Bringing South Asian Minature Paintings & Sculpture to Life
Andrea Douglas, UVa Art Museum
Daniel Ehnbom, Art
2004 TTI Fellows
Bringing South Asian Miniature Paintings and Sculpture to Life: A Collaboration Among the University of Virginia Art Museum, the McIntire Department of Art, and the Visual Resources Collection
The proposed project will digitally reproduce 72 objects from the University of Virginia Art Museum’s collection of South Asian art making them available for projection. These objects will form the basis of a new course on South Asian art with a special emphasis on manuscript painting taught by Professor Daniel Ehnbom. The works of art in the University collection give students an immediate entry to the complex history of an increasingly important region of the world than includes the strategically significant regional powers of India and Pakistan. A limited number of selections from this collection are regularly on view in the Museum’s Asian art gallery and have been utilized by Professor Ehnbom in our Iron Gate study gallery, but because of severe space limitations and the fragility of many of these works, they cannot easily be handled or even viewed at the same time by a lecture class that can enroll as many as 90 students. Making the objects available for projection and accessible in the round will allow students to see them in class and study them outside the classroom. The project will dramatically address this challenge and transform the teaching and understanding of South Asian art at the University. The images will be further linked to the Museum’s already existing database and, through the Embark Web Kiosk, these objects will be made available to scholars and others outside the University community. The project will ultimately serve as a model for other areas of the Museum’s collections that, when made digitally accessible, would serve as the basis for new art history and interdisciplinary courses.