Fort Worth. TX.— The Amon Carter Museum of American Art is pleased to announce that it has recently launched a digital collection database, which includes more than 7,500 artworks from the museum’s permanent collection. Easily searchable by artist, artwork or medium, the database can be accessed from the museum’s website. The process to create the digital database began in 2009, when the museum received a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to photograph and catalog the works on paper collection. Because the painting and sculpture collection was previously cataloged and digitized, the museum focused its efforts on its 7,000 watercolors, prints and drawings. The museum completed digitization of this area of its collection in December 2010.
Also in 2010, the museum received a $150,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to digitize and catalog more than 25,000 photographs. Work began on this initiative in late 2010, and currently more than 2,500 photographs are now digitized, cataloged and entered into the collection database. The museum anticipates that this phase of the digitization project will be complete next summer. “We have more than 250,000 works in our collection, but many are rarely exhibited and never seen by the public,” says Andrew Walker, director of the museum. “This new database makes our collection more accessible and allows us to better serve our diverse audiences—artists, scholars, students and art enthusiasts around the world can now look at artworks in our collection for research, scholarship or pure enjoyment.
Because we are one of only a few museums in the nation that is dedicated to American art, this is a significant accomplishment.” As artworks are photographed and cataloged, they will automatically be added to the searchable database. The Amon Carter has also updated the design of its website says Will Gillham, director of publications. “Our website needed to be redesigned to complement our new graphic identity; but, more importantly, improvements were needed to better serve our visitors. The improvement is tremendous—the site is intuitive and much easier to navigate.” Visitors to the site will also find an enhanced Museum Store and Café page, which is continually updated to reflect the new products in the store.
The Amon Carter Museum was established through the generosity of Amon G. Carter Sr. (1879–1955) to house his collection of paintings and sculpture by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell; to collect, preserve, and exhibit the finest examples of American art; and to serve an educational role through exhibitions, publications, and programs devoted to the study of American art. Designed by Philip Johnson, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art opened to the public in January 1961. From the beginning, the museum was intended to be a vibrant institution; not only would it house Mr. Carter’s collection of works by Remington and Russell, it would expand to encompass a broader range of American art. The museum began to acquire important works of art in various media–paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, and books–by many noted artists working in various styles and depicting a range of subjects and forms.
In the 1970s, the museum commissioned photographer Richard Avedon (1923–2004) to create what would become the groundbreaking body of work In the American West. Other major works acquired for the collection include “Idle Hours” by William Merritt Chase, “Flags on the Waldorf” by Childe Hassam and “Red Cannas” by Georgia O’Keeffe. On the occasion of its fortieth anniversary the Amon Carter underwent a major expansion. Again designed by Johnson–making the building as a whole a singular example of his work–the museum now has gallery space to accommodate the full breadth of its permanent collection. With its expansive galleries for traveling exhibitions, there are today some 600 works of art on view at any given time. A 160-seat auditorium is available for programs, and the library of 50,000 volumes is the only research facility between the two coasts to house the 7,500 microform reels of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. The museum also houses one of the preeminent collections of American photography, and the expansion resulted in climate-controlled vaults (for both cool and cold storage) and a state-of-the-art conservation center, made possible in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Visit the museum’s website at … http://www.cartermuseum.org