The Early Americas at Library of Congress

Useful for those doing courses in American or Precolumbian art, the Library of Congress's Exploring the Early Americas

"features selections from the more than 3,000 rare maps, documents, paintings, prints, and artifacts that make up the Jay I. Kislak Collection at the Library of Congress. It provides insight into indigenous cultures, the drama of the encounters between Native Americans and European explorers and settlers, and the pivotal changes caused by the meeting of the American and European worlds. The exhibition includes two extraordinary maps by Martin Waldseemüller created in 1507 and 1516, which depict a world enlarged by the presence of the Western Hemisphere."

If you follow the links to the Exhibition Themes, there are images of numerous objects with copious information. There are also interactive presentations.

It's not clear from the website how long this exhibition will be up at the Library, but the online content should be up indefinitely.

Views of Florence Online Exhibition

Just in time for those summerschool courses in Italian Art and Architecture (at least those starting in early summer) comes an online exhibition by the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz. Views of Florence from the print collection of the Photothek runs April 28, 2008 ­to July 6, 2008. The Institut describes it as follows:

The online exhibition focuses on “Florentine Views”, which represent the largest group by far within this heterogeneous collection. The exhibition is structured by subject. It begins with a range of views which clearly illustrate the changes as well as the constants in the visual appearance of the city between the 15th century and the 19th century. The exhibition includes a copy from 1758 after the famous Florentine chain map (created around 1485, now in the Museum of Prints and Drawings (Kupferstichkabinett) in Berlin), which was adapted in many later views of the city.
The city maps allow a differentiated view over the city and its monuments, documenting the urban growth of Florence over more than 300 years. Stefano Bonsignori’s map from 1584 uses an axonometric perspective to provide both accurate views of the buildings and the exact route of the roads.
Particularly numerous are the 19th century maps, which illustrate the urban development of the city.
The following sections of the exhibition deal with architectural ensembles such as the cathedral complex, the squares, the palaces, the bridges and the gardens. Several plates document the condition of Florence Cathedral before completion of the neogothic front in 1887. Our prints also include a bequeathed view of the rchitecture of the San Pier Maggiore church, which was demolished in 1783. This demonstrates the special source value of the collection.
The last section of the online exhibition is dedicated to “historical events” and provides a brief excursus on the use of print media in the context of the Italian unification movement of the 19th century.
With the digitalisation of its print inventory, the photo library of the Kunsthistorisches Institute has not only made this resource accessible to online users but at the same time also taken a first step towards the academic study of this important partial collection.
The next online exhibition by the photo library opens on July 7, 2008 and is devoted to the mediaeval art of Georgia.

Enjoy!

Software for Sketching

Few art history students use tablet pcs. As far as I can tell, the tablet or convertible is still more the province of engineering students.
I suspect this will eventually change, however, as more and more students find out the advantages of taking notes directly onto the computer. One outcome I can imagine is that some students will want to sketch details of the art. For that, Student Tablet PC provides a nice roundup of several programs designed for sketching.

To Pre-Post or Not to Pre-Post?

All right, fall semester is ending and we've been very much distracted, but here we are again. The question has arisen: when one has the PowerPoint presentation for class prepared significantly in advance, is it wise to post it online? (This is in relation to presentations that definitely will be online after class.)
One of my students suggested that it would be good to have the images ahead of time, and I didn't have any objection in principle. A colleague, however, states that this leads to students simply printing out the presentation and feeling that there's no need to take notes on the lecture.
I said, what, when the only data on the presentation is the image, the artist, the title, and the year?
She said yes, even so.
Let's have some discussion on this!

For Students: Organizing Notes on Computer

Robert at Student Tablet PC provides a nice summary of how he sets up an electronic filing system to deal with his course notes. Robert points out that while his example uses the GoBinder software program, the same effect can be achieved with other programs, as Damon shows in a detailed comment to Robert's post. Both file via the course (Robert by its number, Damon by its name) and have sub-areas (Robert divides by lecture date and also by other types of material such as Essays). Damon uses a combination of Outlook and OneNote to handle his notes.
While both Robert and Damon use tablet PCs to write and file their notes, their general strategies can be adapted by students who use regular laptops or even desktop machines. In these cases, the student might either scan the lecture notes or just keep them as paper, but the filing strategy could be used for keeping track of other materials related to the course, such as the images being studied.
Robert will be doing a follow-up that deals specifically with note-taking.

Summertime

Since it's summer in the Northern Hemisphere, we're either not thinking much about teaching or teaching summer school and therefore overcome by all the prep and grading.

There'll be more soon enough.

Remembering Dates

One of the most painful study problems for many art history students (especially, but by no means only, non-majors) is the recall of what can be hundreds of works per course.

We'll be returning to this issue in later posts, but for now, a couple of tips on recalling dates.

My own method, which was a pain in itself but was reasonably effective, involved creating a spreadsheet of all the works covered. With it sorted by artist and date, I could see where things tended to fall in the larger chronology.

A more interesting method, which uses a more visual mnemonic technique, comes from medievalist Robert Burdock's Paperless Undergrad blog. Robert reasons that one generally studies a work with an image of it at hand, and that one thus ought to have the date equally handy for study.

If the student is studying from a textbook, the date is indeed usually close at hand... but not usually very noticeable. Captions tend to be unobtrusive.

Robert, who puts digital copies of his artworks on his tablet PC (tablet PCs, for those not yet familiar with them, are akin to laptops but take pen input instead of or addition to typing, and are increasingly popular among students). Robert's mnemonic strategy is to look for some feature within the work itself--a squiggle that looks like a 3, for instance--that will remind him of the work's date. He can then mark it digitally to help himself remember while studying.

As Robert notes, the technique doesn't work for absolutely every work of art, but it does help him remember quite a few works in a much more active, creative manner.
Robert explains his method in detail, with examples, so I won't duplicate his efforts. Robert's method could probably be adopted for very successful use with an electronic flashcard program.