Blog
When viewing an image at the second zoom level, the new “Image Viewer” is now available to you.
The Image Viewer allows you to continuously zoom in and out on the image. The higher the zoom level, the smaller the visible area, but the more detailed the display, making it perfect for evaluating the image. You can assign stars directly, from 1 for “unusable” to 5 for “very good.” Clicking on the two small arrows on the right-hand side sets the zoom to 0, and the arrow (up) on the left-hand side takes you back to the first magnification level of the image with all metadata.
The work of German painter, illustrator, and graphic artist Ruth Baumgarte comprises 3,576 records, which can now be searched via prometheus in the image database “Werkverzeichnis Ruth Baumgarte, Ruth Baumgarte Art Foundation” artist was born in 1923 and studied painting and graphic design at the Berlin University of the Arts from 1941 to 1944. In addition to paintings, watercolors, and drawings, her work consists of an extensive collection of illustrations. These include over 100 works in bold colors, created during her numerous trips to Africa beginning in 1960.
The Ruth Baumgarte Art Foundation was established by the artist in 2012 as a non-profit foundation to communicate her extensive work to a broad public through exhibitions, events, and publications, and to make it available for academic research.
Take a look and discover the work of Ruth Baumgarte.
Out of Frame – 25 Years of prometheus between Structure and Vision
Twenty-five years ago, we developed the idea of prometheus and, one year later on 1 April 2001, launched the distributed digital image archive for research and teaching in art history and other image-based disciplines. Since then, prometheus has actively accompanied the transformation of the humanities in light of technological developments, driving and shaping change by providing vital impulses within the community. The regular prometheus conferences have always been a meeting place for visionary contributions and pioneering discussions. They not only advanced the innovative development of the image archive but also strengthened the prometheus community network and established prometheus as an important actor in building a national research data infrastructure for tangible and intangible cultural assets.
At our conference celebrating the 25th anniversary, entitled ‘Out of Frame – 25 Years of prometheus between Structure and Vision’ (30 September–2 October 2026), we will take a moment to look back with pride and pleasure, and then turn to key questions concerning the transformation of the humanities in the context of technological change. What is our vision for image-based research? In which direction should prometheus continue to develop? What must we change today, in the face of the disruptive impact of generative artificial intelligence, within humanities institutions if they are to remain relevant in the future?
We warmly invite you to ‘Out of Frame’ to discuss these questions with us, to network, and to help reshape today’s structures for tomorrow. SAVE THE DATE and celebrate with us next year the 25th birthday of prometheus in Cologne. Venue and programme to follow.
Since last week, the image archive has a new design, with revised navigation and an improved structure. It is responsive, meaning it adapts flexibly to different devices such as PCs, tablets, and smartphones.
Have you already had some initial experience? Is everything as intuitive as we planned?
We welcome your comments, which you can also send to us using the feedback form.
Have you been traveling in recent months and want to access your own images alongside those from prometheus for your research work, homework, reports, and presentations? Then use your own image database. Anyone with personal access has one and can upload their own images directly and either just save them for now, save them to their favorites for quick access, or assign them to existing image collections.
For each of your uploads, you can specify whether you want to make the image available to everyone in prometheus after it has been reviewed by the prometheus office for quality assurance purposes. The images will then appear directly in the search results after a short time. If you only want to use it for private purposes, simply remove the preset check mark.
A favorites bar is available on the left side of the screen with your personal access. There you can store individual images and entire image collections (see 1.) and access them directly. Icons and headings show you what you have stored.
You can expand and collapse these favorites in the form of boxes (see 2. and 3.), change their order, and delete them. When you delete them, you are only deleting the link to this sidebar. The images and image collections remain in their original locations.
In future, you will no longer find your favorites on the left-hand side, but in the top bar next to the search function, image collections and your database:
If you click on the individual thumbnails in the current image series, you will be taken to prometheus, provided you have access via one of the three access points, to … a black screen. If you click on the black screen, you will be taken to the second zoom level of the “image” and you can watch a video, for example “Eric Lanz. La pâte, Der Teig, Ausschnitt, 2000, 1-channel video, loop, color”. In total, you will find around 1,200 videos by various artists in the research database “Video Archive, imai – inter media art institute, Düsseldorf”.
Another type of media you may encounter in the image archive is a GIF, such as “Ouroboros by Diana Domingues” in the research database “Archive of Digital Art”.
And “Kompakkt” from the Institute for Digital Humanities at the University of Cologne provides interactive 3D objects such as “Phaistos Disc”.
For several months now, we have been offering three different approaches to the image archive.
(1) If your PC is located within a network of the currently 168 licensed institutions, you can use the campus access. After you have read and confirmed the terms of use, you can use the simple and advanced search functions in the image archive.
(2) Or do you already have personal access, with a login name or e-mail address and password? Then you can use it to log in and use other functions in the image archive, such as creating image collections, creating your own image database or saving your preferred settings. If you don’t have one yet but want to use these functions, you can register to use the image archive free of charge if you belong to a licensed institution. For a one-week trial access, fill out a short form and after verification of your research interest, your account will be activated.
(3) Some of the licensed institutions now also offer eduGAIN access for you. And the number is growing. “education Global Authentication INfrastructure” is a global service that connects various national and regional identity networks in the research and higher education sector. It enables researchers and students to log in to various online services offered by other institutions or networks with a single login, without having to create separate accounts or log in to each service individually. You can currently log in via “single sign-on” if you belong to one of the following institutions:
Bibliothek PZ.BS, Basel
Fachhochschule Potsdam
Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin
Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
Martin-Luther-Universität Halle, Zentralbibliothek
Universität Greifswald
Universität Paderborn
Universität zu Köln
Universitätsbibliothek Bern
Zürcher Hochschule der Künste
At its meeting at the beginning of July, the Joint Science Conference of the Federal Government and the Länder decided that all nine consortia from the first round for the development of the National Research Data Infrastructure will continue to receive funding. In October, NFDI4Culture will therefore continue. We are also very happy about this, because the University of Cologne is a co-applicant institution with the prometheus image archive and, together with the University of Paderborn, responsible for the department of tools and services.
Prospectively, we will occasionally open small drawers in our image archive for you – and give you some quick tips. In our rubric “Did you know …?” we will be presenting some charming details at irregular intervals that sometimes remain hidden.
- Did you know that you can select the databases to be searched for your search term in the Advanced Search?
The default setting in the advanced search is to search in all databases. However, you can choose to search only in institute, museum or research databases or in the upload databases of prometheus users …
… or should only be searched in sporadic image databases.
- Did you know you can change your e-mail address in your profile?
If you are logged in with your personal account, you will see your name at the top right. Click on the name, then on the pencil and you can enter a new e-mail address.
- Did you know you can sort the images in the image collections by title?
Images in image collections are sorted by default according to “insertion order”. You can choose nine other ways to display your images, for example by “Title”:
