| Holdings Description: | Byzantine Photograph and Fieldwork Archives, a comprehensive archive of black and white prints, color transparencies, negatives, and research materials, was begun in 1936 and is currently expanding. It includes materials of Byzantine art, architecture, and archaeology from Greece, Asia Minor, the Christian East, the Balkans, and Russia dating from the fourth through the fifteenth century. It also contains Late Classical, Crusader, and some post-Byzantine works. The oldest part of this archive, the Census of Early Christian and Byzantine Art in North American Collections, is a unique collection of object documentation from museums of the United States and Canada. From 1990-1991, the department assembled a copy of the archive of Professor Kurt Weitzmann, a corpus of important photographs of Byzantine manuscripts. Archaeological fieldwork archives, which reflected one of the most significant projects of the last century, were added in 1989. These materials were produced during pioneering campaigns of Byzantine Institute (1931-1953) in Bulgaria, Egypt, and, especially in Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, and the survey of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, by Robert Van Nice (1931- 1970); the latter started as independent project and later supported by the Dumbarton Oaks. Archival holdings from these campaigns, include drawings, mosaic tracings, water colors, rubbings, photographs, negatives, films, and research notebooks.
For correspondence and busyness letters of Byzantine Fieldwork Archives consult Archives & House Collection. |