UCLA Arts Library Art and Art History Blog

From the Collection of UCLA Design | Media Arts Professor Erkki Huhtamo

The magic lantern played an important role in visual education and entertainment for centuries. Introduced soon after the mid-seventeenth century, it became a staple of the curiosity cabinets of savants and was brought to the “common people” by itinerant showmen. In the nineteenth century the magic lantern show developed into a specialized profession and big business, and countless magic lanterns and slides were produced both for professional and domestic use.

Featuring magic lanterns, lantern slides, and other related objects from the extensive private collection of UCLA Design | Media Arts Professor Erkki Huhtamo, this exhibit demonstrates how the magic lantern show, typical of the Victorian era, opened ways for modern society and culture as well.

In connection with the exhibit, the Department of Design | Media Arts will present a Halloween Magic Lantern Show in the EDA auditorium in the Broad Art Center on Thursday, October 29, at 6 p.m. It will be presented by the American Magic Lantern Theater of Connecticut, the only professional group giving authentic magic lantern shows in the United States. Admission is free, and no reservations are required; seating is on a first-come basis.

UCLA now has access to excellent quality architectural images from Archivision, through ARTstor [go to http://library.artstor.org/library/  (listed under ‘Institutional Collections’)].

Here is the collection’s description, from:
http://archivision.com/educational/overview.html

THE BASE COLLECTION (16,000 images)
The Library’s Base Collection is a core architecture collection representing major Greek, Roman, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, 18th & 19th Century and Modern sites. The focus here is the Italian Renaissance and Baroque and Modern architecture, especially the work of Louis Kahn and Le Corbusier. The collection also includes gardens & parks, city skylines, cityscapes and public art as well as other design related topics, such as C.R. Mackintosh furniture drawings, etc.

ADDITION MODULE ONE (6,000 images)
The first Addition Module completes our holdings on Renaissance and Baroque Rome not included in the Base Collection. It also contains all of our Ancient Egyptian material (close to 2000 images – this was our major photographic campaign of 2004). The collection also holds all of our Islamic material in Egypt, as well as overview sets on Cairo, Aswan and Luxor. Many contemporary sites are also included, especially those in Vancouver, Seattle, Boston and Montréal.

ADDITION MODULE TWO (6,000 images)
Module Two contains all of our Andrea Palladio material (over 700 images, of which 299 are Scamozzi etchings illustrating plans, sections and elevations of Palladio’s work); all of the Hector Guimard collection (229 images); Fascist architecture in Italy; most of our holdings from London England; and the balance of our Ancient Greek and Bramante material not contained in the first two modules. The Module also includes all of our Islamic architecture in Turkey plus contemporary architecture in Florida, New York, Montreal, and Washington DC. The Module is rounded out with 300 exquisite new (May 2007) photographs of the exterior and interiors of Mackintosh’s Hill House.

For more information, please contact Janine Henri, Architecture, Design and Digital Servives Librarian.

Please join us for an exhibit honoring the life and accomplishments of Albert Boime, Professor, Department of Art History. The exhibit was organized by Robert Gore, Visual Arts Librarian and David Kunzle, Professor, Department of Art History.

Collection release —Ferguson-Royce: Pre-Columbian Photography
(University of Texas at Austin)
ARTstor and the art and art history department at the University of Texas at Austin collaborated to digitize and distribute approximately 4,200 images of Pre-Columbian archaeological sites from the department’s Ferguson/Royce Archive, now available in the Digital Library.

Learn more about this and related collections

Now available in ARTstor: Architectural photography of Philadelphia by Ralph Lieberman.
ARTstor has sponsored an extended photographic campaign in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Ralph Lieberman focusing on the city’s historic and contemporary architecture, as well as its public art and sculpture.

Learn more about this and related collections

Now available in ARTstor: Additional images of architecture in Venice from Sarah Quill.
Approximately 600 additional images have been added to the ARTstor Digital Library from Sarah Quill’s photographic archive of Venice, where she has been photographing buildings and civic life for more than 30 years. There are now approximately 800 images in the collection.

Learn more about this and related collections

World War I & II postcards and posters available in ARTstor
ARTstor has collaborated with the University of Minnesota Libraries to release approximately 5,740 images depicting posters and postcards from World Wars I and II in the Digital Library. This collection includes works by artists such as James Montgomery Flagg, James H. Daugherty, Ben Shahn, Gil Spear, and Otto Fischer. The collection is international in scope and contains materials from a range of governmental, commercial, and charitable organizations.

Learn more about this and related collections

Collection agreement: Tibetan and Buddhist Art from Rob Linrothe
ARTstor has partnered with Rob Linrothe and the Visual Resources Collections at Skidmore College to share approximately 10,000 images of Tibetan and Buddhist art in the Digital Library.

Learn more about this and related collections

In 2008, the community continued to contribute important and unique collections to the ARTstor Digital Library. ARTstor released 22 new collections, added content to 21 existing collections, and reached agreements with 33 new museums, photoarchives, libraries, scholars, professional photographers, and artists and artists’ estates. The ARTstor Digital Library collection now totals 890,000 images and will soon include nearly 1,000,000 images with the release of the Magnum Photos collection in early 2009. Learn more    

Remember to visit the ARTstor blog to stay up-to-date on ARTstor developments.

Come and see an exhibit featuring art objects and artists’ books from The Norton Family Christmas Project

Where: East Faculty Exhibit Case, Young Research Library
When: December 4, 2008 – January 5, 2009

Retired computer entrepreneur Peter Norton is a contemporary art collector as well as an active participant in various civic and philanthropic activities. In 1988 the Norton Family began commissioning artists to do original, multiple-edition works that are mailed as holiday greetings to friends, colleagues, and selected institutions.

The Arts Library has been fortunate to receive these wonderful holiday greetings on a yearly basis since 1989. The objects and artists’ books that comprise the Norton Family Christmas Project collection are incredibly varied. Some of the artists have chosen to work in a more traditional book format, while others have experimented with sculptural forms using a wide variety of materials including wood, glass, plastic, and cloth.

Reinvented forms of things found in daily life are a recurring theme: a doll house, salt and pepper shakers, a music box, a teacup. A sense of whimsy runs through many of the pieces: salt and pepper shakers become snow globes, a music box exhorts us to be Silent. Many works also have a sociopolitical focus, addressing issues as varied as slavery, AIDS, and gender identity.

Taken together, the Norton Family Christmas Project objects and artists’ books provide a wonderful snapshot of the last twenty years of activity in the art world at large, presenting the work of both emerging and more established artists. The 2008 edition of the Norton Family Christmas Project will arrive while this exhibit is in progress; who knows what it will be?

Photo: Takashi Murakami, Norton Family Christmas Project 2000 © Takashi Murakami.

You can now find Digital Library and OIV help documentation, as well as training materials and video demos all in one place — the ARTstor Help Wiki. In addition to full how-to documentation of ARTstor features and system requirements, the new ARTstor Help is keyword searchable and includes many new document types such as: FAQs, clickable image-map workflows, and “ARTstor in 3 Minutes” instructional videos. ARTstor Help also provides information on ARTstor training options and support documentation such as our instructional handouts, as well as schedules and registration for online training sessions. You can access ARTstor Help from any page in the ARTstor Digital Library — a persistent link is provided in the upper right of every ARTstor screen. In addition, links to Help within the Digital Library take you directly to context-sensitive help documentation.

You can bookmark the ARTstor Help Wiki or any of its sub-pages. We encourage you to explore the Wiki and update your help bookmarks or links accordingly. Below are some frequently used pages:

• Top Digital Library questions
• Online training schedule
• Managing your account
• Top OIV questions

The Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art is partnering with ARTstor to distribute approximately 800 images of Islamic and South Asian art from the collection at Shangri La. The selected images will feature Indian jewelry and enamels; Syrian, Indian, Spanish, and Persian furniture, doors, and ceilings; Persian and Turkish tile panels and portable ceramics; and Central Asian, Persian, Turkish, and Indian textiles.Duke developed a lifelong interest in Islamic art during her travels to Morocco, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, India, and other countries. She was particularly interested in decorative arts of the 17th through 19th centuries, especially those of the Ottoman, Mughal, Safavid, and Qajar dynasties, and additionally commissioned art from contemporary Muslim artists. Over the course of nearly 60 years, Duke amassed approximately 3,500 objects, dating from 1500 BCE through the 20th century CE. Shangri La is owned and supported by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, as a center for Islamic arts and cultures. For more detailed information about this collection, visit the Shangri La Collection page.

Grove Art Online (including the Grove Dictionary of Art) will form the centerpiece of an important new online gateway, Oxford Art Online—the new access point for new and forthcoming Oxford art reference subscriptions and products. Oxford Art Online will offer users the ability to access and cross-search Oxford reference and Grove content in one location.Oxford Art Online includes the full text of the Grove Dictionary of Art, the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms, the Oxford Companion to Western Art, as well as new Grove/MoMA learning resources, a world art timeline and thematic guides, and linking with ARTstor for mutual subscribers.

The new site further allows users to search for images and image links efficiently in a single place. This enhancement permits users to easily discover the more than 5,000 images from many sources, which include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), Art Images for College Teaching (AICT), and the Artists Rights Society.

Do you know about the overflow shelves?

As any visitor to the Arts Library quickly learns, we have more books than physical space. Many of our books are stored in the Southern Regional Library Facility (SRLF); they are listed in the catalog and can be requested online. If you are looking for recently returned books, you’ll often find them on the 3rd floor shelving carts next to the elevator. We also have an “overflow” area on the 1st (bottom) floor, arranged by call number with the regular size titles on the shelves at the bottom of the stairs and the oversize titles on the left-hand shelves against the wall. These books are often in tight call number ranges where we can’t reshelve them right away. It’s a useful additional place to look when you can’t find a book on the regular shelves.

As always, if you can’t find locate materials on the shelves, ask that we put a search on the item for you. A search request can also be made online.