----------------------------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] __________________________________________________________________ Mail submissions to [log in to unmask] Administrative matters (file requests, subscription requests, etc) to [log in to unmask] ARLIS-L Archives and subscription maintenance: http://lsv.uky.edu/archives/arlis-l.html Questions may be addressed to list owner at: [log in to unmask]