Category: fine arts library

The Contemporary Indigenous Art Internship for the summer of 2023

February 2, 2023 / Naoe

Dear Colleagues,

We are excited to share a paid internship opportunity with you from Harvard Library. Tozzer Anthropology Library and the Fine Arts Library will host a student in the summer of 2023 as part of our commitment to diversify the collections and provide learning opportunities to students. The student will be part of a larger cohort working on EDIBA (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Anti-Racism) projects across Harvard Library.

The Contemporary Indigenous Art Internship is centered on increasing representation of contemporary Indigenous art of North America within the research collections of both libraries. Through this experience the intern would also get to engage in complex issues such decolonizing library spaces through collections work.

Please note that the Application Deadline is February 28.

Responsibilities:

While working in collaboration with bibliographers from both libraries, the intern will undertake collections analysis to identify what each library is collecting related to contemporary Indigenous art of North America as well as to identify gaps in existing collections.
In collaboration with bibliographers from both libraries, help to create a collaborative collection development policy.
Help bibliographers identify and document areas to expand within these two research collections.
Work with both libraries to identify ways of promoting contemporary North American Indigenous art research collections to a wider audience.

Basic Qualifications:

Currently enrolled in a graduate library science program or a related, graduate-level field of study
Demonstrated commitment to Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging and Anti-racism. For more information regarding Harvard Library’s commitment to Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Anti-Racism, please see https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/hlhr/diversity-inclusion-belong-antiracism

Additional Qualifications:

Familiarity with Indigenous topics or issues within North America.
Some knowledge of or an enthusiasm for learning about the landscape of contemporary Indigenous art and artists in North America.
An awareness or willingness to learn more about culturally sensitive issues and topics within Indigenous communities in North America.
Experience undertaking a more advanced research project that draws upon library resources. For example, engaging in research for a graduate level course.

Physical Demands:

Ability to lift up to 25 lbs.
This position requires bending, squatting, stretching, and climbing small step stools
Possible exposure to dust and mold

Work Environment:

While the primary workspace is Tozzer Library, the intern would have a floating workspace at the Fine Arts Library.

Compensation:

Local housing will be provided
$15 an hour
$1,000 travel/moving stipend

Dates of Internship:

Summer 2023 (Start Date: TBD)
Offers made late April
30 hours per week

To Apply for the Internship:

Please send your cover letter to HL_EDIBA@harvard.edu.
In the email subject line, please use the following naming convention: 2023 EDIBA SUMMER INTERN_TozzerFAL

Deadline: February 28, 2023

Harvard requires COVID vaccination for all Harvard community members. Individuals may claim exemption from the vaccine requirement for medical or religious reasons. More information regarding the University’s COVID vaccination requirement, exemptions, and verification of vaccination status may be found at the University’s COVID-19 Vaccine Information webpage: http://www.harvard.edu/coronavirus/covid-19-vaccine-information/.  

Resource list on digital images of artworks by Black artists

August 12, 2020 / Naoe

The Fine Arts Library has put together a list of resources on digital images of artworks by Black artists that focus on Black history and issues of race.

We are committed to increasing our representation of works by Black artists and others who have been traditionally left out of the narrative of art history, and to making these resources more accessible and discoverable. Towards that goal, we encourage you to reach out to us with suggestions for artists you don’t find in our collections, improvements we can make to improve the findability of our images, or any other inquiries. Click the link below for a downloadable PDF.

Resource list on digital images of artworks by Black artists

Announcement: Explore our Stuart Cary Welch Islamic & South Asian Photograph Collection!

January 3, 2019 / Naoe

You’re invited to share in a project with us here at the Harvard Fine Arts Library: a digital humanities game using images of Islamic and South Asian art, with the chance to win an art publication of your choice, worth up to $150 USD!

For more information about The Stuart Cary Welch Islamic and South Asian Photograph Collection, see the collection page on our website. The collection consists mostly of high-definition photographs of paintings and drawings, both famous and rare, but it also contains images of historical photographs, metalwork, and architecture.

The game is easy! Just register, then click through the images and add tags, separated by commas. Keywords are fine, but the most important details would be any deeper knowledge you can impart (language, style, rough time period/era, story/text identification, motifs, techniques, artist, repository, etc.)

At the end of each round, the participants will be entered into a drawing to win an art book of their choice valued up to $150 USD. NOTE: you do need to register for an account and play the game at least once in order to be entered into the prize drawing!!

Register HERE (you’ll need to confirm your email)

…then access the game HERE!

The theme for this month is:

The Natural World: Indian & Islamic Paintings and Drawings

A little taste of themes to come (new rounds will be announced on our Instagram page, @harvardfineartslibrary, so give us a follow!):

The Supernatural World (paintings and drawings)

The Real World (historical and architectural photographs)

Challenge round (Difficult! Metalwork, frontispieces, etc.)

Thanks so much, and we hope you enjoy exploring this exciting collection! If you don’t mind, we’d love your feedback after playing, which you can give via the short form here: https://goo.gl/forms/RLxkvvtmEc0d8A3c2. Have fun!

Stuart Cary Welch Islamic and South Asian Photograph Collection – Pt. 2

October 30, 2017 / Naoe

Written by Bronwen Gulkis

This post is the second in a series about the Stuart Cary Welch Islamic and South Asian Photograph Collection written by the project’s staff and student catalogers in the Digital Images and Slides Collections of the Fine Arts Library.

Slides on the light table

Before the widespread availability of high-quality digital images, patrons at the Fine Arts Library viewed images on 35mm film slides, strips of developed film housed in a lightweight metal, plastic, or paper frame. These could be viewed through a slide projector, or at a light table–the Fine Arts Library still has some of these tables in our Lamont location. The library also has over 607,000 slides left from these days, and most scholars and professionals would have kept their own image collections as well. However, this was not always the case. Stuart Cary Welch, the former curator of Indian and Later Islamic art at Harvard, owned a collection of approximately 65,000 slides, which he left to the Fine Arts Library. In a memorial essay for Martin Dickson, “Salute to a Coauthor,” Welch later recalled that when he began amassing his slides, a colleague of his “spurned their use as not quite honorable, akin to cheating at cards.”[1] However unorthodox his methods may have been at the time, they were eventually adopted across the field of Islamic and Indian art.

Like any analogue technology, the clarity and resolution of 35mm slides was dependent on the type of film used and the developing technique. Most of the Stuart Cary Welch collection was photographed on Kodachrome, a proprietary film and emulsion technique owned by Kodak and popular throughout the 20th century. Kodachrome was prized for its archival qualities, since the color dye was added to the film surface in layers during the developing process, allowing for greater clarity, nuance, and pigment stability. However, like all archival materials, slide images degrade over time. The Fine Arts Library staff and our team of photographers has been working to preserve these images by re-photographing the physical slide, and then editing this digital image to restore and their original color balance.

Slides also fostered a unique collaborative way of working. Welch recalled that Martin Dickson, a professor of Persian Studies at Princeton, “underwent trial by color slide” in 1960 upon first visiting the Welch residence to discuss the project that became The Houghton Shahnama.[2] Veterans of the Fine Arts Library will recall a time when professors prepared for their lectures by sorting slides side by side on a light table and loading them into a carousel. Welch collected images from across America, Europe, the Middle East, and India, and then manually reconstructed manuscripts and artistic communities by grouping dispersed images in the same carousels. As we inventory Welch’s slides, we often come across these carousels, filled with images from his publications and lectures.

Today, it is so easy to access high-quality digital images that we forget the meticulous processes that earlier scholars went through to assemble their image collections. Now that 35mm slide technology is no longer in use, these slides become artifacts of a formative period in the discipline of art history. Our next post will cover some of the treasures of this exciting research collection.

[1] Welch, Stuart Cary. “Salute To A Coauthor: Martin Bernard Dickson”. In Intellectual Studies On Islam: Essays Written In Honor Of Martin B. Dickson, 9. Salt Lake City, Utah: University of Utah Press, 1990, 9.

[2] Welch 1990, 14.

Salted Paper Prints from Special Collections

September 6, 2017 / Naoe

Here you see the wide range in tonality and richness in colors. Indeed, monochrome can be very colorful. We are so glad that many of these salt prints have remained in good condition, such that the facial expressions and details of clothing and accessories for each sitter are still astonishingly clear.

In collaboration with the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, and Houghton Library, Harvard Library’s Weissman Preservation Center (WPC) is hosting a symposium on the Salted Paper Prints from the Harvard Fine Arts Library’s historic photographs collection on September 14th and 15th. During the two-day symposium, a hands-on workshop hosted by the Northeast Document Conservation Center will allow participants to explore the chemistry and artistic nuance of creating salted paper prints. A brief lecture will acquaint the participants with the basic chemistry and variations of the process and discuss preservation concerns.

The salted paper print was an early negative/positive printing process developed by William Henry Fox Talbot in England in the 1830s. Many beautiful examples of this process were created in the 19th century and can be found in a variety of photograph collections.

Read more about the symposium and how to register.

Read the previous post about the Salted Paper Prints Symposium.

Salted Paper Prints Symposium

August 29, 2017 / Naoe

Salted paper print at the Fine Arts Library

Salted Paper Prints: Process and Purpose
A Collaborative Workshop in Photograph Conservation

In collaboration with the Foundation for the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, Harvard Art Museums, and Houghton Library, Harvard Weissman Preservation Center (WPC) is hosting a symposium on salted paper prints on September 14th and 15th. Registered participants will be able to attend a special viewing of salted paper prints from the Harvard Fine Arts Library‘s historic photographs collection on September 13th.

A salted paper print, or simply salt print, is a photographic printing process whereby paper is coated with salt solution and then a silver nitrate solution to capture images. It was a popular photographic printing technique between 1839 and approximately 1860.[1]

WPC has undertaken a university-wide project, the Salt Print Initiative, to preserve and enhance access to salt prints across campus, including inventorying the salt prints held by individual repositories, including the Fine Arts Library.

This symposium will present a multi-disciplinary, two-day program that focuses on the preservation, characterization, use, and interpretation of the salt print process, now over 175 years old. Read more about the symposium and how to register.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_print

Staff from Harvard Weissman Preservation Center selected some salted paper prints from our collection for the initial presentation at the Fine Arts Library in December, 2016.

Stay tuned for more images from the historic photographs collection.