2011 Annual Report - National Gallery of Art

36
Educating
provided for scholarly use by authors and for
publications by the Archives of American Art,
the Isabella Stewart Gardiner Museum, the
Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Phillips
Collection, universities, and private presses.
The Library shared 6,474 titles with university
and museum libraries in the United States and
Canada through its interlibrary loan program.
This year the program expanded to include
loans to countries in Scandinavia and the far and
near East.
The department of image collections
acquired more than 61,600 images, including
47,623 photographs, negatives, transparencies,
and images in microform, twelve CD-ROMs,
sixteen rare photographic albums, nearly 1,400
rare postcards, and more than 12,500 digital
files. The department’s holdings total more
than thirteen million images, making the
Gallery one of the largest art and architecture
image repositories in the world. Image specialists
answered 1,278 reference inquiries and
provided 333 orientations in addition to assisting
Gallery staff and Center for Advanced Study
in the Visual Arts fellows.
In addition to Gallery staff, several individuals
made significant donations to the collection.
Lida Moser donated her architectural photographs
and negatives. Pat Clopper donated
six Italian reproductive prints. The estate of
Livingston and Catharina Baart Biddle donated
a large collection of rare postcards. Charles
Schwartz gave one of his camera obscura photographs
of New York architecture. The
Courtauld Institute of Art, the Frick Art
Reference Library, the Modern Art Museum in
Fort Worth, and Art Services International also
donated photographic material.
With support from the Alvord Foundation,
the Kiplinger Foundation, Mr. Albert Small,
and Mr. B. Francis Saul II, the department
began a project with architectural historian
James Goode and photographer Bruce White to
document historic residences in the Washington,
D.C. area.
Substantial additions to the Gallery’s digital
archival repository were made this year,
including more than 35,000 pages of pre-1970
exhibition records. Searchable copies of early
Gallery press releases also were added to
reproduction-quality copies of the Gallery’s
most important early photographs, including
newly discovered images of Paul Mellon,
Jacqueline Kennedy, Chester Dale, and Samuel
and Rush Kress. Digital copies of more than
525 postcards sent by artists to Dorothy and
Herbert Vogel were created to improve usability
and protect fragile originals.
Gallery Archives holdings increased with
the addition of nearly 8,000 original digital
documents and images, 175 cubic feet of traditional
office files, and more than 4,000 sheets of
architectural drawings.
The user interface for the archives description
database was redesigned, and the major project
to incorporate legacy finding aids passed its
midpoint with the import of some 20,000
folder-level records.
Archives staff assisted more than 275 researchers
interested in the history and development of
the Gallery. A series of lectures and an article on
Gallery history in the NGA Bulletin celebrated
the Gallery’s seventieth anniversary.
Work on a Kress Collection history and
conservation database reached its midpoint,
funded by a three-year grant from the Samuel
H. Kress Foundation.
Robert Newlin donated slides of the 1971
East Building groundbreaking ceremony. An
oral history interview was conducted with
donors William and Abigail Gerdts.
IMAGING AND VISUAL SERVICES
The division of imaging and visual services
created high-resolution, color-accurate master
digital files for 259 acquisitions. Digital
photography was completed for eight works
on the Web Collection Highlights list.
Technical imaging in support of 165 conservation
treatments was provided.
Publication-quality images were provided for
Warhol: Headlines, Antico: The Golden Age of
Renaissance Bronzes, Shock of the News, and George
Bellows (1882–1925). Completed photography
for the online Dutch systematic catalog included
studio photography for sixty-six Dutch paintings.
Images were provided for the Spring and
Fall issues of the NGA Bulletin.
More than 17,000 high-quality digital
images were added to the Gallery’s website.
Produced through the Rapid Capture imaging
project funded by the Samuel H. Kress
Foundation, these images include European
prints and drawings and photographs (up to
thirty-five inches wide). Now eighty percent
complete, the project has photographed more
than 30,000 collection objects since it began in
2009. The addition of rapid capture images
brings the number of website images to more
than 24,000.