Winterthur, Museum, Garden & Library announced a $35,000 Art Works grant recommendation from the National Endowment for the Arts to digitize 1,500 important works of art on paper. The project is part of a Winterthur initiative to thoroughly document its collection, upgrade its cataloguing content, and provide broad access through museumcollection.winterthur.org.
The project is part of Winterthur’s ongoing commitment to foster lifelong learning in the arts and humanities, educating and engaging the widest possible audiences through online collection access. Winterthur’s online collection database is currently accessed by nearly 59,000 users internationally.
Funding from the new NEA grant recommendation will be used to hire staff to scan or photograph works, digitally edit them, add metadata, and upload the new digital files to Winterthur’s existing online collections database. Visitors will see initial results of the project this fall in the exhibition Lasting Impressions: The Artists of Currier & Ives.
Many of the newly digitized images in Lasting Impressions will be included in an iPad app presenting highlights of the conservation work involved in preparing the exhibition. Visitors will be able to identify traces of the lithographic process on the prints and exercise their judgment as instant “connoisseurs” of Currier & Ives prints.
The exhibition will be on view in the Winterthur Galleries Sept. 17, 2016 to Jan. 8, 2017, while the online/virtual exhibition will be accessible permanently
