PHAROS receives an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant

July 20, 2019
Frick Photo Archive Collection samples

In Spring of 2019, the PHAROS consortium successfully applied for and received a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to fund a 30-month Pilot Project to create a research platform using the ResearchSpace software that will make available over 1.5 million images of works of art with accompanying scholarly documentation from five of the fourteen PHAROS member institutions. The five pilot institutions that will be part of the project are: Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Florence; Biblioteca Hertziana Max-Planck Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Rome; Bildarchive Foto Marburg; Fondazione Federico Zeri, Bologna; and the Frick Art Reference Library, New York. By bringing their archives together with twenty first century data harmonization and image matching technologies, the PHAROS research platform will provide for a new global audience a resource far greater than any one member institution can provide on its own. The proposed pilot project will serve as both testing ground and model for the desired goal of the PHAROS member institutions: to create a freely available common platform for research on works of art in all media through comprehensive consolidated access. The proposed project began on July 1st and will run through December 31, 2021.