The Art Minute

Sally teaches university level courses in art history, but wanted to reach people who didn’t have the time or luxury to take traditional classes.

How could she reach a new audience, and find sources for art history images that could be reproduced without big licensing fees?

Sally and I met at The University of Texas at Austin. She was a PhD student, and I was in the Master’s program. We became fast friends, and she taught me the secret for making the best margaritas. (Hint: equal parts).

We reconnected years after grad school while I was visiting Austin on business. She had an idea for a blog, and wanted to brainstorm how to get it off the ground.

Sally had the hardest part of creating a blog covered: deep knowledge, and the ability to write about a wide span of topics, quickly. To get started, she needed inexpensive – ideally free – tools.

With WordPress, the publishing tool was open source, and I could get her set up with an inexpensive theme for under $50. And, with the emergence of Open Access initiatives at museums like The Getty, The Met and the Walters Art Museum, Sally could map her examples to images of art that were free to re-use.

Her startup costs? Time, not dollars.

Her investment paid off. Sally’s commitment to writing in an approachable style earned her a loyal following and an invitation to publish her first book of short essays:  Art & Scandal, The Naked Truth.

Glass mosaic fragment, 3rd–4th century A.D. (Roman) |  Image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917

Object Size: Overall: 1 3/4 x 1 7/8 in. (4.5 x 4.7 cm)