The Arquin Slide Collection Digitization Project: Preserving the Heritage of Latin America

FAIN: PW-269408-20

Florida Atlantic University (Boca Raton, FL 33431-6424)
Emily Anne Fenichel (Project Director: July 2019 to present)

Cataloging and digitization of 25,000 slides taken by photographer Florence Arquin during the 1940s and 1950s that document Latin American and Caribbean heritage and culture, to be made available through a website at Florida Atlantic University.

The Arquin Slide Collection Digitization Project will digitize Florence Arquin’s collection of 25,000 slides, create descriptive metadata, archive the images and metadata, and make the collection accessible in a digital collection through a public website created with Omeka S. Online access to the collection will serve as a powerful research tool for scholars throughout the world who study Latin America and the Caribbean.

Associated Products

The Arquin Slide Digitization Project (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: The Arquin Slide Digitization Project
Author: Emily Fenichel, Camila Afanador-Llach
Abstract: In the 1940s, the State Department hired Florence Arquin to take 35mm slides of the art, culture, history, and modern life of Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, and Ecuador. She created an encyclopedic collection of thousands of slides that cover subjects as diverse as colonial churches, indigenous crafts, Modern Mexican painters, and mid-century architecture. Currently held at Florida Atlantic University, these slides are entering a new age, thanks to a Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2020. A collaboration between an Art Historian and a Graphic Designer, the Florence Arquin Slide Project will digitize the slides, attach descriptive metadata to the images, and make the resulting database available to the public for research. This jointly-given paper will introduce the project and highlight its contributions to the humanities. Moreover, it will also consider some of the unique challenges presented by the material, as well as the solutions the PIs have discovered along the way. These challenges range from how to map the images so that researchers can search the material geographically, to how and what metadata to translate into Spanish and Portuguese for researchers in Latin America, to how to deal with potentially sensitive material, to copyright issues, to adapting open-source software, to providing access using UX principles.
Date: 4/2/22
Conference Name: Florida Digital Humanities Consortium 2022

Teaching the Object: Selections from the FAU Art Collection (Exhibition)
Title: Teaching the Object: Selections from the FAU Art Collection
Curator: Karen Leader
Abstract: In celebration of a gift of works by prominent artists including French painter Henri Matisse, and American Modernists Stuart Davis and Suzy Freylinghuysen, this exhibition acknowledges Rick Stone and Lesley Blackner who provided, in addition to their gift of 175 works of art, funding to assist the creation of FAU’s Art History Teaching Lab, which is under construction, and expected to open later in 2022. The Lab’s creation has also been facilitated by funds from the family of the late artist Tom DiSalvo, several of whose paintings are part of the collection and will be included in the exhibition. While not technically a collecting institution, FAU has been gifted hundreds of works of art in all media, from multiple cultures and time periods. A selection will be on view alongside the Stone gift. FAU Art History Professor Karen J. Leader, Ph.D., with her art history students, will curate the idea of a “teaching collection” in a global context. What does it mean to articulate an art historical model that is diverse and representative? And how does having access to works of art to view up close and in person facilitate deep appreciation and rigorous interpretation? The Lab will serve as a training ground for students preparing for careers in museums, galleries, and other arts organizations.
Year: 2022

The Arquin Slide Digitzation Project (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: The Arquin Slide Digitzation Project
Abstract: We presented our research and progress on the project at the Faculty Showcase. This event, held annually in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters at FAU, highlights innovative and important research being conducted in the college to other professors and administrators in the college.
Author: Emily Fenichel
Author: Camila Afanador-Llach
Date: 8/26/22
Location: Boca Raton, Florida

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