We are thrilled to announce that another ARAS project has reached fruition. Awhile ago, we announced in ARAS Connections that we had partnered with Artstor in such a way as to allow all ARAS subscribers to have access to  Artstor’s rich collection of images from the finest archives and museums throughout the United States. The second phase of this project has just been completed—16,000 ARAS images are now available on Artstor which can be accessed for free at museums, universities and libraries around the country by those without ARAS subscriptions. This is a wonderful achievement for ARAS as we have now attained a level of widespread accessibility and recognition that comes with the Artstor affiliation. This affiliation gives ARAS a reach into the world that it could never achieve through its own more limited resources. It should be noted that the ARAS images available on Artstor do not have the same advanced features available on ARAS itself. These features include the ARAS timeline and ARAS' unique search capacity which allows one to link symbolic images from one culture and era to another. But this new partnership gives the Artstor user of ARAS a rich sample of what an ARAS subscription can fully provide. Here is how Artstor’s announced the ARAS connection:

Artstor and the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism have released more than 16,000 images documenting mythology, symbols and rituals in the Digital Library. The images in Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS) explore the universality of certain iconographies and themes, illustrating commonalities in the ways human beings across the world have thought about and represented different phenomena throughout time. Each image includes commentary that points to its unique cultural history and contextualizes it within larger archetypal patterns and historical developments. The collection supports interdisciplinary research in the humanities, including the understanding of images in psychotherapy and dreams. It offers support for artists and designers to search for pictorial inspiration and for people of all ages to explore the power of symbols.

https://artstor.wordpress.com/2016/02/22/now-available-archive-for-research-in-archetypal-symbolism/

The advantage of the Artstor/ARAS affiliation can be appreciated and enjoyed fully by the ARAS subscriber. Here is how Artstor describes itself: "The Artstor Digital Library features a wide range of multidisciplinary content from some of the world’s top museums, artists, libraries, scholars, and photo archives, including rare collections not accessible anywhere else." For a list of the amazing image collections now available to the ARAS subscriber, go to http://www.artstor.org/collections

In short, on the one hand ARAS images and commentaries can now be accessed by many more students, scholars and lovers of art—although without the full search capacity provided only by a subscription to ARAS. And subscribers to ARAS now have at their fingertips access to some of the world’s greatest collections of images.