behind the scenes – PAFA Archives Blog

June 27, 2023July 25, 2023

Digital Treasure Trove: Unwanted Reflections

Contributed by PAFA Museum Collections

One of the many challenges we face when photographing works from the collection is avoiding different kinds of unwanted reflections. Even small adjustments to our lights can result in everything from an overpowering glare to a flattening of any surface texture in the final image. Even trickier is dealing with works that are behind glass/plexiglass, which often reflect the environment back like a mirror.

Addressing this requires making sure that anything within the frame of the shot is cloaked in dark fabric, which won’t reflect enough light to interfere with the image. In addition to cloaking the equipment, we also must ensure that we personally are kept behind the fabric when operating the camera. At times it can look a little odd, but it goes a long way in improving the quality of the museum’s documentation of work.

About the Institute of Museum and Library Services

The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s libraries and museums. We advance, support, and empower America’s museums, libraries, and related organizations through grantmaking, research, and policy development. Our vision is a nation where museums and libraries work together to transform the lives of individuals and communities. To learn more, visit https://www.imls.gov/and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

May 15, 2023May 8, 2023

Digital Treasure Trove: The Watercolors of William Trost Richards

Contributed by PAFA Museum Collections

For the last several photography sessions, the collections team has been working to photograph a unique set of small watercolor paintings by the artist William Trost Richards (1833-1905). With some slight variations, the dozens of paintings are each only a little larger than 3×5” and depict a range of beautiful wide-angle landscape scenes. The images are executed in striking detail for their scale and medium. Together, the works demonstrate a superior command of light and texture. It has been a pleasure to spend time photographing these works, and once the project is finished, they can each be viewed and enjoyed in significantly greater resolution.

William Trost Richards – Boats at Pier for Joseph Wharton’s Workmen, Conanicut Island (1883), Watercolor on paper, 3 3/16 x 5 1/8 in. (8.09625 x 13.0175 cm.). Gift of Dorrance H. Hamilton in memory of Samuel M. V. Hamilton, 2008.5.87

View more works by Richards on PAFA’s online database: https://www.pafa.org/museum/collection-artist/william-trost-richards

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May 8, 2023

Setting up for the 122nd Annual Student Exhibition

Opening this month is PAFA’s Annual Student Exhibition (ASE), now celebrating its 122nd year. Our archives have a long practice and record of documenting the ASE, and its connection to student life here at the school and museum, like in the image here from 1910.

Below are some images of the installation process from this year’s exhibition, which span all three floors of the Samuel M.V. Hamilton Building.

Learn more about this year’s Annual Student Exhibition and its corresponding events here: https://www.pafa.org/school/annual-student-exhibition

Learn more about the history of the Annual Student Exhibition here: https://pafaarchives.org/page/ase

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May 5, 2023May 4, 2023

122nd Annual Student Exhibition

It’s that time of year again! Students, faculty, and staff from the school and museum are actively working to complete the installation of the Annual Student Exhibition (ASE). ASE is considered a capstone event for BFA and MFA students that coincides with graduation.

ASE “Walls” vary from student to student, each pursuing an individual interest. The emphasis of the exhibition is on creating a cohesive body of related works through sustained studio practice and critical inquiry.

While the ASE is spearheaded by the school, the Museum also plays an active role in guiding and providing assistance to students. PAFA’s art preparators help students prepare their works to be hung, help with installation, and provide feedback on aesthetics.

Contract art preparator Travis Grant

PAFA Assistant Art Preparator Jacob Stevens

April 24, 2023September 1, 2023

Digital Treasure Trove: Recto//Verso

Contributed by PAFA Museum Collections

As the collections team has been photographing some of PAFA’s framed paintings over the last several weeks, we have been able to enjoy documenting the rarely seen reverse side of these works.

In the museum world, we define recto as the front or main image and the verso as the back or reverse secondary image. So why may we want to photograph the verso?

Many paintings in our collection have a long exhibition and ownership history, and this provenance can be followed through various notes, labels, stickers, and other markings on the backs of frames. Pictured below are a few examples of works in the middle of being photographed showing the front side view (recto), followed by the corresponding reverse side of the painting (verso).

Charles Burchfield, End of the Day, 1938. Watercolor over pencil and charcoal on white paper, 28 x 48 in. Joseph E. Temple Fund, 1940.3

John Neagle, The Studious Artist, 1836. Oil on canvas. 30 1/8 x 25 1/16 in. Gift of John Frederick Lewis, 1922.1.3

Thomas Eakins, Walt Whitman, 1887. Oil on canvas, framed-shadow box: 38 1/8 x 32 1/4 x 4 in. General Fund, 1917.1

Francis Martin Drexel, Unidentified Girl, 1818. Oil on canvas, 30 1/8 x 24 1/4 in. Gift of John Frederick Lewis, 1923.8.19

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March 8, 2023March 7, 2023

Digital Treasure Trove: Ongoing 16-Bit Photography

Contributed by PAFA Museum Collection

Digitization continues this month here at PAFA. With a permanent collection as large as ours, and with storage and exhibition space spread out across multiple sites and buildings, we need to be flexible, and it keeps us on the move. Currently, we are set up in one of our controlled storage facilities where a large number of our framed paintings are held on storage racks. We have between 150 to 200 works to photograph (or re-photograph) in high resolution, or 16-bit image depth, for future record keeping and image licensing. Not all, but many of the works we have recently photographed coincidentally included those from the Museum’s current exhibition, Making American Artists: Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776–1976.

PAFA Collections photographing the work *Dr. Jean Piccard* (1946), by Raymond Breinin, 48 1/8 x 37 1/8 in. (122.2 x 94.3 cm.), 1948.2, Joseph E. Temple Fund

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February 17, 2023February 16, 2023

Documenting an Empty Historic Landmark Building

Contributed by PAFA Museum Collections

As PAFA prepares for the installation of its major upcoming exhibition Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America, our Historic Landmark Building on Broad Street in Philadelphia has been completely deinstalled for the first time in decades. Given the rare opportunity to see the space emptied, the Collections team took the chance to fully document the interior spaces. The work is an important part of the archives’ mission to preserve records that will benefit not only future scholarship, but also provide important documentation to PAFA’s historic building.

The photographs will also be part of the Rising Sun exhibition planning files and help the the exhibition team learn and understand the intricacies involved when organizing a large and complex exhibition. Below are some images of the building today:

Views of the Historic Landmark Building from January 2023

*Installation view of the Historic Landmark Building from the 1940’s*

*Installation view of the Historic Landmark Building from the 1950’s*

*View of staff lifting Benjamin West’s Christ Reject, 1814, from 1974*

Rising Sun is scheduled to open on March 23, 2023 and will include work from the artists Shiva Ahmadi, John Akomfrah CBE, La Vaughn Belle, Tiffany Chung, Lenka Clayton, Petah Coyne, Martha Jackson Jarvis, Demetrius Oliver, Eamon Ore-Giron, Alison Saar, Dread Scott, Rose B. Simpson, Sheida Soleimani, Renee Stout, Mark Thomas Gibson, Dyani White Hawk, Hank Willis Thomas, Deborah Willis, Wilmer Wilson IV, and Saya Woolfalk. You can find more information about the exhibition here.

January 17, 2023January 19, 2023

Digital Treasure Trove: Beta Testing New Collections Software

Contributed by PAFA Museum Collections

Collections staff have begun beta testing the museum’s new content management system (CMS)–Axiell Collections. While a somewhat clerical sounding update, it is one that we are very excited about, as it marks the beginning of a major turning point in our department’s projects: the migration of our collection data and media from an aging and outdated system, to a modernized one that is better equipped to deal with our needs in the present.

For now we have been busy experimenting with a sandbox version of the software—learning how it works, what it can and cannot do. We are additionally beginning to build out a new batch of custom report templates that work with this new interface. “Reports,” in this case, are automatically generated documents that compile batch answers to various questions that we might want to ask of our database about a given group of works. Example questions might include “where was this group of paintings each most recently located,” or, “what are all the names, materials, and dimensions of all the works currently on exhibit?” Regardless, reports are an invaluable way for a range of museum staff to utilize the vast amount of information in the database, and we are excited to see these coming to life already.

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November 22, 2022November 17, 2022

Digital Treasure Trove: Post-Production Photography Editing

Contributed by PAFA Museum Collections

As part of our ongoing IMLS grant project to digitize portions of our collection, we are continuing to photograph works in our collection, but we are also beginning to process and edit some of these new images in preparation for their integration into PAFA’s databases.

If you have followed the Museum’s previous digitization initiatives, then you should know that these efforts are resource intensive. It is important that we take the time to digitally capture works of art that represent our collection as true-to-life as possible. To ensure we obtain high quality digital assets, there are two points in the digitization workflow that we focus on: 1. the moment we take the photo 2. the post-production work done after digital capture. For paintings and works on paper, this can be as simple as adjusting for the amount and color of the light, ensuring the work is square to the lens, and cropping as needed. For sculptures and 3-dimensional works, however, there are many additional variables that need addressing, including the consistency of the gradient background.

In a perfect world, the background would appear perfectly consistent across our hundreds of images, but this is not always the case. Often when shooting the images, the accuracy of the represented object must be prioritized over the look of the background, leaving artifacts in the image like folds in the paper or markings from other sculptures. To address this, we must correct these issues in post-production.

For every individual image that requires this correcting, we must break them down into three separate Photoshop layers: (1) an isolated background without the object (2) a copy of this isolated background without the object that has had a gaussian blur applied to it (3) a top layer that has only the isolated object. These layers are then carefully stitched together in such a way that the distractions of the “imperfect” background are fixed, while preserving all the necessary elements of the artwork (the object itself and its shadows) to create a clean, long-lasting, and useful image.

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October 25, 2022October 26, 2022

Digital Treasure Trove: Andy Warhol’s Polaroids

Contributed by PAFA Museum Collections

One of the more interesting groups of works in PAFA’s collection that is being digitized for our current IMLS grant is a set of personal Polaroids taken by Andy Warhol. These were largely created during the 70’s and 80’s and whose subjects include what seem like friends, models, and Warhol himself, all in various poses and stages of attire and undress that, when seen together, read like something between art reference photos and contemporary social media posts. Returning figures include named entities like “Kimiko Powers,” “Mr. Black,” or “Ted Hartley,” among other unidentified individuals. Some feel candid, while others clearly posed and staged, but something about them all feel both intimate and enigmatic. Within PAFA’s larger permanent collection, with its historic slant and focus on traditional techniques and subjects, these entries are certainly unique.

Ted Hartley (1980) Andy Warhol, Polacolor Type 108, 3×3 in. (7.62 x 7.62 cm.), 2008.21.82, Gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., The Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program, © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Kimiko Powers (1971) Andy Warhol, Polacolor Type 108, 3×3 in. (7.62 x 7.62 cm.), 2008.21.35, Gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., The Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program, © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

About the Institute of Museum and Library ServiceThe Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s libraries and museums. We advance, support, and empower America’s museums, libraries, and related organizations through grantmaking, research, and policy development. Our vision is a nation where museums and libraries work together to transform the lives of individuals and communities. To learn more, visit https://www.imls.gov/and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.