Haitian Art Digital Crossroads

FAIN: PW-290611-23

Grinnell College (Grinnell, IA 50112-2227)
Fredo Rivera (Project Director: July 2022 to present)
Petrouchka Moise (Co Project Director: June 2023 to present)

The digitization of approximately 1,150 Haitian artworks which are located at sites in Haiti and the United States. These items would be cataloged and, along with 1,266 already-digitized materials, incorporated into a multi-lingual database titled the Haitian Arts Digital Crossroads (HADC), which would be developed as part of the project. 

The Haitian Arts Digital Crossroads (HADC) project is a collaboration led by Grinnell College Libraries with the Waterloo Center for the Arts. HADC will build a digital platform with an open access database of Haitian art from at least four prominent collections. Specifically, we seek NEH funding to digitize the collections of an art center and Vodou temple in Haiti, as well as a prominent collection at a public liberal arts college in New Jersey. We aim to show the value of securing cultural heritage and supporting endangered spaces by creating accessible databases and digital resources. Our digitization process and expanded metadata schema provide a new framework for Haitian art, considering cultural nuances, artistic practices and materials, a Kreyol linguistics, and the Haitian art market. As a model for considering artistic production across the African diaspora, HADC provides an original platform for expanding narratives of Haitian art.