imls – PAFA’s Collections Blog

Digital Treasure Trove: Photographing Naima (2001) by Elizabeth Catlett

November 16, 2023March 29, 2024admin

Contribute by Zoe Smith, Project Museum Collections Assistant

This week at PAFA we continued photographing sculptures as a part of the IMLS grant. While some 3D objects are straight forward, the beautiful sculpture Naima by Elizabeth Catlett was quite the challenge to photograph. I had so much fun creating the set up for this piece. We started using the light box that we have been using for smaller pieces, but because this sculpture is so reflective, we could see everything surrounding the object. We had to get creative and use the structure of the lightbox but switch the reflective sides to diffusion material. Our light source needed to be bigger than the object we were photographing and needed to seamlessly surround it. We had to combine multiple pieces of fabric to surround the work, and then we were able to use two soft boxes to get a beautiful quality of light. This piece has been one of my favorites to photograph so far, and I had a great time working with the photographer Adrian Cubillas to figure it out.

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.

Digital Treasure Trove: Macro Photography

November 2, 2023November 16, 2023admin

Contribute by Zoe Smith, Project Museum Collections Assistant

PAFA’s collection primarily consists of paintings, works on paper, and sculpture. There are some more unique objects in the collection such as medals! PAFA has a discrete collection of medals that were sculpted for the many prizes it awarded artists during its Annual Exhibitions. These objects are much smaller in comparison to the typical objects that we have photographed for the past year. Because of their size, the photography workflow needed to change to obtain a preservation quality image. The project team added a lightbox and new Helicon Focus software. Together, these dramatically improved our capabilities and efficiency.

One of the benefits of using this workflow with the medium format camera is once the photograph is completed, you can zoom in on miniscule details, showcasing the precision and skills of the artist.

The miniatures in the collection are even smaller than the medals–smaller than a quarter! The focus stacking technique allows us to capture stunning details throughout each piece. Using this technology to photograph these objects brings a new life to each piece. This detail from a Temple Trust Fund Medal is less than 2 inches and shows an amazing rendering of PAFA.

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Digital Treasure Trove: Parallel projects-John Rhoden sculptures

October 13, 2023March 29, 2024admin

Contributed by Adrian Cubillas, Photographer and Digital Collection Coordinator & Zoe Smith, IMLS Project Museum Collections Assistant

PAFA’s Digital Treasure Trove project and the exhibition Determined to be: The Sculpture of John Rhoden both embody the institution’s mission by expanding the stories of American art. The grant project preserves and makes artworks more accessible to the public, while the exhibition showcases the work of an artist whose contributions challenge conventions and broaden the understanding of American art. Together, these projects reinforce our commitment to inspiring and educating through its world-class museum and school. For the Rhoden exhibition, Dr. Brittany Webb, Evelyn and Will Kaplan Curator of Twentieth Century Art.

John W. Rhoden (1916-2001). Three Headed Lion, 1954. Bronze, The John Walter Rhoden and Richanda Phillips Rhoden Collection, 2019.27.3

Zoe and I had the pleasure of attending the opening of Determined to be: The Sculpture of John Rhoden. We were lucky enough to walk through the exhibit as it was being installed with the curator Dr. Brittany Webb. Getting to see the behind-the-scenes as well as the final exhibit was a great experience that opened my eyes to how much goes into creating such a big show. We also had the amazing opportunity to make some gifs of the sculptures to promote the show! (see below). We loved being able to contribute to such a wonderful project.

Digital Treasure Trove: Project Update

August 28, 2023March 29, 2024admin

Contributed by Hoang Tran, Director of Archives & Collections and Zoe Smith, IMLS Project Museum Collections Assistant

It’s been a busy summer at PAFA. At the end of June, we had to say good-bye to our IMLS Collections Assistant L. L had an amazing job opportunity to work for a local artist as a studio assistant. We wish L all the best and thank them for all their hard work and dedication! L’s work helped us hit major milestones on the project–completing 99% of works on paper photography, completing all subject terms in the catalog records, and pushing us over 60% completion of the project!

We were fortunate to rehire the position quickly. Our new IMLS Collections Assistant is Zoe Smith who started August 21, 2023. Please read Zoe’s introduction blog below:

My name is Zoe Smith, I am a recent graduate of Drexel University where I completed a bachelor of science in photography. I have a love of nature and art that merges into the work that I make. I am passionate for printing my photographs, and experimenting with alternative printing methods. I am extremely excited to use my photographic experience to contribute to the art world by updating PAFA’s amazing collection of art. This task feels exceptionally important to me, and I hope people are able to learn and grow from this fantastic resource.

My work at PAFA consists of assisting in photographing and digitizing the extensive collection of paintings, sculptures, and other works of art. Being able to look into the history of each one of these objects is an immense privilege that I am very much looking forward to.

My first week here I dove right in and began photographing various medallions. The intricate carvings on each of these surfaces have been a fun challenge to photograph. Using a lightbox to evenly light the subject, we have been using multiple exposures to get different parts of the medallion perfectly in focus. This is necessary because of the various depths of the carving on these objects.

After photographing I have been bringing the 2 to 6 exposures into a focus stacking software and combining them into one photo. This technique can be challenging and it has been great training my eye to see the slight differences in focus. I am looking forward to using the same technique on small busts and sculptures. Each artwork poses an exciting new challenge in photographing that has been very rewarding. I love to imagine the thousands of people before me that have had a connection to this art, which deepens my own personal connection to it.

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Digital Treasure Trove: Unwanted Reflections

June 27, 2023July 25, 2023admin

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.

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Digital Treasure Trove: The Watercolors of William Trost Richards

May 15, 2023May 8, 2023admin

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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Digital Treasure Trove: Recto//Verso

April 24, 2023September 1, 2023admin

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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Digital Treasure Trove: Ongoing 16-Bit Photography

March 8, 2023March 7, 2023admin

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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Digital Treasure Trove: Beta Testing New Collections Software

January 17, 2023January 19, 2023admin

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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Digital Treasure Trove: Post-Production Photography Editing

November 22, 2022November 17, 2022admin

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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