ARTstor

ARTstor logo

ARTstor is a non-profit organization that builds and distributes an online library of more than one million images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences. The ARTstor Digital Library includes a set of tools to view, present, and manage images for research and teaching purposes.

History

ARTstor launched a live service in July 2004, having been created in 2001 with the support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Since 2003, the organization has been an independent non-profit 501(C)(3) organization based in New York, and operates under the leadership of President James Shulman, in collaboration with Neil Rudenstine (Chairman) and the ARTstor Board of Trustees.^[1]

In the late 1990s, as universities and libraries began to convert their slide libraries into local digital image databases, ARTstor was created to address the growing need for a shared online image library that would be accessible to educational institutions worldwide. The ARTstor Digital Library is intended to reduce redundant efforts of scanning and cataloging thousands of the same images from multiple repositories, and also to enable new digital image collections to be shared for teaching and research. The initiative paired innovative digital image and online technologies with Mellon Foundation’s ongoing mission to support higher education, museums, the arts, and art conservation to “bring about a substantial transformation in art-related teaching, learning, and research.”^[2] ARTstor's primary goals as an organization are: to assemble image collections from across many time periods and cultures; to support a wide range of educational and scholarly activities; to create an organized, central, and reliable digital resource that supports strictly non-commercial use of images for research, teaching and learning; and to work with the arts and educational communities to develop collective solutions for building, managing and sharing digital images for educational use.

Collections

ARTstor’s collections are contributed by the community and offer a wide range of images needed for interdisciplinary teaching and research, including contributions from the leading museums, photo archives, libraries, scholars, photographers, artists, and artists’ estates. These diverse collections include: Carnegie Arts of the United States, The Illustrated Bartsch, the Mellon International Dunhuang Archive, The Huntington Archive of Asian Art, and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Architecture and Design Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Bodleian Library, and more.

The Digital Library comprises more than one million images from more than 100 collections worldwide.^[3] The Digital Library is continually expanded by new contributions such as: the Gernsheim Corpus of Master Drawings (185,000 images of old master drawings); Larry Qualls Archive (100,000 images documenting 30 years of NYC gallery exhibitions); architectural photography from Esto, Canyonlights and ART on FILE; university collections from Harvard and Yale; and historical photo archives such as the National Gallery of Art and Frick Art Reference Library, among many others. ARTstor’s collections are useful for learning and research within the arts and in disciplines outside of the arts as well. For example, in February 2009 the ARTstor and Magnum Photos collaboration added 80,000 contemporary photographs of iconic world events and people by world-renowned documentary photographers. ARTstor serves as a valuable resource for students and teachers in disciplines including African-American Studies, Anthropology, Architecture, Asian Studies, Classical Studies, History, Medieval Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Music History, Native American Studies, Religious Studies, Renaissance Studies, and Women’s Studies.^[4]

Licensing

ARTstor is supported by subscriptions ^[5] from educational and cultural institutions worldwide, and by grants from foundations and donors. Members of the ARTstor community include colleges and universities, museums, libraries, primary and secondary schools, and other non-profit organizations. There are currently more than 1,150 ARTstor participants globally, in the US, Canada, Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Australia.^[6]

Tools and Features

ARTstor users have the ability to search, organize, present, upload, and share images. In addition to keyword and advanced searching, users may browse works by geography, classification, or collection name. Users can zoom in on high-resolution images in the image viewer and review related information in image data records.

ARTstor in the News

Arenson, Karen W. “For Art History Scholars, Illumination is a Click Away.” The New York Times. 14 August 2004.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/14/arts/for-art-history-scholars-illumination-is-a-click-away.html?scp=1&sq=artstor&st=cse

“Departing Harvard Leader to Organize Digital Library.” The New York Times. 5 April 2001.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/05/technology/05MELL.html?scp=13&sq=artstor&st=cse

Wagner, Gretchen. Sharing visual arts images for educational use: Finding a new angle of repose. Educause Review 42, no. 6 (2007): 84-104.

http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume42/SharingVisualArtsImagesforEduc/162067

Mirapaul, Matthew. “Far-Flung Artworks, Side by Side Online.” The New York Times. 22 May 2003.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/22/technology/circuits/22muse.html?scp=3&sq=artstor&st=cse&pagewanted=1

External links

• http://www.artstor.org ARTstor Digital Library
• http://www.artstor.org/what-is-artstor/w-html/collection-status.shtml ARTstor Collections: Description and Status
• http://www.artstor.org/interested-in-participation/i-html/current-participants.shtml ARTstor Current Participants
• http://www.artstor.org/interested-in-participation/i-html/becoming-participant.shtml Participation
• http://www.artstor.org/using-artstor/u-html/support-and-training.shtml Support & Training

References