From 2010 to 2014, I served as the Robert H. Smith Research Associate at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. The focus of my work at CASVA is the integration and application of digital research and publishing tools to the research projects of the Center’s deans.
Projects I worked on while at CASVA include:
The History of the Accademia di San Luca
Just before I arrived at CASVA, Associate Dean Peter Lukehart and his team launched The History of the Accademia di San Luca c. 1590–1635: Documents from the Archivio di Stato di Roma. This website traces the early history of the Accademia through documents that had been lost from the Accademia’s own archive, but were recovered in the city archives of Rome.
My work at CASVA has centered on two initiatives related to the Accademia project. The first was an upgrade of the current Documents site. This included developing a project proposal, including a detailed list of functionality requirements, for the NGA technical team. The goals of this project were to add features to and improve the functionality oft the site, to provide for its long-term sustainability, and to integrate it with the NGA public website. (The new site launched in 2015.) The second initiative focused on the development of an interactive, web-based map that would extend the offerings of the Documents site by placing the Accademia di San Luca within its urban context.
Keywords in American Landscape Design
As part of a research team led by Associate Dean Therese O’Malley, on the development of an online resource that researchers can use to chart the evolution of a regional vocabulary of design and the transformation of features in the landscapes of the early United States. This project was designed to support and extend the work done by O’Malley in her 2010 print publication, Keywords in American Landscape Design, from Yale University Press. Through texts and images, both the book and the online resource, the History of Early American Landscape Design Database (HEALDD), trace the changing meaning of landscape and garden terminology as it was adapted from Old World sources and transformed into an American landscape vocabulary.