Legacy Collections

When the Visual Resources Center was established alongside the Department of Art History in 1902, it contained a collection of 60,000 lantern slides. In November, the lantern slide collection was donated to Theaster Gates and is now publicly accessible at the Rebuild Foundation’s Stony Island Arts Bank. Before the collection was donated, around 4,000 lantern slides were digitized by the VRC and these scans are available in a publicly accessible LUNA collection here.

The Epstein Archive consists of over 168,000 photographs of artworks and other objects related to art-historical research. These photographs were, for the most part, acquired by Max Epstein in the 1930’s, and donated by him to the Department of Art History. The core of the collection consists of duplicates of photographs from the collection of Sir Robert Witt, now the Witt Library of Photographs at the Courtauld Institute of the University of London. Also represented are rare and historic photographs. The collection grew through gifts from the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art, and individual members of the University faculty. The Archive is a unique resource for scholars, providing images of objects, views, and details unavailable elsewhere. The Epstein Photographic Archive resides in the Regenstein Library, Room 420. A small selection of images have been digitized and are available in Luna here.

During the mid-20th century, lantern slides fell out of favor as photographic technology rapidly changed and the VRC evolved into a collection of more than 330,000 35mm slides. The 35mm Slide Collection is now located in the Regenstein Library Art Reserve, Room 420.

The Legacy Image Collection contains low-resolution images suitable for course study and reference. High-quality replacement images will be added to the Art History Department Image Collection as they become available. The collection is available in LUNA. Click here for access to this collection.