Art in the News

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Derek Churchill

A few more art-related items in the recent headlines:

An obituary for Cy Twombly, 1928-2011. The American artist, best known for making paintings that look like blackboard scribbles, died on July 5th at age 83.
An architectural review of Zaha Hadid’s Guangzhou Opera House in China.
An article on Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre. The painting, currently on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, is one subject in David McCullough’s new book, The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris.

A New Leonardo da Vinci?

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Derek Churchill

Attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, Salvator Mundi (after restoration)

The Salvator Mundi, newly attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, as it appears after restoration (photo from Mail Online)

The appearance of the Salvator Mundi before restoration (photo from Mail Online)

Is this a newly discovered painting by Leonardo da Vinci? Some experts say it is.

It has long been known that the famous Renaissance artist painted a picture of Christ as the Savior of the World (Salvator Mundi), but while many copies and emulations by Leonardo’s followers have survived, the master’s own original was presumed lost.

After a recent cleaning (left), several Leonardo scholars now think that one of these supposed “copies” is in fact the original. Its authenticity, they believe, was obscured by centuries of retouching and overpainting (right).

The newly unveiled “Leonardo” will be exhibited at the National Gallery in London later this year. You can read more about the painting in Mail Online and Art News.

What do you think? Is this really a long-lost masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci?

BBC’s Your Paintings

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Derek Churchill

John Constable, The Cornfield, 1826 (Photo © The National Gallery, London)

The BBC has teamed up with the Public Catalogue Foundation to launch Your Paintings, a digital library of paintings owned by national museums in Britain. Over the next two years, they expect to build a collection of 200,000 paintings (63,000 are available so far) from 3000 British collections. This includes major London museums like the National Gallery, Tate, and V&A, but the majority are smaller regional and municipal institutions.

At 944 pixels on the long dimension, the digital images on this site are more or less the right size for use in a Powerpoint presentation (vertical images are fine, but horizontal images are a little smaller than one would like).

You can read a BBC article about the Your Paintings project here.

For easy access anytime, I have placed a link to the BBC’s Your Paintings website on the VRC’s Online Resources page.

ARTstor and Firefox 5

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Derek Churchill

If your preferred browser is Firefox and you have upgraded to version 5 (released earlier this week), you may find that you have problems accessing ARTstor.

ARTstor is not currently compatible with Firefox 5, but technicians are working to fix this problem. In the meantime, the folks at ARTstor advise you to uninstall version 5 and use Firefox 4 instead, or simply switch to another browser, such as Internet Explorer or Safari.

If you need help with any of this, please get in touch with me!

Sort by Subject in Google Images

Posted on May 31, 2011 by Derek Churchill

Google has added a new feature to its Google Image search. The new “Sort by Subject” feature on the left sidebar of your results page will group your results based on their similarities. This will hopefully it faster and easier to find the exact images you want.

Read about this new sorting option here.

Yale to Open Its Image Collections

Posted on May 12, 2011 by Derek Churchill

Louis I. Kahn, Yale Center for British Art, 1969-1977, New Haven, Connecticut (Photo © Kathleen Cohen/WorldImages)

Yale University has announced its intention to open its digital image collections to all users over the Web. This will provide free access to works in its museums and libraries, which include the Yale University Art Gallery, Yale Center for British Art, Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and Lewis Walpole Library. Read the press release here and a story about it here.

This follows a similar announcement by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which I discussed in a post last month on VRC@UD.

Apply Now!

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Derek Churchill

It’s still not too late to apply for the VRC’s 2011 Summer Internship! The deadline to submit your application (which is really just your resume and a brief cover letter describing your interest) is this Friday, April 29. You can read more about the internship here, or email me with any questions at visualresources@udel.edu. I look forward to hearing from you!

New Collections in ARTstor

Posted on April 15, 2011 by Derek Churchill

Four new image collections drawn from university museums are now available in ARTstor. Click on the links below for ARTstor’s description of each collection:

Fowler Museum, UCLA (non-Western objects, with a particular strength in African art)
Colby College Museum of Art (strong in American art, including paintings by Alex Katz)
Minneapolis College of Art and Design
Richard F. Brush Art Gallery, St. Lawrence University

LACMA Image Library

Posted on April 7, 2011 by Derek Churchill

Georges de La Tour, The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame, ca. 1638-1640 (Photo © Los Angeles County Museum of Art, www.lacma.org)

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has just launched its new Image Library, which lets you download free, high-resolution images of works from its permanent collection. Many other museums already do the same thing, but LACMA’s Image Library is different in one significant respect: it explicitly permits you to use its images without restriction. That means you don’t need to seek the museum’s separate permission in order to use these images in publications.

Note that this only applies to works that LACMA has established as being in the public domain, so most 20th-century works are excluded. The VRC’s Copyright page explains why this is.

You can read LACMA’s Terms and Conditions of Use here. Hopefully, this openness is part of a trend towards greater access to images.

Apply for our 2011 Summer Internship

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Derek Churchill

What do you want to do with your art history degree? Teach? Work in a museum? How about exploring a career in the Visual Resources profession? Visual Resources professionals build the digital image libraries that many of your professors use to teach classes in art history and other subjects.

The Visual Resources Collection is pleased to announce its 2011 Summer Internship in Visual Resources Management.

Undergraduate interns have to be enrolled and in residence in Newark during the summer, and will devote about 10 hours a week to their projects from the beginning of June to the end of August. Your exact schedule is flexible. There is no pay for the internship, but you will receive 3 credits at the completion of your project. You do not have to be an Art History major to apply.

Applying is easy: all you need to send are a cover letter and résumé. Click here to learn more about the internship and how to apply for it. And please feel free to contact me at visualresources@udel.edu if you would like to discuss possibilities for the internship in person.

All applications must be received by Friday, April 29, 2011.