Photographer D. James Dee and his archive

Photographer D. James Dee and his archive

The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation has awarded $75,000 to Artstor in support of the James Dee Archives project. The Archives are composed of approximately 250,000 slides, transparencies, negatives, and photographs documenting contemporary art in New York City over the last four decades, and Artstor is digitizing and maintaining the archive for use in research and education. The gift will support the processing of the collection, developing crowdsourcing software for collaborative cataloging, and the outreach to galleries and individuals who would be helpful in interpreting the images.

“The James Dee Archives project is an invaluable resource, one of the most comprehensive documentations of contemporary art in New York City over the last four decades,” said Jack Cowart, Executive Director of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. “It relates to our own Harry Shunk and Shunk-Kender Photography Collection of 200,000 photographs of prominent artists, which the Foundation recently gifted to five major institutions. While the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation doesn’t usually make grants, the Board and staff felt the James Dee project merited an exception given its broad relevance and art historical importance. We also hoped our support would reward Artstor for its initiative while encouraging other funders to join this ambitious project.”

“Artstor is very grateful for the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation’s support,” said James Shulman, President of Artstor. “We believe that the lessons learned in rescuing, processing, and maintaining this analogue archive will be important for the community. We very much hope that by documenting this process, we will establish some best practices that can be used by Artstor and others when preserving other one-of-a-kind at risk image collections.”

Learn more about the James Dee Archives here.