Dear colleagues,

I am pleased to share this digest of recent collection development
announcements on behalf of ARTstor. ARTstor (www.artstor.org) was
created in 2001 as a nonprofit initiative of The Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation, and is now an independent non-profit organization dedicated
to serving education and scholarship in the arts and the humanities
through the utilization of digital technologies. Currently, more than 400
nonprofit institutions in North America are participating in ARTstor, and
ARTstor anticipates making its library of digital images available to
nonprofit institutions outside of the North America as well. For fuller
descriptions of these collection development collaborations, please see
http://www.artstor.org/info/news/whats_new.jsp .

Max Marmor
Director of Collection Development
ARTstor

Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts from the Bodleian Library, Oxford
University

Oxford University and ARTstor have recently reached an agreement whereby
Oxford University's Bodleian Library and ARTstor will collaborate on the
digitization and distribution through ARTstor of approximately 25,000
digital images of manuscript paintings and drawings from the Bodleian
Library's outstanding collection of medieval and renaissance illuminated
western manuscripts. Through this partnership, ARTstor will digitize
virtually all of the illuminated manuscript leaves from Bodleian
manuscripts through the 16th century. The present collaboration will
make this rich body of visual material and related scholarship available
online and at high resolution for the first time.

Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise"

After more than twenty-five years of work, the restoration of Ghiberti's
famous "Gates of Paradise" - the bronze doors on the east side of the
Florentine Baptistery - is nearing completion. Through an agreement with
the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore and the Museo Opificio delle Pietre
Dure (Florence, Italy), ARTstor is supporting the rich photographic
documentation of the recently restored This photographic campaign has
produced nearly 700 stunning, detailed color photographs of Ghiberti's
relief sculptures, all of which will be digitized and made available
through ARTstor at the highest resolution.

Kress Collection of Old Master Paintings

Through a collaboration with the Samuel H. Kress Foundation,
approximately 1,200 Old Master paintings from the former Kress Collection
will be made available in digital form through ARTstor. From the mid-
1920s to the end of the 1950s, S.H. Kress (1863-1955) and the Samuel H.
Kress Foundation (est. 1929) amassed one of the most important
collections of European Old Master paintings, sculpture, and decorative
arts ever assembled through the efforts of a private individual. The
entire collection was ultimately given away to 42 American museums,
including the National Gallery of Art. Encompassing European art of the
principal continental schools from the 13th to the early 19th centuries,
the Kress Collection's greatest distinction resides its more than 1,000
Italian paintings. Through the present collaboration, this remarkable
collection will be reassembled in digital form, at high resolution.