----------------------------Original message----------------------------
(Please excuse any duplicate postings.)
For Immediate Re
June 26, 2000
HOMELAND FOUNDATION, INC. AWARDS $1-MILLION GRANT TO CATALOGUE AND DIGITIZE MORG
MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE MANUSCRIPTS
Charles E. Pierce, Jr., Director of the Morgan Library, announced today that the
received a $1-million grant from the Homeland Foundation, Inc. for a project und
Princeton University's Index of Christian Art to catalogue and digitize the Libr
collection of medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts. These manuscript
represent a thousand years of Western iconography, will be available for the fi
Internet-accessible databases. Scholars will be able to view Morgan manuscripts
through the Index of Christian Art while visitors to the Library's Web site will
browse the same data and images in CORSAIR, the Library's on-line catalogue.
"Digitizing and providing Internet access to these illuminated manuscrip
benefit both the Library and everyone with an interest in medieval art and cultu
Pierce. "Access to these rare materials will increase dramatically and in unprec
We are grateful to the Homeland Foundation for joining the Getty Grant Program i
remarkable resource possible."
In May 1999 the Getty Grant Program, a part of the J. Paul Getty Trust t
diverse range of projects, including research in the history of art and related
a $250,000 grant to the Index of Christian Art to support the initial phase of t
collaborative project. The Homeland Foundation's generous support completes the
funding. The Homeland Foundation is a private, independent New York foundation t
operates historic Wethersfield House, Farm, Carriage House and Formal Gardens ou
Millbrook, New York, sponsors cultural and religious programs, and makes grants
educational, and religious organizations.
E. Lisk Wyckoff, Jr., President of Homeland Foundation, said, "Our grant
Morgan Library's collection of medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts
available in a significant manner to the public generally. Our founder, Chauncey
would be most pleased with this prospect."
The Morgan Library-an independent research library and museum with exten
of manuscripts, drawings, and rare books-houses one of the preeminent collection
and Renaissance manuscripts. The collection spans some ten centuries of Western
and includes nearly 1,300 manuscripts as well as papyri. Since it became an educ
institution in 1924, the Library has played a pioneering role in the development
of American scholars in medieval studies, art history, and other fields. The new
represents an unrivalled opportunity to disseminate images and collection inform
widest possible audience.
The Index of Christian Art-the world's largest archive of medieval art a
comprehensive database for Christian iconography-is an art historical resource t
scholars from a wide range of fields for the past eighty years. It focuses on Ch
all media from the early apostolic period to the late Middle Ages. (The term "Ch
broadly construed and is by no means restricted to art that is theological in th
within ecclesiastical contexts.) The Index currently holds descriptive records o
works of art recorded in over 500,000 entries and classified under 26,000 specia
subject terms.
The Library and the Index of Christian Art will jointly create digitized
detailed, descriptive records for each of the images in the Library's collection
manuscripts dating from the fifth to sixteenth centuries. The images and descrip
available publicly in CORSAIR, which will be accessible by early 2002 at www.mor
The inclusion of the Morgan records in the context of the Index's iconog
classification system will provide scholars with a completely new way of studyin
documents, making them available to a much wider research community than is curr
"The Index is a unique resource throughout the art world," stated Harold T. Shap
of Princeton University. "Adding searchable data and images from the Morgan Libr
to the Index's database will enable scholars to study manuscript paintings in th
collections within wider contexts. The Foundation's generous support of this pro
enhance scholarship in many disciplines."
The scheduled date for completion of the project is 2005, but images and
made available on the Index of Christian Art database as they are created. Curre
2,000 of the Morgan Library's records and images are available in the Index data
###
For more information, please contact Glory Jones, Director of Communications and
Morgan Library, at (212) 590-0310, or Colum Hourihane, Director, Index of Christ
Princeton University, at (609) 258-6363.
--
Elizabeth O'Keefe
Director of Collection Information Systems
The Pierpont Morgan Library
29 East 36th Street
New York, NY 10016-3403
TEL: 212 685-0008 x366
FAX: 212 481-3484
NET: [log in to unmask]
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