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Category: Digital Image Collections

Open Image Collections for Hispanic Heritage Month

Posted on by Mcnamara, Keri

Sept.15th-Oct 15th is recognized as Hispanic Heritage month.  The JSOR daily newsletter recently published an article that listed links to freely available images and other primary source materials from the JSTOR Open Community Collections and Artstor Public Collections. The full article can be viewed here

Included are:

Wofford College: The Lindsay Webster Collection of Cuban Posters

The collection features approximately 350 works created in Cuba from the revolution through the 2000s.

Dartmouth: Ediciones Vigia Collection

In 1985, Cuban poet Alfredo Zaldivar and artist Rolando Estevez established a literary forum for a group of Cuban artists in Matanzas, Cuba, and called it Ediciones Vigía. For over twenty years now, the goal for these artists has been to create beautiful handmade books.

Albright College David Schwartz’ Collection Nicaraguan Revolution

David Schwartz visited Nicaragua and took thousands of photographs during the period of the Sandinista revolution.

Rice University: Rio de Janeiro Iconography

Rice University: Brasilia Iconography

Rice University in Houston is sharing two fascinating collections of iconography around the second and third most-populated cities in Brazil:

City College Dominican Library First Blacks in the Americas

City College: Fighting for Democracy: Dominican Veterans from World War II

The City College of New York, home to the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, offers several collections related to Dominican history and Dominican-Americans.

Photo:
Part of a collection of handmade books published by Ediciones Vigía under the auspices of the Cuban Ministry of Culture, from Dartmouth: Ediciones Vigia Collection

 

George Floyd and Anti Racist Street Art

Posted on by Mcnamara, Keri

The George Floyd and Anti Racist Street Art Database is a new project documenting street art with anti racist themes emerging the movement demanding social justice that was part of the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. The database project began at the college of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Thomas, Saint Paul, Minnesota.

There is a total of 8 collections to browse and the database is intended for educational and research purposes.

The Public Domain Review

Posted on by Mcnamara, Keri

 The Public Domain Review website aims to share materials, specifically those that have fallen into the public domain.  The site features Collections and Essays and can be searched by medium, time, or tags. They have images, books, film, and audio.

As their website explains, The Public Domain Review is an online journal and not-for-profit project dedicated to the exploration of curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas.
In particular, as our name suggests, the focus is on works which have now fallen into the public domain, that vast commons of out-of-copyright material that everyone is free to enjoy, share, and build upon without restriction.

Screenshot taken of  the Public Domain Review Website

Art Institute of Chicago offers free High-Resolution images

Posted on by Mcnamara, Keri

The Art Institute of Chicago has opened up much of its digital archive to the public. Now, website users have unrestricted access to over 44,000 images  under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license.
View the collection here

What this means, according to the Art Institute, is that these images can be downloaded for free on the artwork’s pages. In addition, the Institute has also enhanced image viewing capabilities on object pages, allowing viewers to see the works in greater detail.

You can explore the cryerson and Burnham Archives, search by architect or artist, or by city.

There is also a Visual Artist Oral History Archive under development. Suggested topics for the interviews include:
academic study, family background, cultural influences, gallery affiliations, exhibitions, awards, artistic influences and the role of Chicago in their work and career.  Explore the oral history archive here

Screenshot of Art Institute of Chicago website

 

375,000 public domain images now available

Posted on by Mcnamara, Keri

The Met and ArtStor have announced the Met is sharing open content for 375,000 images of public domain works in the ArtStor database.

Users can choose a theme or a subject in art history and gather a sampling across cultures. In portraiture, a line can be drawn from antiquity through today, and illustrated with highlights
Other advantages to the digital collection include thousands of fragile drawings and manuscripts that have been restricted or unavailable are now exposed to scholars and students. In addition, detail and alternate views present objects in their entirety, including surfaces and features that are hidden in a conventional exhibition context. The images can be viewed when you are logged in to ArtStor.

British Library offers over 1 million free vintage images for download

Posted on by Mcnamara, Keri

If you need some vintage visual inspiration – or a real antique elements for an illustration, design or motion project – check out the British Library’s collection of over a million copyright-free images that essentially you can do whatever you like with. The centuries-old copyright-free images range from book illustrations to photos, and cover everything from flowers to cycling and children’s books to maps.

MoMA Releases Digital Archive of over 30,000 Exhibition Images

Posted on by Mcnamara, Keri

The Museum of Modern Art has announced that it has released an extensive digital archive that chronicles its exhibitions from when the museum opened its doors in 1929 to today.
The archive currently features 3,542 exhibitions and is continually being updated. More than 33,000 installation photographs as well as  documents such as press releases, checklists, catalogues, and artist lists are available for viewing. There are many different ways to search the archive such as by exhibition name, dates, and type.

You can access the archive at  http://moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/history

image below is a screenshot of the  MOMA archive

 

Balboa Commons

Posted on by Mcnamara, Keri

The online Balboa Park Commons is open to the public.

The web-based resource developed by the Balboa Park Online Collaborative with funding from the Legler Benbough Foundation and the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services includes more than 20,000 “rare and significant” materials from seven Balboa Park institutions.

The website has a video to explain how to use the Balboa Commons

According to an article in the Union Tribune the website should be particularly useful for educators, scholars and researchers (representatives from each group were involved in the development of the website). It allows registered users to download images for classroom or other educational, noncommercial use. But the site should also appeal to just about anyone who is curious.

The institutions currently included on the site are:
Mingei International Museum
the Museum of Photographic Arts
the Timken, the San Diego Museum of Art
Air &Space Museum
Museum of Man and the
Natural History Museum.

Bauhaus Special Collection images available online

Posted on by Mcnamara, Keri
Home to one of the first and largest collections devoted to the Bauhaus, Harvard Art Museums now has a new, online resource that makes it easier to navigate these holdings. Over 32,000 Bauhaus-related objects of a variety of media are now easily searchable through the Bauhaus Special Collection by keyword, title, artist, medium, date, and theme.

 The Harvard Art Museums hold one of the first and largest collections relating to the Bauhaus, the 20th century’s most influential school of art and design. Active during the years of Germany’s Weimar Republic (1919–33), the Bauhaus aimed to unite artists, architects, and craftsmen in the utopian project of designing a new world

The Corning Museum of Glass

Posted on by Mcnamara, Keri
The Museum’s Glass Collection showcases more than 35 centuries of glass artistry. Their website features an extensive searchable collection with categories such as beads, science and technology, modern, and ancient.
Furthermore the library website hosts a collection of its own and collections of videos, audio, and virtual books and is a great resource for exploring more about glass.
For those of us who love looking at old pyrex patterns there is a great online collection
Screenshot from the Corning Museum of Glass Website