Preserving Photographic Glass Plates: 
Conservation and Access in the Digital Age

The WPI is pleased to announce its participation at the 50th annual conference of the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA). The conference took place April 5–9, 2022 at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago, IL.

On April 6, 2022, our panel, “Preserving Photographic Glass Plates: Conservation and Access in the Digital Age” brought together an interdisciplinary panel of conservators, historians, and archivists who presented their own preservation and public access strategies and discuss the relevance of these materials to their distinct fields of study. The moderated Q&A portion of the session emphasized the need for collaboration between institutions to undertake ambitious conservation-related projects and improve access to these significant materials. 

Program

INTRODUCTION

Elizabeth Gorayeb
Executive Director, WPI New York

PRESENTATIONS

Jody Butterworth 
Curator, Endangered Archives Programme, The British Library, London, UK

Bayasgalan Bayanbat
Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Butterworth introduced the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme (EAP), which facilitates the digitization of archives around the world that are in danger of destruction, neglect or physical deterioration. Bayanbat, a recent EAP grantee, presented the holdings of The Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording in Mongolia, which house over 160,000 photo negatives, including 10,552 glass plate negatives and their digitization process.

Elisabeth Long
Associate University Librarian for Information Technology and Digital Scholarship, University of Chicago Library, Chicago, IL

Long discussed the Library’s collection of 175,000 images of astronomical objects on photographic glass plate slides from Yerkes Observatory and how it offers tremendous research opportunities for historians of science, astronomers, and astrophysicists.

Fatima Fall 
Director, Centre de Recherches et de Documentation du Sénégal (CRDS), Saint-Louis, Senegal
Preventive Conservation Specialist, Université Gaston Berger, Saint-Louis, Senegal

Fall presented her institution’s collections of glass plates, and discussed how her team was able to identify sitters in a series of portraits.

Sandrine Canac
Director of Digital Archival Projects, WPI New York

Canac shared examples of the WPI’s glass plate negatives, and discussed how the long-term preservation of these objects requires guidance and a significant commitment of resources that smaller institutions often lack. 

Provenance research has become a hot topic for museums, collectors, dealers and others who are keen to identify works that were looted by the Nazis. But definite answers can be elusive after the passage of so much time.

 Elizabeth Gorayeb, Executive Director of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute joined Jane Kallir, President of the Kallir Research Institute, and attorney William L. Charron for a deep dive into the subject. The discussion was moderated by David D’Arcy of The Art Newspaper. This event was brought to you from the Kallir Research Institute in collaboration with the Wildenstein Plattner Institute.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
Elizabeth Gorayeb
Executive Director, Wildenstein Plattner Institute

EGON SCHIELE: A CASE STUDY
Jane Kallir
President, Kallir Research Institute

LEGAL ASPECTS
William L. Charron
Partner, Pryor Cashman LLP

The Kallir Research Institute is a non-profit foundation established in 2017 to continue and expand upon the scholarship of art historian and art dealer Otto Kallir (1894-1978). Its research focuses primarily on the Austrian and German Expressionists, foremost among them Egon Schiele, Richard Gerstl and Käthe Kollwitz. 

The Wildenstein Plattner Institute is a non-profit foundation dedicated to the study of art history and to fostering the accessibility, cataloguing, and digitization of archival materials that support critical research in the field.