GSA Library Art and Design News

Olympic Record

2012-05-21T13:46:00.000Z

The National Archives, which holds a range of records on the modern Olympic and Paralympic Games and Cultural Olympiad from 1896 to the present, has made these available online for the first time, providing you with access to this rich resource on sporting and cultural history.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/olympics/

British Council Film Collection

2012-05-21T13:44:00.001Z

The British Council has now made 80 films from its collection free to view online. Subjects include Architecture, Ceramics, Sport, Fashion and Textiles.
http://film.britishcouncil.org/british-council-film-collection

Popular Graphic Prints

2012-05-10T09:18:00.002Z

About 15,000 historical prints (ca. 1700-1900) created to document geographic locations or popular subjects and sometimes used for advertising and educational purposes. Most are by American printmakers (e.g., Baillie, Currier & Ives, Sachse & Co.), but publishers in many other countries are also represented (e.g., Antonio Vanegas Arroyo). Subjects vary widely, from city and harbor views, street scenes, and manufacturing plants to genre scenes, historical events, religious iconography and portraits.
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/pga/

Gladstone Collection of African American Photographs

2012-05-10T09:16:00.002Z

The William A. Gladstone Collection of African American Photographs provides almost 350 images showing African Americans and related military and social history. The Civil War era is the primary time period covered, with scattered examples through 1945. Most of the images are photographs, including 270 cartes de visite.
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/gld/

17th Century Letterforms

2012-05-10T09:11:00.003Z

Designed in the mid-1600s by the Polish goldsmith, Jan (or Johann) Christian Bierpfaff (1600-?1690). Courtesy of Bibliodyssey
http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/rise-of-living-type.html

myShakespeare

2012-04-18T13:21:00.000Z

myShakespeare is a brand new interactive website from the Royal Shakespeare Company designed to inspire global conversations and discover how we interpret Shakespeare today. Discover how artists have created new and original work inspired by Shakespeare; Read, debate and discuss with guest bloggers and commentators on the myShakespeare; Create your own visual snapshot of Shakespeare online to share with your friends.

Award-Winning InfosmART Portfolio Released by Glasgow School of Art Library

2012-04-16T15:06:00.002Z

The Glasgow School of Art Library’s award-winning InfosmART portfolio is now freely available to the UK’s art and design communities, following Innovation and Development funding from the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC.
InfosmART is the Glasgow School of Art Library’s portfolio of online interactive modules in information and research skills, specifically designed for creative practitioners. It has been produced for the learning, teaching and research communities in art, design and architecture, and helps artists and designers to develop and improve their research capabilities and information handling, at either undergraduate, postgraduate or research levels. It does this through an easy-to-follow 5-step programme: Define, Find, Evaluate, Cite and Use.
In 2010, InfosmART was recognised at the Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Awards, where its development team was named Outstanding Library Team of the Year. In 2011, its lead developer was named Information Literacy Practitioner of the Year for his work on the resource.
InfosmART was developed in-house by the Library of Glasgow School of Art. It has now been released for free non-commercial use and adaptation under Creative Commons licensing at http://www2.gsa.ac.uk/library/infosmart

Garden Photographs by Frances Benjamin Johnston

2012-04-16T08:46:00.000Z

The Library of Congress today is releasing online the digital images of a rare collection of more than 1,000 hand-colored, glass-plate lantern slides of American gardens taken a century ago by one of the first professional female photographers to achieve international prominence, Frances Benjamin Johnston. This online collection expands the book significantly by providing hundreds of additional images that reveal more fully such beautiful and vanished places as the color-themed gardens of the artists Albert and Adele Herter in East Hampton, N.Y. The collection also includes urban sites in New York City and estates from Pasadena, Calif., to Brookline, Mass. These remarkable color slides have not been seen since Johnston last projected them during lectures in the 1910s to 1930s to rally Americans to grow gardens on tenement lots, in row-house yards and in parks, which had deteriorated from industrial pollution and neglect during the Gilded Age.
Johnston has long been acknowledged as an important photographer for her many contributions to early photojournalism and documentation of historic architecture. But her front and center role in the Garden Beautiful movement as an advocate and artist working with garden clubs, horticultural societies and museums has been neglected, until now. Johnston advocated for gardening the nation back to "America the Beautiful," one elm, one rose and one fountain and shady terrace at a time.

Chronicle: BBC Northern Ireland's television news from the 60s and 70s

2012-04-04T09:04:00.000Z

GSA Library now has access to Chronicle: BBC Northern Ireland's television news from the 60s and 70s.

The audio-visual archives of the BBC contain a wealth of material gathered since it was founded in the 1920’s but it remains untapped. ‘Chronicle’ has made part of that archive available to UK higher and further education by digitising hours of content from the BBC Northern Ireland’s vaults.The digitised material will allow users to explore events over a 7 year time period (1969-1976) of Northern Ireland’s history, delivering a rich and contextual experience from a political, historical and cultural perspective. Chronicle provides authenticated users with free access to digitised copies of selected news and current affairs material covering Northern Ireland and The Troubles, via a simple, user-friendly interface and web-based tools for searching and viewing.
A MyGSA account is required both on and off-campus to access this resource.

The Word and the Image: Narrative in Fiction and Photography

2012-03-30T07:54:00.000Z

James Robertson, in conversation with Robin Gillanders.

How the two media, the written word and the captured image, compare and contrast is the fascinating subject of this event which will include readings by James Robertson and photographs which might just possibly have been made by a fictitious photographer.

James Robertson won the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award 2010 for his novel And the Land Lay Still in which the central character is a photographer curating an exhibition of his father’s work. The father, perhaps a better photographer than the son, has recorded the key moments and personalities of Scotland in the middle years of the twentieth century.

Robin Gillanders is one of Scotland’s most distinguished photographers. His work includes portraits of many of the best-known names in Scottish life and arts. He has a particular interest in how photography expresses narrative.

Presented by The Scottish Society for the History of Photography.

The Word and the Image: Narrative in Fiction and Photography
The 2012 Annan Lecture

Thursday April 5 at 6.00 in the Jeffrey Library, The Mitchell Library.

Admission Free

Journal of European Television History and Culture

2012-03-21T12:42:00.000Z

The EUscreen project has released its first peer-reviewed, multi-media and open access e-journal in the field of European television history and culture. The aim of this e-journal, Journal of European Television History and Culture, is to provide an international platform for outstanding research and reflection on television as an important part of our European cultural heritage. The journal builds on recent digitisation initiatives in European archives and audiovisual libraries and addresses the need for critical study of the cultural, social and political role of television in Europe’s past and presence with the help of television material that has now become available on a large scale. The journal is the result of a cooperation between the EUscreen platform and researchers from the European Television History Network,which was launched in 2004 to promote a transnational perspective on the history and culture of television in Europe.

Yayoi Kusama's Obliteration Room

2012-03-16T09:22:00.002Z

Yayoi Kusama's interactive Obliteration Room begins as an entirely white space, furnished as a monochrome living room, which people are then invited to 'obliterate' with multi-coloured stickers. Over the course of a few weeks the room is transformed from a blank canvas into an explosion of colour, with thousands of spots stuck over every available surface. TateShots have produced this timelapse video of The Obliteration Room covering the first few weeks of its presentation at Tate Modern.

Oxfam Research Repository

2012-03-16T08:29:00.000Z

Oxfam GB has just launched it's new research repository, which holds and showcases the charity's research, programme and policy publications and data from its anti-poverty work. For the first time, the full extent of research on ecology, politics, social policy, government and equality is available to the public from a single interface.

Polyhedra

2012-03-07T08:51:00.000Z

Images from a 16th century anonymous manuscript of thirty watercolour sketches of polyhedra. Via Bibliodyssey.

Fluxus Reader

2012-03-07T08:38:00.000Z

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Fluxus—the international laboratory of art, architecture, design and music—Swinburne University of Technology has released a free digital copy of The Fluxus Reader.

Fluxus began in the 1950s as a loose, international community of artists, architects, composers and designers. By the 1960s, Fluxus had become a laboratory of ideas and an arena for artistic experimentation in Europe, Asia and the United States. Described as 'the most radical and experimental art movement of the 1960s', Fluxus has challenged conventional thinking on art and culture for half a century. Fluxus artists had a central role in the birth of such key contemporary art forms as concept art, installation, performance art, intermedia and video. Despite this influence, the scope and scale of this unique phenomenon have made it difficult to explain Fluxus in normative historical and critical terms.

In The Fluxus Reader, editor Ken Friedman offers the first comprehensive overview of this challenging and controversial group. The Fluxus Reader is written by leading scholars and experts from Europe, the United States and Australia.

Gavin Turk

2012-03-05T09:12:00.000Z

New from TateShots. Gavin Turk has long been interested in issues of authorship and identity; his artworks include images of himself disguised as Sid Vicious, Che Guevara and Andy Warhol amongst others.

National Gallery Technical Bulletins

2012-03-01T09:47:00.000Z

The National Gallery has just made over 200 articles from its Technical Bulletins available for free download from the Gallery’s website.
X-ray machines, infrared cameras, microscopes and mass-spectrometers might not be the first things that come to mind when people think about the National Gallery. However, they are essential to the research of the Scientific and Conservation departments, who work behind the scenes to investigate and preserve paintings in the collection.
Their vital research is charted in the National Gallery Technical Bulletin, which – since its launch in 1977 – has achieved a leading position in documenting the scientific examination of paintings. Previously only available in print form or by subscription, the digitisation of all 32 volumes of the Bulletin allows a wider audience to access unique research at the Gallery.
Over 200 articles can now be downloaded free from the Gallery's website. They provide insight into the materials and methods used by artists historically, the conservation and treatment of paintings, and how 21st-century scientific techniques can shed light on artworks of the past. Other articles deal with preventive conservation and digital documentation of paintings.

Courtauld Institute of Art on SUNCAT

2012-03-01T09:40:00.000Z

The Courtauld Institute of Art has just added details of its serial holdings to the UK serials union catalogue SUNCAT.
The Courtaiuld is an international centre for the study of the history of art and conservation, as well as home to one of the finest small art museums in the world. Its Book Library provides access to a significant art historical collection and is one of the major international research collections of art historical books, periodicals and exhibition catalogues in the country. Just over 1,000 serial records, for both print and electronic titles, have been loaded into SUNCAT.

Old Maps Online

2012-02-29T13:27:00.000Z

The broadest single collection of historical maps from around the world is now available online, providing access to a vast collection of maps held by institutions across the globe.The site incorporates access to collections at the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, the Moravian Library in the Czech Republic and the prestigious David Rumsey Collection in California. Other collections to be added later this year include those from Harvard University, the New York Public Library, the National Library of Wales, the Bodleian Library at Oxford and several major European libraries.

The Magazine

2012-02-03T12:00:00.001Z

GSA Archives and Collections have recently conserved and digitised an important 4 volumes of student work by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his contemporaries, dating from their time at the School in the mid 1890s.
Known simply as 'The Magazine' these volumes continue to provide important source material for researchers, with individual volumes loaned to a number of major exhibitions in the UK and overseas. The dedicated website now allows these volumes to be searched and accessed online for the first time.

Body Pods

2012-01-12T15:07:00.000Z

Discover the strange and surprising human body in Body Pods, a series of 12 podcasts by artists and scientists, each one exploring a different part of your body.
The Ear is the first in the serie. Artists to follow include Francesca Beard, Amanda Boyle, Stacy Makishi, David Rosenberg, and Richard Thomas.

Luc Tuymans

2012-01-05T16:46:00.000Z

Luc Tuymans often uses the history of his country, Belgium, and that of his own family as a starting point in his work. His paintings are born out of a distrust of imagery in an image saturated world, and a belief that representation can only ever be partial and subjective. Drawing on images from film, television and photography, on subjects ranging from major historical events, such as the Holocaust, or the politics of the Belgian Congo, to something as inconsequential and banal as wallpaper patterns, he creates paintings that explore the inadequacy of collective memory. TateShots visited Tuymans in his home city of Antwerp.

Isaac Newton's Papers

2011-12-15T08:57:00.000Z

Isaac Newton’s own annotated copies of his works, notebooks and manuscripts are being made available online by Cambridge University Library and the University of Sussex. Researchers, students and the public can now zoom in to each page to explore texts like Principia Mathematica in incredible detail and make use of transcriptions to understand Newton’s mind – and handwriting. Several of the manuscripts in the collection contain the handwritten line ‘not fit to be printed’, scrawled by Thomas Pellet, a Fellow of the Royal Society, who went through Newton’s papers after his death to decide which ones should be published.

Voices of Art History

2011-12-14T09:59:00.000Z

The Association of Art Historians has launched its online oral history project. Voices in Art History explores the development of the discipline in Britain through a series of audio interviews with art historians. The recordings offer commentary on the changing nature of the arts and culture since the 1950s.

Locating London's Past

2011-12-12T11:55:00.000Z

Researchers have today unveiled a new interactive map that reveals London’s social history in unprecedented detail, enabling users to explore everything from the world’s first gay scene to eighteenth century riots. Locating London’s Past is a new website that lets users delve deep into the capital’s past. The website is the first to map information from a vast array of sources, covering:

· crime and punishment

· the distribution of wealth, poverty and occupations

· the ownership of consumer goods

· mortality