New agreement: Images of installations at the Mattress Factory

ARTstor Digital Library and the Mattress Factory have reached an agreement to share 12,000 images documenting installations exhibited at the museum since its opening in 1977.

The Mattress Factory is a museum of contemporary art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that specializes in installations created on site by artists from all over the world. The museum’s unusual galleries are located in two creatively reused buildings on the city’s historic North Side. Both buildings house a growing permanent collection, featuring works by James Turrell, Yayoi Kusama, Winifred Lutz, and Rolf Julius, as well as periodical exhibitions.

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Karen Finley: “Straight from the gut”

Karen Finley | A Woman’s Life Isn’t Worth Much | 5/18/1990 | Originally at Franklin Furnace, New York, NY

March is Women’s History Month, the perfect time to highlight the work of Karen Finley, a world-renowned performance artist, author, and playwright whose work has addressed issues such as sexuality, abuse, and American politics from an uncompromising feminist perspective.

Finley came to national attention when her 1990 grant application to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was vetoed, along those of three other artists, because the content of her work was considered inappropriate. The artists sued and ultimately lost a Supreme Court appeal, but Finley was not deterred. As her struggles with the NEA were already in full swing in 1990, Franklin Furnace—in a bold move, as the organization itself was partly funded by the NEA—presented her installation, A Woman’s Life Isn’t Worth Much.

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Now available: Zimmerli Art Museum (Rutgers University)

Erik Bulatov | Sevina Sineva (Seva’s Blue) | 1979| Rutgers University: Zimmerli Art Museum | © 2008 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

ARTstor and the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University are now sharing more than 250 images of nonconformist art from the Soviet Union in the Digital Library. The collection, the largest of its kind in the world, includes more than 20,000 works of art by close to 1,000 artists and documents the creative activities of underground artists in the Soviet Union who courageously broke away from Socialist Realism—the official artistic style of the communist regime. With works in all media, the collection spans the late 1950s to late 1980s—from the initiation of the underground movement during Khruschev’s cultural thaw to Gorbachev’s perestroika and the downfall of the Soviet Union.

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Now available: Renaissance Society: University of Chicago

Katherina Grosse | Exhibition: Atoms Inside Balloons, general view; 2007 (creation) | Exhibited at: The Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago | © 2008 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / BILDKUNST, Bonn

ARTstor and the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago are sharing nearly 2,400 images of contemporary art and exhibition installation views in the Digital Library. This collection features painting, sculpture, installation, video, performance, and multi-media work by seminal contemporary artists who exhibited at the Renaissance Society, including Nancy Spero, Raymond Pettibon, Francis Alÿs, Eva Hesse, Kerry James Marshall, Shahzia Sikander, and others.

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Now available: Images of Spanish Colonial art and utilitarian objects from the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

Anonymous, Mexico | Tabernacle, Second half of the 18th Century | Image and original data provided by Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

Nearly 140 images of Spanish Colonial art and utilitarian objects from Brazil, Bolivia, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela from the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC) are now available in the Digital Library. This release joins the CPPC’s approximately 170 images of modern and contemporary Latin American art previously available in the Digital Library.

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On this day: Edgar Degas is born

Edgar Degas | Arabesque over the right leg, left arm in line, 1882-1895 | yellow-brown wax | Photograph by Gauthier| Musee d’Orsay, Paris, France | Image and original data provided by Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, N.Y. artres.com

Celebrated French Impressionist Edgar Degas was born on July 19, 1834. Widely known for his painting, he only exhibited one sculpture during his lifetime: The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer was shown in the sixth Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1881. Upon Degas’ death in 1917, more than 150 pieces of sculpture of dancers, horses, and nudes, mostly made of wax, clay, and plastiline (a type of modeling clay), were discovered in his studio (read the intriguing story of the posthumous castings on the Metropolitan Museum of Art website).

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Among hundreds of images of Degas’ paintings, works on paper, and sculptures, the ARTstor Digital Library includes a selection of fascinating photographs by Gauthier from 1917-1918 of the original uncast sculptures in the Réunion des Musées Nationaux collection. Search the Digital Library for Degas and Gauthier to see all three dozen images.

Edgar Degas | Horse galloping on right foot, 1865-1881| brown wax; pieces of cork in the base | Photograph by Gauthier | Musee d’Orsay, Paris, France | Image and original data provided by Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, N.Y. artres.com

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A peek behind Ghiberti’s Florentine Baptistery Doors

Left: Lorenzo Ghiberti | Sacrifice of Isaac, 1401-1402. Right: Filippo Brunelleschi | Sacrifice of Isaac, 1401-1402 | Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise Collection | these images were provided by the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore

The competition for the bronze doors of the Florence Baptistery at the turn of the fifteenth century was the city’s most prestigious public commission. Seven artists competed by submitting a bronze plaque on the “Sacrifice of Isaac,” to be judged by a committee of thirty-four native-born citizens of Florence. The competition quickly narrowed down to Lorenzo Ghiberti and Filippo Brunelleschi. After Ghiberti won, he unabashedly claimed, “To me was conceded the palm of victory by all the experts and by all my fellow competitors. Universally, they conceded to me the glory, without exception. Everyone felt I had surpassed the others in that time, without a single exception, after great consultation and examination by learned men.”

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De gustibus non est disputandum, but was Ghiberti’s entry so clearly superior? As historian Rona Goffen put it in her excellent book Renaissance Rivals, “The committee’s decision was surely influenced by the fact that Ghiberti’s panel weighed 7 kilos [approx. 15½ lbs] less than Brunelleschi’s, savings in bronze that signified considerable savings of money.” The photographs of the backs of the panels clearly show how Ghiberti saved those 7 kilos.

Left: Lorenzo Ghiberti | Sacrifice of Isaac; back of panel, 1401-1402. Right: Filippo Brunelleschi | Sacrifice of Isaac; back of panel, 1401-1402 | Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise Collection | these images were provided by the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore

In 2008, ARTstor supported the comprehensive photographic documentation of the Gates of Paradise in their restored state in collaboration with the Museo dell’ Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore and the Opificio delle Pietre Dure. The photographic campaign by photographer Antonio Quattrone documented the newly cleaned bronze panels and frieze elements, as well as Ghiberti and Brunelleschi’s competition panels, now housed in the Museum del Bargello in Florence.

Check out the more than 800 glorious images of the doors, including details and side views, in the Digital Library http://library.artstor.org/library/collection/ghiberti. Feel free to weigh in (ahem) on whether you think Ghiberti’s entry won on esthetic issues alone.

- Giovanni Garcia-Fenech

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New collection agreement: Zimmerli Art Museum (Rutgers University)

ARTstor is partnering with the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University to share 280 works by 94 artists from its renowned Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union. The collection, the largest of its kind in the world, includes more than 20,000 works of art by close to 1,000 artists and documents the creative activities of underground artists in the Soviet Union who courageously broke away from Socialist Realism—the official artistic style of the communist regime. With works in all media, the collection spans the late 1950s to late 1980s—from the initiation of the underground movement during Khruschev’s cultural thaw to Gorbachev’s perestroika and the downfall of the Soviet Union.

The Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers is one of the largest and most distinguished university-based art museums in the nation. The museum’s collection includes more than 60,000 works, ranging from ancient to contemporary art, with particular emphasis on nineteenth-century French art; Russian art from icons to the present day; and American art with notable holdings of prints.

For more detailed information about this collection, visit the Zimmerli Art Museum (Rutgers University) page.

 

Related collections:

The Museum of Modern Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Contemporary Art (Larry Qualls Archive); New Museum of Contemporary Art Collection

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Now available: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Louise Bourgeois| Maman, 1999 | Image and original data provided by ©The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York | Art © Estate of Louise Bourgeois / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. This work of art is protected by copyright and/or related rights and may not be reproduced in any manner, except as permitted under the ARTstor Digital Library Terms and Conditions of Use, without the prior express written authorization of VAGA, 350 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2820, New York, NY 10118. Tel.: 212-736-6666; Fax: 212-736-6767; Email: info@vagarights.com.

ARTstor and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation have released more than 750 images of major artworks from the permanent collection in the Digital Library. The images document the Guggenheim Museum’s superb holdings in modern and contemporary art by such significant artists as Louise Bourgeois, Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Willem de Kooning, Paul Klee, Robert Mapplethorpe, Claes Oldenburg, Cindy Sherman, and Vincent van Gogh, among many others.

This is the first release of a projected 7,000 images of art, exhibition installation views, and architecture from the Foundation. Future releases will include 5,000 installation views spanning from 1990s to the present from the Guggenheim Museum in New York, more than 1,000 installations views from the museums in Bilbao and Venice, and 200 historical and contemporary photographs documenting the architecture of these three museum buildings.

“The Guggenheim is pleased to join ARTstor in sharing the breadth and diversity of the Guggenheim Foundation’s collection and archives with the educational community,” stated Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. “Education has been a central mandate of the Guggenheim since its founding in 1937. Through this collaboration, the museum further expands its reach by providing digital access to works in our collection, documentation of major exhibitions, and architectural photography of the Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry buildings.”

Christine Kuan, ARTstor’s Chief Curatorial Officer and Vice President for External Affairs, states: “These important images from the Guggenheim’s superb collections will be widely taught and studied via ARTstor Digital Library’s network of educational and scholarly users—impacting current and future generations of students, scholars, curators, and researchers around the world for many years to come.”

For more detailed information about this collection, visit the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation page.

Related collections:

• The Museum of Modern Art: Painting and Sculpture
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
• New Museum of Contemporary Art
• Ellsworth Kelly
• Contemporary Art (Larry Qualls Archive)
• Barnes Foundation
• Jacqueline Barnitz: Modern Latin American Art (University of Texas at Austin)
• Roy Lichtenstein
• Elizabeth Peyton
• Mark Rothko

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On this day: The founding of Rome

She-wolf nursing Romulus and Remus, 16th century | Musée du Louvre | Image and original data provided by Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives/ART RESOURCE, N.Y. artres.com / artres.com

Twin brothers Romulus and Remus founded Rome on April 21, 753 B.C. on the site where they were suckled by a she-wolf as orphaned infants.

Roman | Ara Casali | Museo Pio-Clementino | Image and original data provided by SCALA, Florence/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.
artres.com / scalarchives.com | (c) 2006, SCALA, Florence / ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

According to the legend, the twins were the sons of Rhea Silvia and the war god Mars. Fearing that they would claim his throne, Rhea’s uncle Amulius ordered them drowned in the River Tiber. Thanks to help from the river deity Tiberinus, the twins were safely washed ashore at the foot of the Palatine hill, where they were suckled by a she-wolf. They were rescued by a shepherd, who raised them as his own. Once grown, the twins killed Amulus and went on to found a town on the site where they had been saved. After a disagreement on the exact location of the site, Romulus killed by his brother and became ruler of the settlement, which he named “Rome” after himself.

The image of the 16^th century sculpture of the she-wolf nursing Romulus and Remus comes to us from Art, Archaeology and Architecture (Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives), the Casali Altarpiece from the 2^nd century C.E. comes from Italian and other European Art (Scala Archives), and Nicholas Mignard’s 17^th century painting comes from the Dallas Museum of Art Collection. Search for Remus and Romulus to find many more related images, including the series of prints by Giambattista Fontana from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Collection.

Nicholas Mignard | The Shepherd Faustulus Bringing Romulus and Remus to His Wife, 1654 | Dallas Museum of Art | Image and data from the Dallas Museum of Art

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