Australian National University, Canberra
Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture
$313,000 Australian awarded December 1998

The Australian National University received Getty funding for the preparation of the Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture, a reference work focusing on indigenous Australian art. Designed to present the analyses and interpretations of scholars and artists, both indigenous and non-indigenous, the publication documents the complex traditions and influences that have shaped Aboriginal art and culture from pre-colonial times to the present. The Companion includes a wide range of essays, ranging from discussions of archaeologically documented pre-colonial traditions, to analyses of styles from the early contact period through the 19th-century, to information on the development of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art practices, and the emergence of Aboriginal art in urban institutions, markets, and exhibitions. Grant funds supported illustration and publication costs for this comprehensive volume on indigenous art history and practice.

The British Museum, London, England
Ferdinand Columbus Print Collection Catalogue and Publication
$295,600 awarded $180,000 September 1999 and $115,600 August 2002

The British Museum received Getty support for the research and publication of the print collection of Ferdinand Columbus (1488-1539), best known for a biography of his father, Christopher Columbus, and for his extraordinary private library in Seville. During diplomatic and cultural missions for the Spanish royal family and Hapsburg emperors, Ferdinand accumulated the largest print collection in Europe. The project originated with the discovery of a unique 16th-century manuscript describing over 3,000 engravings, woodcuts, and maps Ferdinand collected. An initial Getty grant ($180,000) enabled the manuscript to be completely transcribed and identified as many of the prints decribed as possible. So far over 1,500 prints have been matched. A subsequent grant ($115,600) is supporting partial publication costs for a two-volume scholarly catalogue on the prints. The catalogue will include reproductions of nearly 500 of the prints, extensive curatorial analysis by an international team of art historians, contextual essays on print production and collecting in the sixteenth-century, and a full transcription and English translation of the inventory.

Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos, Santiago, Chile
Spanish Translation of AAT
$120,000 awarded February 2000

A Getty grant enabled the Centro de Documentación de Bienes Patrimoniales, located in Santiago, Chile, to complete a Spanish translation of the Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT). Developed as a tool for scholars and professionals in the museum and visual arts fields and managed by the Getty since 1985, AAT is a comprehensive vocabulary of nearly 120,000 terms for describing objects, images, architecture, and material culture from antiquity to the present. AAT terms have established an international standard for documenting cultural heritage information and now considered essential tools for providing electronic access to museum collections and archives. In an effort to provide museums in Chile and other Spanish-speaking countries with access to this powerful vocabulary tool, the Centro de Documentación is leading a collaborative effort to translate and manage a Spanish version of AAT. The project includes meetings with Latin American institutions to establish common strategies and goals, and a national working group of specialists in art and documentation to review the project. Getty funds are supporting translation, research, inputting, and editing costs. Once complete, the Spanish version of the AAT will be available online and on CD-ROM.

Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Vatican Topography Project
$250,000 awarded December 2000

Harvard's Graduate School of Design received a grant to support the Vatican Topography Project. The project is using architectural modeling and graphic technologies to create a multimedia database of text, images, animations, and geometric and digital models to document the successive transformations of the Vatican Hill area in Rome over its 2,000-year history. Since the time of Nero in the first century, this site has been central to Rome's rich history, and home to Hadrian's mausoleum, St. Peter's Basilica, residential buildings, and a variety of building campaigns. The grant-funded project is using visual records (drawings, paintings, prints), archaeological evidence, secondary source materials, and geographic information to create computer models of key phases in the development of the Vatican site over time. Getty funding is supporting research costs for the project's multi-disciplinary team of scholars and advisory board over a three-year period. Support is also being provided for two conferences where the project's findings will be reviewed with scholars in the field.

Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence, Italy
"Years of the Cupola" Database
$142,000 awarded March 2000

A three-year Getty grant is supporting the creation of a textual and digital resource of documentary sources related to the planning and construction of the famed cupola of the Cathedral of Florence, Santa Maria del Fiore. Designed by Filippo Brunelleschi in the early 15th-century, the mechanics of the cupola's vaulted construction opened a new era of architectural innovation in the early Italian Renaissance. The grant-funded database, entitled "The Years of the Cupola," will provide access to the full records of the cathedral's Opera, or Board of Works, which oversaw the cupola's construction, the furnishing and decoration of the church, and related projects over a twenty-year period, from 1417 to1436. These records include architectural documents and drawings as well as contextual documents related to Florentine society and material culture. Designed by an art historian in consultation with historians, linguists, scientists, and programmers, the database will make available full information about materials that are difficult to access and understand in their original forms. Grant funds are supporting the complex process of transcribing, editing, and inputting information for a critical portion of the over 15,000 documents in the Opera's collections.

See a complete listing of grants awarded.