Additional non-western art and architecture from Erich Lessing Archives

March 19, 2009

The Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives will make available more than 13,000 images of world art and architecture through ARTstor Digital Library. Approximately 9,200 images, focusing primarily on European art and architecture, have already been released in the Digital Library. An additional 4,000 images will be added to provide documentation of art and architecture in Asia and the Middle East, including China, Tibet, Bhutan, Japan, India, Afghanistan, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Turkey, among others. The forthcoming content will also include works in European museums with significant holdings of ancient Near Eastern and Islamic art, as well as Judaica.

Over the course of his distinguished career, Erich Lessing undertook photographic campaigns all over the world. The large-format (4"x5" or 8" x 10") color transparencies he produced have been scanned to produce high-quality digital images, on average 120 megabytes in size. In addition to documenting cultural objects and sites, Lessing was also an accomplished documentary photographer and member of the photographers' collective, Magnum Photos. Through a collaboration with Magnum Photos, Lessing is also represented in the Digital Library with over 400 images depicting political events in post-World War II Europe, particularly in the former Soviet-bloc countries of Eastern Europe.


For more detailed information about this collection, visit the Art, Archaeology, and Architecture (Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives) page.


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