Blog Topic: Highlights

March is Women’s History Month, the perfect time to highlight the work of Karen Finley, a world-renowned performance artist, author, and playwright whose work has addressed issues such as sexuality, abuse, and American politics from an uncompromising feminist perspective. Finley came to national attention when her 1990 grant application to the National Endowment for the Arts […]

For over twenty years, Panos Pictures has been using photography to communicate critical social issues and stories beyond the mainstream media landscape to new and diverse audiences. More than 30,000 of their images of contemporary global affairs are currently available in the ARTstor Digital Library. In this Panos-produced video, Stephan Vanfleteren talks about capturing a moment that he didn’t […]

Debris from a meteor streaked through the sky in western Siberia early this morning, causing a boom that damaged a large number of buildings, mainly in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. Some 1,000 people were reportedly hurt, mostly as a result of glass shattering when the meteor entered the atmosphere.

This year, we mark Black History month with a summary of some of the excellent resources available in the Artstor Digital Library that focus on the lives and many achievements of African Americans. Collections Panos Pictures The independent photo agency specializes in documentary images of critical social issues, including thousands of images from the United […]

For over twenty years, Panos Pictures has been using photography to communicate critical social issues and stories beyond the mainstream media landscape to new and diverse audiences. More than 30,000 of their images of contemporary global affairs are currently available in the Artstor Digital Library. In this Panos-produced video, Carolyn Drake shares the devastating backstory behind her seemingly-neutral photograph […]

A mystery from nearly 3,200 years ago has been solved: Conspirators murdered Egyptian king Ramesses III by cutting his throat, according to a recent study in the British Medical Journal. Furthermore, the investigation suggests that one of his sons was involved in the murder. The fate of the second Pharaoh of the 20th dynasty was […]

Happy Hanukkah! The eight-day festival that celebrates the triumph of light over darkness begins on the eve of the 25th of the Jewish month of Kislev. Artstor offers many resources to mark the holiday. Among the traditions surrounding the festival, possibly the most striking is the nightly lighting of the menorah. And indeed, a search for […]

As you’ve probably heard, people across the world have been worrying that the world will end on December 21, 2012, influenced by some recent interpretations of Popol Vuh, a 16th-century narrative about the origins, traditions, and history of the Maya nation. Thankfully, NASA scientists recently debunked this and other apocalyptic predictions. But don’t let the fact that the world is not about […]

Alberto Giacometti moved from his native Switzerland to Paris as a young man in 1922 and lived there almost uninterruptedly until his death in 1966. He fell in love with the city and enjoyed wandering through its streets aimlessly, relishing the unexpected adventures that would ensue, like meeting fellow flâneurs such as Jean-Paul Sartre or […]

Tradition holds that on Halloween the walls between the worlds of the living and the dead weaken and spirits walk the earth. More recently, the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer combined this concept with the medieval motif of the hellmouth. In the show, the hellmouth is a weak place between dimensions that attracts demons […]