With the advent of the Artemisia Imaging Project, Dartmouth has instituted an on-line museum of sorts for students' use.
Named after Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi, this virtual-Met consists of scanned images of the works of art, which students in various art history courses are required to memorize, and is continually accessible from any networked computer, according to a press release issued by the College.
Currently, there are over 3000 low-resolution images available on-line. The Project is utilized this term by three classes in the Art History department, which are Art History 46: Northern Baroque Art, Art History 50: American Art and Art History 51: Nineteenth Century Art, according to Elizabeth O'Donnell, project director.
"There is no one set of images, it changes every term because there are new classes and there are classes that are no longer taught," she said.
The Fall term of 1993 was the first time images were available on-line, O'Donnell said.
There is no set date for the project's completion, she said, because, "it is an ongoing thing. It is very labor intensive and we are adding images every day."
Previously, students could only view the required pictures during class and once before the exam, according to the press release.
Now, after the slides are shown in class, they are scanned into the network. The images are organized by class in the order that they were shown and grouped by artist, title, date, style and museum location. There are also controls which allow the viewer to adjust color, size and brightness of the picture.
According to O'Donnell, due to copyright laws, the exact details for accessing the images and the software required are given only to students in the participating classes during any given term. A copy of Artemisia is also available on the Public fileserver.
The program is very popular with both faculty and students. "The faculty are all eager to take part in this. They think it is a big help to the students and they are all waiting for their chance to get on-line," said Betsy Alexander, the secretary for the Art History department.
Professor John Jacobus, who teaches Art History 51, is also enthusiastic about the project. "I think [its] excellent. It's one of those things you wish you had years ago," he said.
With the success of Artemisia, a second project is in the works: an on-line glossary of art history terminology which will include paintings, illustrations, architectural drawings and diagrams, according to the press release.
Students enjoy the new tool as well, finding it a valuable supplement to learning in the classroom.
"The last Art History course I took was Art History 2, and it was misery if you missed a class because you had to spend so much time in the library looking up the slides you missed. The quality of the pictures [in the on-line library] is pretty bad, but at least you know what the subject is and can identify it later," said Debra Baltzer '95, a student in Art History 51.
The project was originally funded by the Computer Technology Venture Fund which supports faculty and student initiatives in educational technology at Dartmouth.
Dartmouth has always been on the college computing frontier. Since 1991 all freshmen were required to purchase computers, and the class of 1998 was the first class required to purchase color monitors before entering the College.
Other colleges have instituted similar programs but Dartmouth's extensive and accessible intra-campus computer networking make the Artemisia Project more feasible than its counterparts.
Though Artemisia does not act as a substitute for actual paintings, its convenience and worth as a teaching tool are its most redeeming features.
