AMICO Press Release
May 21, 2001

Teaching Art Digitally: The Art Museum Image Consortium Offers Model
Assignments

AMICO Headquarters; Pittsburgh, PA

The Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO) is pleased to announce that a
variety of model art history assignments are now available on their public
web site at http://www.amico.org. AMICO was developed to open up the vast
hidden collections of art museums to teachers and students of art history.
The AMICO Library's great strength for teaching is that it does not
duplicate the teaching canon of an university slide library but augments it
with tens of thousands of important art objects that do not appear in
current printed textbooks and monographs. Since the array of entirely new
material - much of it previously unpublished and unstudied by scholars -
that is contained in The AMICO LibraryTM can be overwhelming to a new user
and might require some orientation, these model assignments are designed to
introduce students and their teachers to the possibilities of this vast
resource. These models were created by Peter Walsh, a former director of
publications for the Harvard University Art Museums who has extensive
knowledge of the use of museum collections in publishing, new technology,
and teaching. Mr. Walsh writes and speaks frequently on the effects of
technology on the perception of art and art history, was a guest lecturer
on image copyright and new technology at Dartmouth College, and is the
chairman of the Massachusetts Art Commission and the Committee on
Intellectual Property of the College Art Association.

After surveying the studio art and art history courses offered by current
AMICO Library subscribers, Mr. Walsh determined major areas of intersection
with works described in The AMICO Library. The model assignments he created
seek to highlight strengths of The AMICO Library as a teaching resource and
to provide launching points for humanities faculty to see how images and
information from The AMICO Library could be incorporated in class
assignments. Mr. Walsh notes, "the depth and breadth of The AMICO Library
can often be daunting to a newcomer, especially when faculty members are
presented with works they have never encountered before. The hope of these
assignments is to help faculty understand the range of works in The AMICO
Library, as well as how the digital format can really allow them to be
creative in the ways they structure assignments and incorporate works of
art into the learning process."


The assignments may be found at
http://www.amico.org/univ/sampleAssignments/ . They range from traditional
compare and contrast exercises to the curation of a virtual exhibition
based on a chosen theme and a research assignment involving an auction
purchase, budget management, authenticity, and collections integration and
growth. "I think that this set of exercises allows educators to see many
potential uses fro The AMICO Library's richness of content. I can see many
ways for professors at subscribing institutions to take these templates and
easily alter them for new subject areas," states Jennifer Trant, Executive
Director of AMICO. The assignments may be found at
http://www.amico.org/univ/sampleAssignments/ . Colleen Skidmore, Associate
Professor in the Department of History of Art, Design, and Visual Culture
at the University of Alberta, a Testbed participant and current AMICO
Library subscriber, found, "the model assignments demonstrate how AMICO
supports more established, traditional, and successful means of teaching
visual history while showing how instructors can integrate new and
imaginative approaches that captivate students' interest. I think these
will encourage both faculty and students to explore the database more
extensively and add to a comfort level with the materials there."

Educators are invited to review the model assignments and provide
suggestions and reports of use to [log in to unmask] All comments are
welcome!

ABOUT AMICO
The Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO) is an independent non-profit
corporation with 501 (c) 3 designation from the IRS. Founded in 1997 with
23 Members, the Consortium today is made up of over 30 major museums in the
United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. It's an innovative
collaboration - not seen before in museums - that shares, shapes, and
standardizes digital information regarding museum collections and enables
its educational use. Membership is open to any institution with a
collection of art.

AMICO Members make annual contributions of multimedia documentation of
works in their museums' collections. This is regularly compiled and made
available as The AMICO LibraryTM to universities, colleges, schools, and
public libraries. The 2001-2002 edition of The AMICO Library will document
approximately 75,000 different works of art, from prehistoric goddess
figures to contemporary installations. More than simply an image database,
works in The AMICO Library are fully documented and may also include
curatorial text about the artwork, detailed provenance information,
multiple views of the work itself, and other related multimedia.

The AMICO Library is accessible over secure networks to institutional
subscribers including universities, colleges, libraries, schools, and
museums, and is now accessible by over 2 million users, including faculty,
students, teachers, staff, and researchers. Educational institutions may
subscribe to The AMICO Library by contacting one of its distributors. These
include the Research Libraries Group (RLG), the Ohio Library and
Information Network (OhioLINK), Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network
(SCRAN), and other new distributor options available for the fall. A
subscription to The AMICO Library provides a license to use works for a
broad range of educational purposes. Potential subscribers may preview a
Thumbnail Catalog of The AMICO Library, get further information and request
a free, 30-day trial to the subscriber version of The AMICO Library at
http://www.amico.org.

AMICO
Jennifer Trant
Executive Director
Art Museum Image Consortium
Phone (412) 422 8533
Email: [log in to unmask]
http://www.amico.org
-------------------------
Kelly Richmond
Communications Director
Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO)
2008 Murray Ave, Suite D
Pittsburgh, PA  15217  USA
phone: +1 412 422 8533
fax: +1 412 422 8594
http://www.amico.org
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