2015 Artstor Summary

Freake-Gibbs Painter, Elizabeth Clarke Freake (Mrs. John Freake) and Baby Mary (detail), ca. 1671, Worcester Art Museum

Freake-Gibbs Painter, Elizabeth Clarke Freake (Mrs. John Freake) and Baby Mary (detail), ca. 1671, Worcester Art Museum

As we enter the new year, the Artstor Digital Library now has more than two million images. To see all the collections that were added or expanded in 2015, and for a preview of what’s coming up in 2016, check out Artstor’s year-end summary.

Two new collections of note were added over the holidays:

And just today, several more Artstor collections have been enlarged:

Freer and Sackler Collections Online

Chinese (Western Zhou), Bronze Fitting in the Form of a Tiger, ca. 900 BCE, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington

Chinese (Western Zhou), Bronze Fitting in the Form of a Tiger, ca. 900 BCE, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington

The Freer and Sackler Galleries, the Smithsonian Institution’s museums of Asian art, released their entire digitized collections online on January 1, 2015. With the new Open F|S, you can now download high-resolution images of more than 40,000 works in the two museums, and you are permitted to use them for any non-commercial purpose.

The Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington are among the nation’s most important collections of Asian art, with a particular strength in the arts of China. In addition, they are home to works from ancient Egypt, the Islamic world, and the United States, including James McNeill Whistler’s famous Peacock Room at the Freer.

You can read the press release about Open F|S here.

New Images Available in Artstor

Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Young Girl Reading, ca. 1770, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Young Girl Reading, ca. 1770, National Gallery of Art, Washington

This month, new images have been added to the following collections in the Artstor Digital Library:

Art Museums in the News

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

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:

Art in the News

KodakIt was a slow start to the year, but things have picked up in the last week or so. Let’s start with the big news from January:

  • The bankruptcy of Eastman Kodak should come as no great surprise to anyone in this digital world, but it’s a sad loss nonetheless. Long before JPEGs there were Kodachrome slides, and long before Powerpoint there was the Kodak Carousel slide projector. Generations of art history students grew up on Kodak products.
  • Two deaths and a birthday (sort of): American Surrealist painter Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012) and artist Mike Kelley (1954-2012) both died last week. And January 28 would have been the 100th birthday of Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock (1912-1956).
  • And just when we thought the Dan Brown effect was finally on the wane, there’s a new revelation about Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

2011 Artists’ Obituaries

Last summer I posted links to obituaries for Cy Twombly and Lucian Freud. Let me add the names of a few more noteworthy figures in 20th-century art who have passed away since then: