HARVARD UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUMS ANNOUNCES NEW WEB SITE: SARGENT AT HARVARD

Released July 11, 1996

The Harvard University Art Museums is pleased to announce that the public will soon be able to access through the World Wide Web a searchable database which makes available images and textual information relating to works by the American artist John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) in the collections of the Fogg Art Museum and the Harvard University Portrait Collection. Sargent at Harvard was developed by Melinda Linderer, 1995-96 Lynn and Philip A. Straus Intern, Drawing Department, and Lee Mandell, computer support specialist. The database can be accessed on July 24 through the Art Museums home page: www.artmuseums.harvard.edu/sargent/

Sargent at Harvard is a structured database comprised of digitized images and accompanying textual information for over four-hundred drawings, paintings, sculptures and related materials. The textual material for each object has been extracted from the Harvard University Art Museums collections management database. The Web site is designed as an on-going cataloguing project with the goal of making images and textual information more accessible to scholars, students, and the general public. Many of the drawings were catalogued by Linderer as part of her project.

"The electronic capacity of this project provides the opportunity to access a large number of images and information on-line," stated Linderer. "It also allows the user to respond to the information provided through a comments form. While many of the objects in the database have been linked to specific projects or paintings, the relationship of other objects has yet to be determined. As an interactive scholarly tool, we hope that the database of information and images will be strengthened by the critical commentary and exchange provided by Sargent scholars and students of art history."

"Before the Web site project, the Fogg's Sargent drawings had been only partially catalogued," stated Miriam Stewart, assistant curator of drawings. "A scholar or visitor interested in, for example, Sargent's studies for the Boston Public Library murals, would have to look through roughly 400 drawings in order to ensure that he had found everything. Sargent at Harvard offers the visitor logical and efficient ways of searching for works related to the Boston Public Library, for drawings of Madame X, or for works in watercolor, etc. In the past ten years there has been a tremendous surge of interest in Sargent, and this project offers an exciting new way to explore one of the largest collections of Sargent's works, whether by visiting the Fogg Art Museum in person or in cyberspace."

The Sargent material can be searched by keyword, full text, or by the Harvard University Art Museums accession number. In addition to the searchable database, Sargent at Harvard contains a short essay on the history of the objects in Harvard's collections and a list of institutions with related collections.