explore the Moving Image Collection at Dumbarton Oaks and the collection accompanying archival materials in The Byzantine Institute and Dumbarton Oaks Fieldwork Records and Papers.

Via ICFA Blog

Balboa Park Online Commons

 The Balboa Park Online Commons features more than 20,000 images of unique materials from 7 San Diego museums: the Mingei International Museum, the Museum of Photographic Arts, the San Diego Air and Space Museum, the San Diego Museum of Art, the San Diego Museum of Man, the San Diego Natural History Museum, and the Timken Museum of Art.

This unified digital collection allows users to keyword search to retrieve results across institutions or to browse by museum, “featured sets” (thematic groupings of objects), or by user sets. Users can create their own set or collection of objects by creating an account on the website, and there is also a feature to download a PDF of the object record.

For more information, check out the Balboa Park Online Commons.

Via PetaPixel

 

Tate Guide to Modern Art Terms

In 2009, the Tate published The Tate Guide to Modern Art Terms and followed it with an iPad and iPhone app released in March 2012. The app defines more than 300 terms pertaining to modern art themes, movements, media, and art practices, and many definitions are illustrated with artwork examples.

The app interface allows users to search for terms or browse by image gallery or category. Users can also create a list of “favorite” art terms.

To learn more about the Tate Guide to Modern Art Terms, check out the iTunes App Store, the Tate, or visit the VRC to try it on our iPad. You can also browse the physical copy in the Regenstein reference section.

A Van Gogh Research Round-Up

With the conclusion of an eight-year long research project, Vincent van Gogh has been in the news quite a bit recently. In 2005, the van Gogh museum teamed up with Shell and the Netherland’s Cultural Heritage Agency to research the materials, tools, techniques, and working processes of the artist. The website for the research project, Van Gogh’s Studio Practice, describes contains blog posts about how the researchers approached their work and describes the aims of their research. The results of the project were not earth-shattering, but the small surprises they discovered do deepen our understanding of van Gogh’s works and his psyche. The most talked about new discovery is the fact that The Bedroom was originally painted with violet walls, but since the red pigment of the paint faded, we know the work as having blue walls.

The new exhibition at the van Gogh Museum benefits from results of this lengthy research project, and is called Van Gogh at Work (May 1, 2013–January 12, 2014). The show will contain 200 works by van Gogh as well as some contemporary artists, as well as archival materials such as letters, sketchbooks, and the artist’s palette and paint tubes. The show will also include a digital re-creation of The Bedroom to show how it would have looked with the original violet walls.

The Van Gogh Museum also has a web portal for van Gogh’s letters (written and received) that contains facsimiles, transcriptions, and detailed object information of some 900 letters and 25 miscellaneous loose sheets or drafts. You can browse the collection by period, correspondent, place, or limit your results to letters that contain sketches. Simple and advanced search features are also available. The website also contains a wealth of contextual essays, biographical information, and research tools including the publication history of van Gogh’s letters, a chronology, and detailed bibliographies of the individual letters. A few years ago, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam released an app called Yours, Vincent: The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh, which contains digitized versions of van Gogh’s letters, sketches, and paintings as well as audio and video contextual clips.

Via ArtNews and the New York Times. For more information about van Gogh’s archival presence, visit Vincent van Gogh, The Letters or the Yours, Vincent app. You can always stop by the VRC to check it out, too!

Image: Vincent van Gogh. Self-portrait with a Straw Hat (verso: The Potato Peeler), probably 1887. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 67.187.70a. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

ARTstor Introduces Saved Searches

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

The Art of the Sublime at the Tate

The Art of the Sublime is a research module that explores the concept of the sublime during several artistic movements, including the Baroque, the Romantic, the Victorian, and the modern. The project contains essays and case studies, illustrated by works of art from the Tate’s collection as well as literary examples. More about the project:

In 2008 Tate initiated a project to explore the history and current relevance of the sublime, particularly as reflected in Tate’s collection of historic and modern works of art. Supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the project embraced a range of activities and outputs, including an exhibition and display at Tate Britain, conferences and specially made films.

To explore the project, visit the Art of the Sublime.

Reel to Real: Ethnomusicology and Sound at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford

The Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford has recently released Reel to Real, a digital collection pertaining to sound and video from ethnomusicology research. “The content of the recordings ranges from spirits singing in the rainforests of the Central African Republic to children’s songs and games in playgrounds throughout Europe.”

The website features playlists of curated material along with archival photographs taken at the same time the recordings were made.

To learn more, explore the Reel to Real collection.