Terra Grant for American Art Archives

The Terra Foundation for American Art has given a grant of $3.6 million to the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art to support a five-year program to digitize a selection of the archives and make the material accessible to the public, free of charge, on the archives' Web site (www.aaa.si.edu). Nearly 1.6 million files will be available by the end of the project. This is the foundation's largest grant to date.

The material to be digitized includes artists' photographs, sketchbooks, diaries, business records and writings from the 18th century to today. Additional material pertaining to art galleries and organizations, collectors, art historians, critics, editors, museum directors and other arts professionals will be included. Among the individuals featured are Albert Bierstadt, Marcel Breuer, Alexander Calder, Joseph Cornell, Dorothy Dehner, Arthur Dove, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, Jacob Lawrence, Reginald Marsh, Dorothy Miller, Louise Nevelson, Erwin Panofsky, Betty Parsons, Horace Pippin, Jackson Pollock, Charles Sheeler, Robert Smithson, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and Grant Wood.

The venture is part of the Terra Foundation's new mission. Last year, citing financial difficulties and low attendance, and after several years of turmoil and a lawsuit over a proposed relocation to Washington, D.C., the foundation closed its Terra Museum of American Art in Chicago in order to devote its resources to promoting the visual arts in the U.S. [see "Front Page," Sept. '03]. Much of the Terra's collection was placed on long-term loan to the Art Institute of Chicago, and is also available for viewing at www.terraamericanart.org.

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