Asian Art Archives

The Collection

The Asian Art Archives is a photograph collection located on the lower level of Tappan Hall. A resource of approximately 190,000 photographs, the Archives is open to both faculty and students for study and research. Study space is provided in Room 20 during office hours, Monday through Friday 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Use of the photographs is restricted to the premises.

Distinctive Features of the Collection
  • Far Eastern Art Archive
  • South Asian Art Archive
  • Southeast Asian Art Archive
  • SAAF (Southeast Asia Art Foundation) Archive
  • Islamic Art Archive

The Far Eastern Art Archive includes approximately 48,000 photographs of Chinese and Japanese painting, sculpture, architecture, and decorative arts. The Archive contains the Palace Museum Archive (National Palace Museum, Taiwan), all photograph holdings of Asian Art Photographic Distribution, and acquisitions from important museums and private collections of Far Eastern Art.

The South Asian Art Archive has approximately 13,000 photographs of Indian architecture, sculpture, and painting. The strength of the collection is its extensive coverage of cave temples of Western India. The Archive supplied visual resources to the Ajanta microfiche published by the American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA). These photographs are filed separately.

The Southeast Asian Art Archive contains photographs of monuments, sculpture and murals of Thailand and Java. Other areas of Southeast Asia are not extensively represented.

The SAAF (Southeast Asia Art Foundation) Archive was established in 1977 in Hill, New Hampshire to provide a research center for the study of Southeast Asian art and archaeology. In 1993, the Archive was transferred from New Hampshire to the University of Michigan. The photo archive contains approximately 100,000 photographs and slides, and features 18 collections of visual materials by photographers and leading scholars of Southeast Asian art. Some of the photographers have accorded permission for their photographs to be accessible online. Collections may be viewed through the U-M Digital Library at the following URL: http://images.umdl.umich.edu/s/saaf.

The Islamic Art Archive is the oldest photographic archive of Islamic art in the United States. It consists of approximately 10,000 photographs of manuscript paintings, monuments, and decorative arts. The major focus of the collection is in the area of book illumination. The Archive also contains three collections of b/w negatives, including:

  • a complete record of the University of Michigan and Harvard University excavations at Qasr al-Hayr East, Syria. Published as O. Grabar, R. Holod, J. Knudstad, and W. Trousdale, City in the Desert: Qasr al-Hayr East, Cambridge, 1978. All plates in City in the Desert, as well as many more, are represented in the 227 rolls of original negatives.
  • 70 rolls from Donald Wilber illustrating Islamic architecture in Iran and Afghanistan. Some have been published, chiefly in the Survey of Persian Art.
  • 49 rolls of copy negatives taken of prints in the possession of Arthur Upham Pope. Many of the photographs illustrated in the Survey of Persian Art are included.


Related Collections

The Asian slide distribution projects provide high quality, modestly priced color slides for teaching and research purposes to individuals (ACSAA only) and institutions around the world. The impact on the field has been far-reaching — the choice of material has shaped the teaching and study of Asian art in the United States.

The Palace Museum Archive is a research collection of 9,000 black and white photographs of paintings and decorative arts in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taiwan. The University of Michigan was designated as the sole repository in this country of original slides and negatives of this world-famous collection of Chinese painting. A distribution service was established at the University in order to make available to other educational institutions contents of this archive. This project was the model for all other distribution services developed at the University of Michigan.

Appointments to use the materials in this archive (closed for general study purposes) must be scheduled through the Sr. Associate Curator. Recent research on the collection has produced a database of seal readings on Chinese paintings. Some of the material in the Palace Museum Archive is accessible for study online through the U-M Digital Library at the following URL: . This online archive is updated periodically. Although it is currently accessible only to the U-M academic community, the archive eventually will be open for viewing worldwide.

Materials may be photocopied for students preparing papers. All such requests will be handled by a curator. Students requesting photocopies should plan in advance, since it may not be possible to process the request immediately. Contents of study notebooks cannot be photocopied for study.

Wendy Holden
Sr. Associate Curator
revised 2001





















The Romanesque Archive

The Romanesque Archive is a specialized collection of 5,646 study photographs of Romanesque sculpture. At present it is intended primarily to illustrate French monuments, although examples from Spain, Italy and Israel have been included. Its scope is not meant to encompass architecture, except for cases in which architectural views clarify the location of sculptural decoration. The purpose of the archive is to provide high quality photographs for students and scholars for use in seminars and for independent research projects. Use of the photographs is restricted to the premises of the Romanesque Archive.

Since the major function of the collection is to provide material for original research, acquisitions have concentrated on important but little-studied monuments as well as on major monuments, such as Cluny, Autun, Vezelay, Saint-Denis, and cloisters, such as Moissac, Toulouse, and Saint-Trophime at Arles. The archive is very strong in the monuments for Burgundy and southwest France, and it is expected that photographs will continue to be added.

Photographs from the archive may NOT be reproduced for any reason.

Students or scholars wishing to consult the archive should contact Gertraud Reynolds, who will explain the organization of the collection and procedures for its use. Questions regarding policies should be addressed to Gertraud Reynolds @ (734) 434-0647.










The Sinai Archive

The Sinai Archive comprises a collection of 8,500 negatives photographed during the expedition to the Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai, undertaken by the Universities of Alexandria, Michigan, and Princeton.

The negatives are the fruit of four campaigns of activity in 1958, 1960, 1963, and 1965. They record every detail of the sixth century Justiniac church of Saint Catherine, as well as the monastic buildings, the mosaics and frescoes of the church, the liturgical objects contained in the church Treasury, and the huge collection of icons and manuscripts in the Monastery’s possession.

Questions regarding the procedures to access and/or publish black/white prints from negatives should be addressed to Gertraud Reynolds @ (734) 434-0647.