Visual Resources staff have been busy over the summer on multiple fronts. Senior Image Collections Specialist and Support Specialist, Michele Mazeris, has transferred all the delicate negatives from the Weitzmann refrigerator into the new freezers and continues to re-package more collections into improved storage systems. Thanks goes to Princeton’s Office of Environmental Health and Safety for assisting in the disposal of old negatives in July.
Once we have identified an unused collection for deaccessioning, we try to determine the best possible recipient. For a collection of vintage (1970-2000) magazine advertisements and print photographs of Roman sculpture, we decided to bring them to Trenton Artworks for a collage course for high school students and adults. We are very excited that, instead of ending up in the recycling box, these materials will have a new life in art and that young students will be able to work with, and in the case of the Roman prints, have excellent quality photographs of significant works of art. Likewise, one box of unidentified glass plate negatives was brought to a glass artist in Pennsylvania who is very excited at the prospect of incorporating them into new works.
The restored moving image film from the excavation of Antioch, produced in 1932, has returned from restoration at The Packard Humanities Institute, and it looks fantastic. We are very excited that this is intended to be used in the forthcoming Antioch exhibition at Wellesley College due to open in 2026. We are grateful to the Packard Institute for doing a conservative and considerate restoration. There are some major flaws in the film footage (most notably something at the top right of frame (perhaps dirt)) for a large portion, and we will be conferring with the PHI if they recommend more specific editing.
In preparation for the fall 2025 semester, Digital Project Specialist Leigh Anne Lieberman has been working closely with Ben Johnston from the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning, Monica Bravo, and Breton Langendorfer in preparation for a digital curatorial project that students in ART 100 will be undertaking this fall. The students’ exhibitions, which they will develop in the digital platform Scalar, will put individual works of art and objects in conversation with one another as they share an art historical story focused on a specific theme of the class. We’re excited to see what they come up with!
Lieberman has also worked with OIT to sustain the system we developed with Johnston for IIIF-standard image delivery directly into courses in Canvas. This is especially effective with high resolution images of detailed works of art. If you are instructing for the Department of Art and Archaeology and are interested in incorporating this into your spring courses, please reach out to the Director of Visual Resources, Julia Gearhart.