About Derek Churchill

Derek Churchill is the Director of the Visual Resources Collection at the University of Delaware.

Brewer Bookplates in Artstor

Posted on December 16, 2014 by Derek Churchill

William P. Barrett, The Library of George Frederick Ernest Albert Prince of Wales, 1904 (UD Library, William Augustus Brewer Bookplate Collection)

William P. Barrett, The Library of George Frederick Ernest Albert Prince of Wales, 1904, University of Delaware Library, Newark

The University of Delaware Library’s own William Augustus Brewer Bookplate Collection is the subject of a recent post in the Artstor Blog. The story highlights the Library’s collection of well over 12,000 bookplates dating from the 18th through 20th centuries, all of which can be viewed in Artstor.

The Brewer bookplates represent just one of many image collections from the UD Library that are available in Artstor. And even for non-Artstor subscribers, the Library’s collections are made freely available to anyone through the open-access Shared Shelf Commons.

Art Museums in the News

Posted on November 30, 2014 by Derek Churchill

Tullio Lombardo, Adam, ca. 1490-1495, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Here is a roundup of some recent stories from the museum world:

A “grand bargain” appears to have saved the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts, which was in danger of being sold off to help pay the massive debts of the bankrupt city of Detroit.
A Renaissance statue of Adam by the Venetian sculptor Tullio Lombardo has been put back on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art after more than a decade of conservation. The marble statue had shattered in 2002 when its pedestal buckled beneath its weight.
The Harvard Art Museums have reopened after a six-year expansion. The new complex, designed by architect Renzo Piano, unites the three museums (Fogg Museum, Busch-Reisinger Museum, and Arthur M. Sackler Museum) under a single roof.
Billionaire Jerry Perenchio is donating his collection of 19th- and 20th-century art to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
After the controversial deaccessioning of several works from its collection, the Delaware Art Museum has retired its debt and announced that it has received a number of new gifts.

OIV 4.0 Now Available

Posted on October 31, 2014 by Derek Churchill

OIV logo Artstor has released a new version of its Offline Image Viewer (OIV). For Mac users, OIV 4.0 is compatible with OSX Mavericks (version 10.9), but it is not yet compatible with Apple’s newest operating system, OSX Yosemite (version 10.10). So if you use OIV, I would recommend waiting to upgrade your system to Yosemite until Artstor has addressed this known issue.

You can find more information about new features in OIV 4.0, along with detailed instructions for installing it, in the Artstor Blog.

New Collections in Artstor

Posted on October 7, 2014 by Derek Churchill

Frederic Remington, The Bronco Buster, 1895, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth

Among the recent additions to the Artstor Digital Library are the collections of several major North American art museums:

Works in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Works in the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth
Works in the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
Prints and photographs of Parisian interior design from the New York School of Interior Design
Architecture photographed by the scholars William L. MacDonald and John Pinto
New images have been also added to the collection of the American Institute of Indian Studies

Public Domain Book Illustrations in Flickr

Posted on September 30, 2014 by Derek Churchill

A new collection in Flickr assembles millions of images from copyright-free (pre-1923) books that had previously been digitized and placed online. The story of the technology behind this project is maybe even more interesting than the images themselves, as you can read about here.

You can also explore the Internet Archive Book Images photostream in Flickr.

New Images Available in Artstor

Posted on August 14, 2014 by Derek Churchill

George Caleb Bingham, The Country Election, 1851-1852, Saint Louis Art Museum

New images have recently been added to the Artstor Digital Library:

More than 5,000 additional images of works in the J. Paul Getty Museum
More than 800 additional images of works in the Saint Louis Art Museum
Nearly 3,000 more images of Cyprus and the Mediterranean world from Allan Langdale
More than 60 images of community murals and public art from San Anto Cultural Arts in San Antonio, Texas
Also, there are now more than 100,000 images in Shared Shelf Commons, including thousands from the University of Delaware Library

Art Museums in the News

Posted on July 25, 2014 by Derek Churchill

Rembrandt, Self-Portrait in a Cap, Open-Mouthed, 1630, Morgan Library and Museum, New York

Here are a few recent stories of interest from the museum world:

The Morgan Library and Museum in New York has digitized its entire collection of Rembrandt etchings. A new online collection of about 500 images lets you explore nearly all of the prints made by Rembrandt during his lifetime. These are not Open Access images, so you cannot do whatever you want with them, but you are permitted to download them for personal, educational, or noncommercial use.
The late Richard Mellon Scaife, who died earlier this month, has left roughly half of his art collection to the Brandywine River Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. The rest of his collection will go to the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, Pennsylvania (near Pittsburgh). There are few details about the nature of the collection itself, but it is said to consist mainly of American works.

Images from the Museum of New Zealand

Posted on June 25, 2014 by Derek Churchill

John Gully, Milford Sound, 1883, watercolor, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington

The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington has made over 30,000 images of works from its collection available for free download. Over 14,000 of these are released under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND license that requires attribution and prohibits any commercial use or the making of derivatives. The remaining 17,000 images have no known copyright restrictions, and are available for any use.

Te Papa is New Zealand’s national museum, and its collections include art as well as history, natural history, and Maori and Pacific cultures. You can read more about this image initiative on Te Papa’s blog, or begin exploring the Collections Online.

Open Access Images from the Met

Posted on May 20, 2014 by Derek Churchill

Edo culture (Court of Benin, Nigeria), Queen Mother Pendant Mask: Iyoba, 16th century, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has made more than 400,000 images of public domain works in its collection available for non-commercial use through its new Open Access for Scholarly Content (OASC) initiative. You may now download images from its website and use them for scholarly purposes–including print and online publication–without having to request permission or pay a fee. The Museum is letting users decide if their own projects qualify as “scholarly” or “non-commercial”; you can find definitions and examples on the Met’s OASC FAQ page. You may also want to consult the fine print in the Terms and Conditions for the Met’s website. Commercial use of these images is not permitted.

This is not the first time the Metropolitan Museum of Art has made its images available for free. You have been able to download large images for personal use since its website was redesigned a few years ago, and its collection has been the cornerstone of Artstor’s Images for Academic Publishing (IAP) since that program’s creation. OASC gives users yet another avenue for accessing and using the Met’s images.

Artstor and Shared Shelf in UDaily

Posted on May 9, 2014 by Derek Churchill

You probably already know that UD is a longtime subscriber to Artstor, but you may not know what Shared Shelf and Shared Shelf Commons (sometimes called “Artstor Commons”) are.

UDaily has just published an article about Artstor and Shared Shelf at UD that may answer some of your questions. The Visual Resources Center has been working with Artstor and the UD Library for years, so please feel free to contact me anytime if you need more information about any of these services!

VRC@UD

The news blog of the Visual Resources Center at the University of Delaware

Author Archives: Derek Churchill

About Derek Churchill

Brewer Bookplates in Artstor

Art Museums in the News

OIV 4.0 Now Available

New Collections in Artstor

Public Domain Book Illustrations in Flickr

New Images Available in Artstor

Art Museums in the News

Images from the Museum of New Zealand

Open Access Images from the Met

Artstor and Shared Shelf in UDaily