On 23 December 2005 CODART launched a new section on its website, the Special Features, which consisted of the Curator´s Bookshelf, comprising a list of the most useful reference works on Dutch and Flemish art, a list of important online sources, and the addresses of various institutions that are helpful in the study of Dutch and Flemish art.
Since then, rapid changes have taken place in the way research is carried out in our field. Moreover, experience has taught us how difficult it is to maintain the list of more than seven hundred museums worldwide with art from the Low Countries, and to present reliable and up-to-date information from universities, libraries, archives and other sources.
We are therefore proud to present a completely new version of this section, which also has a new name: Research Guide. In addition to updating all our information and presenting it in a more attractive way, an important objective of the new Research Guide is the further integration of our information with the extensive databases of the RKD.
A Portal to Knowledge and Centers of Excellence
More and more collections, sources and art-historical literature are easily accessible online, free of charge. Whenever possible, the Research Guide acts as a portal to such freely accessible books and journals, archival material, images and other sources of knowledge. Whenever the Curator’s Bookshelf mentions literature that is not generally accessible on the Internet, we provide a link to the online catalogue of the library of the RKD, where all the basic information about that publication can be found.
The Resources & Links section of the Research Guide acts as a portal to research tools, online images and research institutions by providing links to their websites.
Publication in the Spotlight
A new feature is the Publication in the Spotlight, in which we highlight a publication that is freely accessible online. We kick off with Maria Senenko’s The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts: Collection of Dutch Paintings. This catalogue can be downloaded as a Pdf, courtesy of the Foundation for Cultural Inventory (SCI), which published the English version of the catalogue in cooperation with the Pushkin Museum. The Spotlight will focus on different publications as they come to our attention.
Old, Familiar Special Features
Even though we are proud of our new, improved Research Guide, we also understand those who prefer to work with the old, familiar Special Features, so they continue to be available here.
Finally, our Research Guide does not claim to give a complete overview of everything that can be of use in researching Dutch and Flemish art. We therefore welcome your suggestions for expanding it, which we kindly request you to send to the webmaster@codart.nl.
