Scriptorium

Scriptorium is an online digital archive of manuscript miscellanies and commonplace books dating from the 15th to 18th centuries. The archive is the work of a project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge, and is still progressing. At the time of writing the site gives access to images of three codexes from the University of Cambridge: a French Biblical miscellany from the 1540s; an English miscellany of verse dated c. 1640; and a 16th-century collection of carols in English and Latin. The images are of a high quality and can be enlarged for clearer viewing. The images are accompanied by: a description of the codex; a summary of its contents; and a bibliography.
Link: http://scriptorium.english.cam.ac.uk/
Access: Free

Cult Media Studies

This is the website of Cult Media Studies, an online networking hub for students and academics studying cult film, television and other media. The website's advisory board includes scholars from University of Aberystwyth, and Indiana University among others. There is a discussion forum where users can discuss cult media issues. One can post video clips on the video section of the website to aid in discussions or to showcase clips which might be of interest to other members. There is also an events page listing upcoming events such as conferences, festivals and new publications. There is a list of members which includes name and location. A links section is also available.
Link: http://cultmediastudies.ning.com/
Access: Free

Modernist Journals Project

This project is "intended to become a major resource for the study of the rise of modernism in the English-speaking world, with periodical literature at the center of this study." Its website features individual issues of British and American periodicals from 1910 and 1911, literary journals from the 1890s to early 1920s, biographical sketches of artists and writers, books, articles, and related material. From Brown University and the University of Tulsa.
Link: http://dl.lib.brown.edu:8082/exist/mjp/index.xml
Access: Free

Japanese Toys

The Ningyo do bunko online database offers a large collection of over 60 galleries of antique watercolour designs for Japanese toys. The galleries are in Japanese only, so those unfamiliar with the language will struggle with the limited contextual details. Navigation by thumbnail image and arrows is a simple enough affair, however, and the galleries are easy enough to browse. The images have been digitized at a reasonably high resolution and most may be magnified on-screen.
Link: http://tinyurl.com/3pscx5
Access: Free

Rosebud for Film Studies

Published by the University of Maryland, this website provides a comprehensive glossary to film studies.
Link: http://mith2.umd.edu/clients/mlifton/rosebud_old/Glossary/
Access: Free

Alphabet of Illustrators

This alphabet of illustrators has been provided by the Culture Archive based in Brighton and offers digital images of historical illustrations. Clicking on any name provides high quality images of scans from books and publications of the illustrator's work. Illustrations include pictures from the fairytales of Hans Christian Anderson, as well as work by the artist Walter Crane, Edward Bawden's pamphlet for Fortnum and Mason and the work of Fougasse, and many more.
Link: http://www.fulltable.com/VTS/aoi/
Access: Free

Babar The Elephant

The Morgan Library and Museum in New York have launched an online facsimile of original sketches for Jean de Brunhoff's classic children's character Babar The Elephant.
This digital facsimile presents every page of a small, delicate maquette that Jean de Brunhoff created in 1930 or 1931 as he drafted the first book in the Babar series. The maquette, an extraordinary handmade booklet complete with cover and endpapers, text and illustrations, is the prototype for Histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant.
Link: http://www.themorgan.org/collections/swf/exhibOnline.asp?id=900
Access: Free

Benin: Kings and Rituals

This site provides free access to an online exhibition of museum artefacts from the Art Institute of Chicago. They cover the history, anthropology and kingship rituals of the kingdom of Benin, Nigeria. They include 40 online images of royal sculptures and regalia from the West African Kingdom plus interactive maps, a brief history of the Oba, a glossary of terms and links to recommended further reading.
Link: http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/exhibitions/benin/overview
Access: Free

Art & Research

Issue 2 of the Glasgow School of Art's e-journal in fine art research, Art & Research, has just been published.
Art and Research is an artist-led, internationally peer-assessed e-journal of Research in Fine Art Practice, focused upon questions, contexts and methodologies of artistic research and practice. Art & Research aims to serve professional artists and academics, curators and critics, artistic researchers, postgraduate and doctoral research students and undergraduates, and to inform current pedagogical thought in a global context.
Issue 2 is focused on the work of French philosopher Jacques Rancière and includes papers from the two-day conference Aesthetics and Politics: With and Around Jacques Rancière co-organized by Sophie Berrebi and Marie-Aude Baronian at the University of Amsterdam on 20 and 21 June 2006. It includes the previously unpublished text of Rancières plenary lecture delivered at the conference and a new interview with the philosopher; it also includes a transcript of an exchange with Rancière which followed the papers presented by Stephen Wright and Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield which also appear here.

Contents:

• Editorial: Jacques Rancière and The (Re)Distribution of the Sensible:( Five Lessons in Artistic Research
• With and Around Jacques Rancière
• Sophie Berrebi: Everything you wanted to know about Jacques Rancière but were afraid to ask&..
• Jacques Rancière: Aesthetic Separation, Aesthetic Community: Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime of Art
• Stephen Wright: Behind Police Lines: Art Visible and Invisible
• Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield: Nowhere is aesthetics contra ethics:
• (Rancière the other side of Lyotard
• An Exchange with Jacques Rancière
• Jacques Rancière and Indisciplinarity, translated by Gregory Elliott
• Sophie Berrebi: Jacques Rancière: Aesthetics is Politics
• Audron Žukauskait: Imaginary Identities In Contemporary Lithuanian Art
• Sean Snyder: Optics. Compression. Propaganda.
• Michael Rakowitz: The invisible enemy should not exist
• All of a Sudden: Things that Matter in Contemporary Art: An Interview with Jörg Heiser
• Dan Kidner: Chris Evans: Socially Awkward
• Chris Evans: The Freedom of Negative Expression
• The Phenomenology of Olfactory Perception:( An interview with Clara Ursitti
• Clara Ursitti: Oxford/Rome
• Micro Gestures For a New Co-Efficiency in Art: An interview with Andrew Sunley Smith
• Andrew Sunley Smith: Micro Gestures
• Brian O'Connell: Ghostly Media: What Would an Invoking Medium Look Like?
• Sarah-Neel Smith: Nightcomers at the 2007 Istanbul Biennial:( revolution or counter-revolution?

Link: http://www.artandresearch.org.uk/
Access: Free

Czech Book Covers

The Smithsonian Institution Libraries website has provided this resource on Czech book covers of the 1920s and 1930s, which is based on the collection in the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Library. The overview introduces Czech book design which sprang from the journals published by the Devetsil Artistic Union. The union was a highly influential group of avant-garde poets, writers, artists and designers who were active from 1920 to 1931. The collection can be viewed by style - constructivism, poetism, surrealism or social realism; or by book designer/typographer/illustrator, including work by Karel Bedrna,Vrastislav Hugo Brunner, Gustave Dore and Adolf Hoffmeister. All these books can also be viewed by author or by date of publication. A select bibliography is also provided.
Link: http://www.sil.si.edu/ondisplay/czechbooks/
Access: Free

Hannah Frank

This website is dedicated to the Scottish Jewish artist and sculptor, Hannah Frank, who in 2008 is regarded as the last living link to the Scottish Art Nouveau movement. Born in Glasgow in 1908 to Jewish parents, she studied at the University of Glasgow between 1927 and 1932, where she produced a fortnightly illustration for Glasgow University Magazine. She is best-known for these pen-and-ink drawings, which she signed with her pen-name of 'Al Aaraaf'. In the 1940s she went to Glasgow School of Art to learn clay modelling and from 1950 to 2000, sculpture was her main preoccupation. Created by her niece, Fiona Frank, this informative website provides a biography of the artist, details about current and past exhibitions, and a news archive.
Link: http://www.hannahfrank.org.uk/
Access: Free

Dali and Film

This website features the online exhibition 'Dalí: Painting and Film', also showing at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) from 29th June until 15th September 2008. Bringing together over a hundred paintings, photographs, drawings and films by Salvador Dalí, the exhibition explores the role of cinema in his work, and covers his collaborations with filmmakers including Luis Buñuel, Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney.
Link: http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/dali/
Access: Free

Wyndham Lewis Portraits

This website accompanies an exhibition at London’s National Portrait Gallery in 2008. Focussing on artist Percy Wyndham Lewis’ portraits, the exhibition “explores Lewis’s ideas about human personality, which he viewed as complex and unsettled” and presents images of important early modern figures such as TS Eliot and James Joyce. The website takes the reader though key works annotated with information about the artist and the sitters, as well as providing a timeline of Wyndham Lewis’ career.
Link: http://www.npg.org.uk/wyndhamlewis/index.html
Access: Free

Graphic Design Timeline

The Graphic design timeline is an interactive guide which acts as an accompaniment to the fourth edition of "Meggs' History of Graphic Design", by Philip P. Meggs and Alston W. Purvis. Using flash technology the site provides a chronological history of graphic design, beginning in the year 15,000 BC and the Lascaux cave paintings, and covering the invention of writing, illuminated manuscripts, the advent of printing, the industrial revolution, the Arts and Crafts Movement, right up until the present day to the digital revolution and beyond.
Link: http://www.graphicdesigntimeline.net/
Access: Free