Project Name: The Huntington Archive of Buddhist and Related Art and Its Projects
Project Representative(s): Susan and John Huntington, Janice Glowski.
The John C. and Susan L. Huntington Photographic Archive of Buddhist and Related Art contains nearly 300,000 original color slides and black and white and color photographs of art and architecture throughout Asia. Countries covered in the collection include India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, China, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, and Myanmar (Burma). Works range from approximately 2500 B.C.E. to the present, and documentation includes contemporary religious activities in various parts of Asia. The Archive documents the art and architecture of these countries in situ, as well as works of art found in most major Asian, European, and American museums. This broad, yet detailed, collection contains predominantly Buddhist material, but also includes Hindu, Jain, Islamic, and other works. In addition to being the most comprehensive collection of its kind, The Huntington Archive includes the largest photographic archive of Nepali art and architecture in the world and represents the only formal collection that photographically records this country's artistic heritage.
The Huntington Archive represents the efforts of over twenty-five years of field documentation photography by John and Susan Huntington, professors of Asian Art History at The Ohio State University. In 1986, the Huntingtons decided to formally expand their photographic collection beyond the countries central to their personal research to include other major countries in Asia that had not yet been documented. When the move from a personal resource materials archive to a pan-Asian documentation project was made, the Huntingtons and the History of Art Department decided to create an institutional archive that could be used for scholarly research and classroom teaching.
Update from the 1999 Taipei meeting (January 1999):
The John C. and Susan L Huntington Photographic Archive of Buddhist
and Related Art is pleased to announce the creation of a new sub-site on
the Buddhist Art of China. The China site can also be reached from the the main home page by simply scrolling down the list of Archive
Resources. Our intention is to put up about 1500 to 2000 high quality
photographs by the end of the spring term.
However, we have another 3000 to 4000 photographs of Chinese art
and are seeking funding to put those up as well. At this time (January
1999) Longmen and Yungang are well represented and the Baimasi in Sian is
also available. In the long run we should be able to have about fifty
temples and cave sites, two mosques, the Gardens of Suzhou, and many other
sites of interest.
We will also be putting up maps of the location of Chinese Buddhist
art and architecture, Maps of Tibetan Art and Architecture and some
province identifiers so that one can learn the geography of China as well.
Our intention is to make the Art of China as accessible to as many people
as possible through Web Technology.