100-Year-Old Archive Embarks on Archival Digitization

The Phillips Collection is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, 2021. In addition to doing a retrospective on the art collection and looking for contemporary artists to showcase, the museum also wanted to enhance its legacy through an inaugural archival digitization project.

This project is aimed at getting the correspondence of the museum’s founder, Duncan Phillips, and a collection of historic photographs, imaged and accessible. Thus far we have the imaging underway and are working toward building and implementing infrastructure and workflows that will make these digitized items and other archival collections more widely accessible. We have assessed tools to use and tools to invest in, keeping the institution’s age, resources, and staff in mind.

The Correspondence of Duncan Phillips includes letters spanning most of the twentieth century between himself, or his secretary, wife, and other early museum staff members with artists such as Alfred Stieglitze, professors at Howard and American University, board members of the Museum of Modern Art, and other influential artists and people at art and academic-oriented institutions.

Digitization and the building of infrastructure are critical in allowing The Phillips Collection to recontextualize its works as the institution delves into Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion. Pixel Acuity has been an essential partner in making this work possible, especially as I am a small team, and as we adapt to life during the pandemic. With the use of DT Heritage digitization solutions powered by the Phase One iXG, the Pixel Acuity team was able to digitize over 125,000 collection pieces for The Phillips Collection Archives.

Learn about the background of the project on the Phillips Collection's blog here: https://blog.phillipscollection.org/2021/03/18/the-phillips-is-digitizing-its-archives/

Discover how Pixel Acuity's industry-leading OCR technology was utilized for the project here: https://pixelacuity-digitaltransitions.com/the-word-on-optical-character-recognition-at-the-phillips-collection-archive/

Featured Presenters
Rachel Jacobson | Digital Assets Librarian at the Phillips Collection Archive
Rachel Jacobson is the first full-time archivist at The Phillips Collection, a mid-sized art museum in Washington, D.C. She was brought on to stand up the first archival digitization project for the museum’s library & archive. Rachel Jacobson is from outside Washington, D.C., and has done projects in Amman, Jordan, Honolulu, HI, and the less exotic suburbs of Baltimore. Her background is in archaeology and public history.

Hannah Storch | Project Manager at Pixel Acuity
Hannah is a Project Manager with Pixel Acuity, specializing in cultural heritage digitization. After obtaining her B.A. in Classics and History from Grinnell College, Hannah attended Georgetown University, where she received her master’s degree in Art and Museum Studies. Her role at Pixel Acuity has enabled her to partner with institutions, embracing the opportunities that collection digitization brings to institutions and the communities they serve.

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