Access to Art in Encyclopedic Context

FAIN: PW-51338-13

Walters Art Gallery (Baltimore, MD 21201-5118)
Kate Blanch (Project Director: July 2012 to September 2015)

Planning for the creation of access to the museum's curatorial files, representing approximately 262 linear feet of correspondence, photograph albums of exhibit installations, an object index catalog, and bibliographic references for an encyclopedic collection of 35,000 works of art that were collected from the mid-19th century through the present and range from ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance works to decorative arts and modern European painting.

The Walters Art Museum requests $40,000 to arrange and describe content of the curatorial files, compile records stored across disparate locations, assess records for value to the humanities, prioritize materials for digitization, and create an online finding aid to inform the public of the information available. The content of these curatorial records pertains to the artworks in the Walters' world-renowned collection and reveals the origins, experiences, and journeys of the treasures in our collection.