{"id":7749,"date":"2025-02-27T18:47:34","date_gmt":"2025-02-27T18:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exhibitions.bgc.bard.edu\/catena\/?page_id=7749"},"modified":"2025-06-10T20:02:14","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T20:02:14","slug":"project-info","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/exhibitions.bgc.bard.edu\/catena\/project-info\/","title":{"rendered":"Project Info"},"content":{"rendered":"

PROJECT INFORMATION<\/h1><\/div>

<\/i><\/i><\/span>PROJECT MISSION<\/span><\/a><\/h4><\/div>
\n

The primary mission of Catena, the Digital Archive of Historic Gardens and Landscapes, is to fill a void in American higher education by assembling a searchable collection of historic and contemporary images that include plans, engravings, paintings, and photographs to make the following possible:<\/span><\/p>\n

Provide Images for Teaching Landscape Studies<\/span><\/h4>\n

Catena offers a readily available set of images to illustrate classroom lectures. It thus serves as a means of integrating a relatively new academic field into the curricula of institutions that, for lack of visual resources, would not otherwise be able to offer courses in landscape design history.<\/p>\n

Integrate Images and Educational Materials<\/span><\/h4>\n

As an online resource, Catena makes it possible for scholars, teachers, and students of landscape history to fully integrate images and contextual materials in a more dynamic manner than is possible with traditional teaching and study materials.<\/p>\n

Provide a Supplement to Textbooks<\/span><\/h4>\n

Digital technology offers an important way to augment the images found in books, which are necessarily limited because of publishers\u2019 specifications concerning page count and illustration number. A textbook may have only one or two images of a major landscape site, but Catena can offer unlimited computer-accessible images.<\/p>\n

Better Simulate the Experience of Landscape<\/span><\/h4>\n

Unlike other works of art that can be comprehended in a single view, landscapes are for the most part spatially extensive and should be experienced from multiple perspectives and several vantage points. Catena makes it possible to visually tour landscapes with plans that are keyed to sequences of views.<\/p>\n

Preserve Existing Slide Collections<\/span><\/h4>\n

Catena performs a valuable visual resources preservation function. Slides have a limited life span. By scanning and cataloging the images that belong to the personal collections of professors and landscape photographers, Catena ensures that certain notable collections of images of historic gardens, parks, and cities are not lost.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

<\/i><\/i><\/span>PROJECT TEAM<\/span><\/a><\/h4><\/div>
\n

The 2005 Catena project team consisted of a committee of advisors, participating scholars, a steering committee, and BGC staff.<\/p>\n

COMMITTEE OF ADVISORS<\/h4>\n

This group includes some pioneers in the field of landscape design history. The books listed bear the most relevance to this project.<\/p>\n

James Ackerman, Ph.D.,<\/strong> Professor Emeritus in Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University, is the author of The Villa: Form and Ideology of Country Houses<\/em> (1990).<\/p>\n

Miroslava Marie Benes, Ph.D.,<\/strong> Senior Lecturer in the History of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Design School is the co-author of Villas and Gardens in Early Modern Italy and France <\/em>(2001). <\/span><\/p>\n

Joseph Connors, Ph.D.,<\/strong> is Professor in the Department of Art History at Columbia University and Director of the Harvard Center for the Study of the Italian Renaissance at the Villa I Tatti in Florence.<\/p>\n

Claudia Lazzaro, Ph.D.,<\/strong> Professor in the Department of Art History at Cornell University, is the author of The Italian Renaissance Garden<\/em> (1990).<\/p>\n

David Lowenthal,<\/strong> Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geography at University College London, is the author of The Past is a Foreign Country <\/em>(1985).<\/span><\/p>\n

Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, MCP<\/strong> (Project Founder and former Director), President, Foundation for Landscape Studies is the author of the award-winning Landscape Design, A Cultural and Architectural History<\/em>. She was the founding director of the Garden History and Landscape Studies concentration at the Bard Graduate Center and was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the Catena digital archive.<\/span><\/p>\n

David Schuyler, Ph.D.,<\/strong> Professor in the Department of American Studies at Franklin and Marshall College, is the author of Apostle Of Taste: Andrew Jackson Downing, 1815\u20131852 <\/em>(1996).<\/span><\/p>\n

PARTICIPATING SCHOLARS<\/h4>\n

This group is providing the visual materials and intellectual content contained in the database and website. The books listed bear the most relevance to this project.<\/p>\n

Dr. Alberta Campitelli<\/strong> is the Superintendent of the Villas and Historical Parks Service, Rome, and has worked on the restoration of the secret gardens of the Villa Borghese.<\/p>\n

Denis Cosgrove, Ph.D.,<\/strong> Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, is contributing images and documentation for the villas of the Veneto. He is the author of The Palladian Landscape: Geographical Change and its Cultural Representations in Sixteenth-Century Italy <\/em>(1993).<\/p>\n

Tracy Ehrlich, Ph.D.,<\/strong> Assistant Professor of Art History at Colgate University, is a specialist on the villas of Frascati and is the author of Landscape and Identity in Early Modern Rome: Villa Culture at Frascati in the Borghese Era <\/em>(2002).<\/p>\n

Bernard Frischer, Ph.D.,<\/strong> Professor of Classics and Director of the University of Virginia\u2019s Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, is an authority on ancient Roman landscape and director of the excavations at Horace\u2019s Villa from 1997\u2013<\/em><\/span>2001.<\/p>\n

Giorgio Galletti<\/strong> has been Director of the Office of Villas, Parks, and Gardens of the Soprintendenza per i Beni Architettonici in Florence since 1986. His principal responsibilities have included the maintenance, conservation, and restoration of the Giardino di Boboli and the villas of Castello, la Petraia, and Poggio a Caiano. The Ac\u00e1demie de France selected him for the conservation project of the garden of the Villa Medici in Rome, on which he has been working since June 2000. He was a fellow at Dumbarton Oaks for the academic year 1998\u20131999.<\/p>\n

Kathryn Gleason, Ph.D.,<\/strong> is Associate Professor and Department Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture at Cornell University. She specializes in garden archeology.<\/p>\n

Dianne Harris, Ph.D.,<\/strong> Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Architecture in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has worked extensively on Lombard gardens and is the author of The Nature of Authority: Villa Culture, Landscape, and Representation in Eighteenth-Century Lombardy<\/em> (2003).<\/p>\n

Robin Karson<\/strong> is the Executive Director of The Library of American Landscape History and is the author of The Muses of Gwinn: Art and Nature in a Gardens Designed by Warren H. Manning, Charles A. Platt, and Ellen Biddle Shipman <\/em>(1995).<\/p>\n

Patricia Osmond, Ph.D.,<\/strong> is the Consultant for Research and Development and the curator of the archives at Villa Gamberaia. In 2002, she was guest editor for Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes<\/em>, a special issue devoted to the Villa Gambaraia.<\/p>\n

John Pinto, Ph.D.,<\/strong> is Howard Crosby Butler Professor for the History of Architecture in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. He is the co-author (with William Macdonald) of Hadrian\u2019s Villa and its Legacy <\/em>(1995).<\/p>\n

Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, Ph.D., <\/strong>Professor in the Dipartimento di Storia delle Arti dell\u2019Universita di Pisa, is an expert on Medici villas and gardens. She is co-author (with Gretchen Hirschauer) of The Flowering of Florence: Botanical Art for the Medici<\/em> (2002).<\/p>\n

PROJECT STEERING COMMITTEE<\/h4>\n

The steering committee consists of people who have experience either with new media applications, creating databases of visual resources collections, or using online content as a teaching tool.<\/p>\n

Jeffrey Cohen, Ph.D.,<\/strong> Senior Lecturer, Growth and Structure of the Cities Program; Director, Digital Media and Visual Resources Center, Bryn Mawr College <\/span><\/p>\n

Therese O\u2019Malley, Ph.D.,<\/strong> Landscape historian and Associate Dean, Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC<\/p>\n

Reuben Rainey, Ph.D.,<\/strong> Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Virginia<\/p>\n

Ann Whiteside, MLS,<\/strong> Fine Arts Librarian, University of Virginia, Former President of the Visual Resources Association<\/p>\n

PROJECT STAFF<\/h4>\n

The project staff is affiliated with the Bard Graduate Center and works closely with the steering committee to reach decisions regarding the appropriate metadata tags for images as well as all other matters relating to the construction of the project website and its searchable database.<\/p>\n

Johanna Bauman, Ph.D.<\/strong> (Project Director and Landscape Historian), Visual Media Curator, Bard Graduate Center<\/p>\n

Erik de Jong, Ph.D. <\/strong>(Project Advisor and Participating Scholar), Professor, Garden History and Landscape Studies, Bard Graduate Center<\/p>\n

Polly Giragosian<\/strong> (Project Assistant), Assistant Curator of Visual Media Resources, Bard Graduate Center<\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div>

<\/i><\/i><\/span>PARTICIPATING INSTITUTIONS<\/span><\/a><\/h4><\/div>
\n

We would like to thank the following institutions for providing support to the project:<\/p>\n

LuEsther T. Mertz Library, New York Botanical Garden<\/strong> <\/span>
\nThe library of the New York Botanical Garden<\/a> has generously provided several items from its collection of rare books concerning the history of landscape design. It is one of the world\u2019s largest and most important botanical research libraries. Its diverse collections hold irreplaceable materials that date to the twelfth century as well as electronic resources such as e-journals and searchable databases containing the latest results of research and discoveries in plant science and modern horticultural practice. The library and its collections serve both as a scholarly resource and a general-public information center.<\/p>\n

Brooklyn Botanic Garden Library<\/span><\/strong>
\nThe rare book room of the Library<\/a> at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden has two Renaissance era print editions of Piero de\u2019Crescenzi\u2019s Liber ruralium commodorum<\/em>. A selection of pages was photographed from these and have been included in the Catena database.<\/p>\n

Dumbarton Oaks<\/span><\/strong>
\nThe Garden Rare Book Collection<\/a> of the library at Dumbarton Oaks has donated several digital images of items from its collection, which focuses primarily on landscape and garden history of the western world from the seventeenth century to the present, with the greatest emphasis on the U.S. and Europe. (Please note: The images from Dumbarton Oaks are currently not included in the database, but will be available by January 2006.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Morgan Library<\/span><\/strong>
\nThe The Morgan Library<\/a> has given permission to use images of its fifteenth-century manuscript of Piero de\u2019Crescenzi\u2019s Liber ruralium commodorum,<\/em> the most important medieval treatise on agriculture.<\/p>\n

University of Virginia Libraries<\/span><\/strong>
\nActing as consultants and providing resources and training, specialists in digital media and visual resources from the Robertson Media Center<\/a> and the Fiske-Kimball Fine Arts Library<\/a> provided assistance in directing the technical aspects of the project.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

<\/i><\/i><\/span>PROJECT UPDATES<\/span><\/a><\/h4><\/div>
\n

Update September 23, 2005
\n<\/strong>Interpretive texts were added to nearly all the featured sites, along with primary texts. Elsewhere in the website greater interactivity was achieved by allowing users the option to browse by site name, location, and work type and illustrating the Glossary. The Bibliography was updated to include both primary and secondary sources.<\/p>\n

Update April 18, 2005
\n<\/strong>An additional 600 images was added to the collection, bringing the total number of images to 1,700. Additional terms were added both to the Search Terms List and the Glossary.<\/p>\n

November 1, 2004
\n<\/strong>Work on Catena began in May 2003, and \u00a0the first installment of the website and database was launched which included 1,100 images of villas and their gardens.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

<\/i><\/i><\/span>LUNA COMMONS<\/span><\/a><\/h4><\/div>
\n

Catena’s archive of digital images is hosted on Luna Commons, powered by Luna Imaging Systems<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Quick Start Guide for viewing Catena<\/em> on Luna Commons<\/a>:<\/p>\n