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A new image database documents world art, architecture, design, and visual culture
Northwestern faculty, researchers, and students now have access to an art image database which combines the content of several highly respected collections, including the Mellon International Dunhuang Collection, directed and assembled by Sarah E. Fraser, associate professor and chair of Northwestern’s Art History Department. The ARTstor Digital Library provides access to Fraser’s high-resolution images of Buddhist wall paintings and sculpture from Dunhuang, China, as well as to 300,000 digital images of world art, architecture, design, and other forms of visual culture.
Founded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and available through University Library, ARTstor documents the artistic traditions of many time periods and cultures, providing images of important paintings, architecture, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, and design. ARTstor combines images and related data from the following collections:
· The Image Gallery. A collection of more than 200,000 images of world art and culture, created in response to representative teaching needs.
· The Art History Survey Collection. An art history survey collection comprised of 4,000 images from 10 standard art history texts.
· The Carnegie Arts of the United States Collection. A widely used collection of images documenting the history of American art, architecture, visual and material culture.
· The Huntington Archive of Asian Art. A broad photographic overview of Asian art from 3000 B.C. to present.
· The Illustrated Bartsch. A collection derived from a standard, multivolume reference source, The Illustrated Bartsch, which contains Old Master European prints from the 15th to the 19th centuries.
· The Mellon International Dunhuang Archive. A complete source of images documenting the architecture and wall paintings of the Buddhist cave shrines in Dunhuang, a key site on China’s ancient Silk Route. Working in collaboration with NUIT Academic Technologies, Professor Fraser used interactive photography, laser technology, and metadata to build this extensive image collection.
· The MoMA Architecture and Design Collection. A comprehensive collection of digital images representing the collections of the Department of Architecture and Design of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
In addition, ARTstor recently reached an agreement with the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University, to distribute 30,000 high quality digital images from the Black in Western Art Research Project and Photo Archive. This research initiative is dedicated to investigating how people of African descent have been perceived and represented in art. The archive includes images from a prize-winning, four-volume series titled The Image of the Black in Western Art.
“We’re excited to join ARTstor as a charter member and to offer ARTstor’s comprehensive and specialized collections to the University community,” says Russ Clement, head of the Library’s Art Collection. “As the service develops and collections expand, ARTstor will become an indispensable image database for the study of visual resources.”
ARTstor is designed with software tools that allow users to zoom in on images, view two images side-by-side for comparison purposes, save groups of images online, add personal notes, and create presentations. “ARTstor has something for everyone,” says Clement. “Undergraduates can select, examine in minute detail, save, and download hundreds of thousands of digital reproductions of the world’s greatest art, designs, and architecture. Graduate students and faculty can customize image groups for presentations, research, and exams.”
Northwestern students and faculty can access ARTstor at http://www.artstor.org. To enter the digital library, users must click on the “Search and Browse for Images” link at the left side of the screen. One-time registration is required for full access to the database’s many features. For a Quick Start Guide and FAQs, click on “Help” at the top of the ARTstor page.
For more information on the ARTstor Digital Library, contact Russ Clement at 847-467-6471 or r-clement@northwestern.edu.