Announcement
October 15, 2015
Collaboration Agreement between The University of Michigan History of Art Visual
Resources Collections (VRC), the Center for Art and Archaeology (CA&A) of the
American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS), and the American Council for Southern
Asian Art (ACSAA)
The University of Michigan History of Art Visual Resources Collections (VRC;
http://www.lsa.umich.edu/histartvrc/), the Center for Art and Archaeology (CA&A)
of the American Institute of Indian Studies in Gurgaon, India (AIIS;
http://www.indiastudies.org/), and the American Council for Southern Asian Art
(ACSAA; http://acsaa.us/) are pleased to announce that, per a collaboration agreement
reached in February 2014, over 12,000 low-resolution images (suitable for
PowerPoint presentations), known collectively as the ACSAA Digital Images, are
now newly available for free direct downloading for non-commercial, educational and
scholarly purposes through the Virtual Museum of Images and Sounds (VMIS;
http://www.vmis.in/). Funded by the Ministry of Culture, Government of India, the
virtual museum was recently created by using the image and sound archives of the
CA&A, and the Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology (ARCE) – the
two centers of the AIIS.
The ACSAA Digital Images were first distributed under the aegis of the ACSAA
Color Slide Project, a non-profit initiative administered through the former Asian Art
Archives of The University of Michigan that from 1974 through 2006 provided high
quality original and duplicate 35 mm color slides of the art and architecture of India
and greater South Asia, Southeast Asia and Indonesia, and the Himalayan regions to
individuals and institutions for teaching and research purposes around the world.
Based on an idea of University of Michigan Professor and then ACSAA President,
Dr. Walter Spink, who served as the Project Director, the ACSAA Color Slide Project
was created as the premier image resource to facilitate the study and teaching of the
rich artistic heritage of Southern Asia. With these new iterations of the ACSAA
images, the original project’s educational intentions have not only been maintained,
but have now been expanded to make the images available on an even wider scale and
without fee. The User simply needs to register (free of charge) on the VMIS website
before the images can be downloaded (free of charge).
The Visual Resources Collections maintains nearly 500,000 images of art. The
collection’s roots are more than 90 years old and developed as a teaching collection to
support faculty and students. As The University of Michigan’s Department of the
History of Art evolved and became a center for scholarship, so did the VRC collection
become an international resource.
The Center for Art and Archaeology, established in 1965, is an international leader in
the documentation of Indic art and architecture. The CA&A welcomes scholars and
students to its renowned Archive and Library. The CA&A Archive documents and
maintains images and architectural plans for more than 7,000 monuments and ancient
buildings. These resources have been primarily created by CA&A professional staff
and include some contributed by research scholars. In addition, the Archive houses
surveys of 350 museum collections in India, the results of documentation projects,
some also commissioned and funded by the Government of India and carried out by
CA&A staff. In total, the CA&A houses more than 200,000 images of Indic art and
architecture. The CA&A also maintains a Library that stands among the finest
collections on Indian art history in the subcontinent. This open-stack facility houses
75,000 books, journals, and maps.
The American Council for Southern Asian Art is a non-profit organization dedicated
to advancing the study and awareness of the art of South and Southeast Asia and the
Himalayan regions. In addition to periodic symposia, usually held every two years,
ACSAA pursues these goals through various projects, including its annual bulletin,
bibliographies, and the distribution of assorted visual and research materials. Since
its incorporation in 1967, ACSAA has grown from its original fifteen members to an
organization of some three hundred individuals and institutions. ACSAA is formally
affiliated with the College Art Association (CAA) and the Association of Asian
Studies (AAS).
In addition to perpetuating the original educational mission of the ACSAA Color
Slide Project, publishing the ACSAA Digital Images on the CA&A VMIS website
bring the images "full circle" in an historical sense because the CA&A was initially
founded in 1965 by ACSAA as the American Academy of Benares, which was
subsequently merged with the American Institute of Indian Studies. Thus, the
CA&A’s VMIS website is a fitting repository of the ACSAA Digital Images, and
enables the images to be available to the people of India and beyond in a manner
entirely consistent with the original ACSAA Color Slide Project.
The CA&A and AIIS are not responsible for supplying high-resolution images
suitable for publication through the VMIS website. For publication-quality images,
interested parties are required to contact the VRC directly at vrum@umich.edu. The
VRC represents and warrants that, to the best of its knowledge, granting the right to
display the ACSAA Digital Images in the stipulated manner is consistent with the
Fair-Use Statue of the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 (Section 107) and does not violate
any known third-party rights. Should any photographer or institution who holds
rights to a photograph take issue with its publication on the VMIS website, upon
notification to caa.archives@aiis.org.in, the image(s) in question will be immediately
removed.
The Museums and Monuments covered in the ACSAA Digital Images are available in
the ‘Collections’ of the ‘Center for Art and Archaeology’ at http://vmis.in