Gutenberg-e online books Columbia University Press has a new site where it is publishing e-monographs. Gutenberg-e (not to be confused with Project Gutenberg) is an open access site that publishes award-winning dissertations as e-books. It appears that Gutenberg-e aims to “offer elements that cannot be conveyed in print: extensive documentation, hyperlinks to supplementary literature, images, music, video, and links to related web sites”. Of interest to art historians is Robert Kirkbride’s Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro, which can be read here. The book has also been recently reviewed by Saundra Weddle on H-net. __________ JISC Collections JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) recently launched a page that acts as an introduction to their online resources. From here you can search across collections and browse the different collections. The collections have a UK focus but are likely…
Category: News
Art and art history related news. Please send news item and media releases to Katrina Grant webmaster@melbourneartnetwork.com.au The decision of what news to publish lies with the editors and their decision is final.
Vale Bill Kent
It is with regret that we have learned of the death of Emeritus Professor Francis William (Bill) Kent on 30th August 2010. Professor Kent was the Founding Director of Monash University Prato Centre (2000-2004) and then Professor of History and Australian Professorial Fellow at the School of Historical Studies, Monash University. Bill was one of the great Italian Renaissance historians, and a world authority on Lorenzo the Magnificent. He was a great supporter of art history and a friend to art historians. A Bill Kent Foundation has been established to honour his memory. Details can be found to the following website: http://www.monash.edu.au/giving/news/billkent.html
New look Melbourne Art Network
We have recently upgraded the website for the Melbourne Art Network. We hope that you will find it easier to navigate and easier to locate information that you are interested in. The address remains the same at https://melbourneartnetwork.com.au What you will find on the new look Melbourne Art Network: Content: Notices We will continue to post calls-for-papers, details of funding and scholarships, and art, and art history-related events both in Melbourne and elsewhere. You can now quickly find these organised according to categories by way of the lower menu at the top of the page. We encourage our readers to send in details of events, calls-for-papers and funding that may be of interest. Content: Opinion, Reviews and Commentary The new website will post reviews of new art, art history, architecture, and garden history books as well reviews of exhibitions both…
Melbourne Prints online
Two new websites have just been launched that detail Melbourne based research into Early Modern prints. These websites have been developed with the assistance of a Scholarly Innovation Information Grant from the Baillieu Library. MELBOURNE PRINTS – http://melbourneprints.wordpress.com/ The Melbourne Prints website is being used to showcase a range of rare early modern books and prints held in the Baillieu Library. The aim of the site is to document and deepen knowledge of the content, material production and provenance of these cultural objects; to enable students from different disciplines to learn about methods and processes of their storage, conservation and display; to make this knowledge more accessible; to understand the material condition of these objects, as well as the nature of conservation, ongoing maintenance, storage and display; and to publicize the material to other students and scholars locally, nationally and…
New Database: Payments to Artists – 17th-Century Rome
A new database has been launched based on the research of Richard Spear for his recent book Painting for Profit: The Economic Lives of Seventeenth-Century Italian Painters (see this earlier post for details on the book). The database is described on the Getty website as follows: Artists’ wealth, like that of most Renaissance and Baroque painters, was principally derived from what they earned selling their art. Data that documents payments to artists—as opposed to resale prices or inventory evaluations—is the primary means for analyzing the socioeconomic lives of painters in early modern Europe. This online database contains approximately 1,000 payments recorded in Rome between 1576 and 1711. Information concerning painters active in Rome for a small portion of their careers is limited to their Roman phase. Richard Spear gathered this set of data in order to write the Rome section…
Volunteering opportunity at the Johnston Collection of Fine and Decorative Arts
The Johnston Collection, Museum of Fine and Decorative Arts in East Melbourne is inviting applications from anyone interested in becoming a voluntary guide. Successful applicants will be required to take part in an intensive 12 session training programme to be held on 12 successive Mondays commencing 19 July 2010. For further information and an application form contact The Johnston Collection. Telephone: 9416 2515 email: wrjohnston@bigpond.com Website: http://www.johnstoncollection.org/
News: Art Gallery of South Australia Announces New Director
Last week the Chairman of the Art Gallery of South Australia, Michael Abbott QC, announced that Nick Mitzevich would be the new Director of the Gallery. The previous director, Christopher Menz, resigned from the post in January this year. Nick Mitzevich is currently the Director of the University of Queensland Art Museum in Brisbane and was formerly Director of the Newcastle Region Art Gallery. At forty years old, Mr Mitzevich is the youngest person to assume the role of Director in the Art Gallery of South Australia’s 129 year history. Nick Mitzevich said, “It is an honour to have been selected as the new Director. The Art Gallery of South Australia has a dynamic history which is most inspiring and I look forward to enhancing the extraordinary collection and continuing to enlighten, surprise and stimulate visitors with accessible and thoughtful…
BHA to continue with free access for all
The Getty has announced on their site that the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA) will continue to operate. They state that: Since ending its collaboration with the Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique (INIST)–CNRS in December 2007, the Getty has been searching for partners to continue the production and distribution of BHA. This process has been complicated, and with no suitable arrangement immediately available, the Getty decided to act on its commitment to the scholarly community by providing access to BHA directly from its own Web site. It can now be accessed via their website free of charge at http://library.getty.edu/bha. Free Web access to BHA will be an advantage to those who previously could not access it as they didn’t have an institutional subscription. The database search includes both BHA (covering 1990-2007) and the International Bibliography of Art…
New Book ‘The Possessions of a Cardinal Politics, Piety, and Art, 1450–1700′
The Possessions of a Cardinal: Politics, Piety, and Art, 1450–1700 Edited by Mary Hollingsworth and Carol M. Richardson Cardinals occupied a unique place in the world of early modern Europe, their distinctive red hats the visible signs not only of impressive careers at the highest rank the pope could bestow, but also of their high social status and political influence on an international scale. Appointed for life, these princes of the Church played a key role in the dramatic events during a period in which both the power and the authority of the papacy were challenged. Cardinals crossed the ambiguous boundaries then existing between religious and secular power. Granted unparalleled access to Church and private property, they spent considerable time, money, and effort on making the best collections of art and antiquities. Some commissioned artworks in churches that advertised their…
Tables of Contents of open access art history journals
There is a blog that tracks the Tables of Contents of online, open access art history journals. The author of the site state that: The aim of this blog is to collect the TOCs of new issues of open access journals in the field of art history. “Art history” is conceived here in a rather narrow sense. Although the header contains tabs like “Contemporary Art & Theory” or “Architecture” too, a comprehensive outlook on these fields is not intended. Periodicals of related disciplines are evaluated only if they have some art historical material too, this may however change in the future. You can visit the site here and subscribe to its feed, you can also follow it on twitter.
Bibliography of the History of Art to cease at the end of March
It appears that the Bibliography of the History of Art is to fold at the end of this month due to cost cutting at the Getty. The Cornell University Library reports that: For a number of years, the Getty Research Institute has maintained the database, Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA). Cornell has been able to license access to that database via OCLC’s First Search platform. Due to the economic crisis, the Getty took the radical step last summer of declining to continue the BHA. On Friday, March 5, we received notification that our licensed access to the BHA will continue through March 31, 2010. The BHA is the decisive periodical citation index for art history scholarship, and this is certainly a very unfortunate decision. Many of us had been holding out hope that another entity would be willing…
JSTOR Auction catalogues online – open access till June 2010
JSTOR is collaborating with the Frick Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a pilot project funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to understand how auction catalogs can be best preserved for the long-term and made most easily accessible for scholarly use. Auction catalogs are vital for provenance research as well as for the study of art markets and the history of collecting. This prototype site is open to the public through June 2010. If you are interested in this content and the importance to art research, you are encouraged to try the site and take a brief survey. In June, we will evaluate use of the content and the feedback we have received in order to help determine the future of the resource. http://auctioncatalogs.jstor.org/
Painting for Profit in 17th century Italy – Upcoming Book and online Database
Painting for Profit: The Economic Lives of Seventeenth-Century Italian Painters by Richard Spear and Philip Sohm with contributions by Renata Ago, Elena Fumagalli, Richard Goldthwaite, Christopher Marshall and Raffaella Morselli. In this highly original book five leading art historians team up with two distinguished economic and social historians to investigate the financial worlds of painters in Baroque Italy. Exploring the many variables that determined the prices asked or received by painters—including the status of their patrons, the size of works and time spent making them, their subject matter, and their number of figures—the authors offer major insights into the social lives, psychological disposition, and economic circumstances of a wide range of major and minor artists. Richard Spear is Professor Emeritus of Art History at Oberlin College and Affiliate Research Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. Philip Sohm is University…
History of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome – Archival Documents now online
A new online archive of interest to scholars of Italian art history. History of the Accademia di San Luca The History of the Accademia di San Luca, c. 1590–1635: Documents from the Archivio di Stato di Roma brings together a body of largely unpublished notarial records from the Trenta Notai Capitolini (TNC) found in the Archivio di Stato di Roma (ASR), many previously thought lost, concerning the institutional history of the Accademia. This new material sheds light on the foundation, operation, administration, and financial management of the academy from its origins in the late 16th century to its consolidation as a well-regarded institution in the 1630s. The Database The searchable database of this Web site provides access to a complete transcription of every extant notarial record of the period from the Archivio di Stato di Roma identified by the project…
Melbourne Art Journal Vol. 11 ‘Europe and Australia’ – Updated
‘Europe and Australia’ the new MAJ (Melbourne Art Journal nos. 11 & 12) will be available from mid-March 2010. This volume has a focus on ‘Europe and Australia’ and includes a diverse range of articles from both Australian and international scholars. The Melbourne Art Journal was published by the Fine Arts Network (ISBN 978 09 803807 1 2 ISSN: 1329-9441). A copy of MAJ will be sent to all 2009 FAN members, it will also be available for purchase ($80). Contents below or click here to download a pdf of the contents page and abstracts of each article. For a sneak preview inside the journal and to download an order form visit the MAJ page on this website. Ruth Pullin ‘The Vulkaneifel and Victoria’s Western District: Eugène von Guérard and the Geognostic Landscape’ Caroline Jordan and Veronica Filmer ‘Old Sayer’s…