History of Art VRC

Sinai Archive Images The Sinai Archive at the University of Michigan is an unprecedented scholarly resource: Nearly 10,000 of masterfully captured images revealing fourteen turbulent centuries of religious life in the Monastery of Saint Catherine

Collection Highlights The Visual Resources Collections (VRC) maintains nearly 500,000 images of art, with more being added each day as we continue digitizing our unpublished material. The collectionâ s roots are more than 90 years old and developed as a teaching collection to support faculty and students. As the University of Michiganâ s Department of the History of Art evolved and became a center for scholarship, so did the VRC collection become an international resource for images.

Finding Aids The Visual Resources Collections, until very recently, has never made their archival holdings public. With the aid of Encoded Archival Description (EAD) files, we are now able to provide access to finding aids and inventories of our primary resources online. Through the provision of these online finding aids, we hope to help you connect with our vast resources of images of art, architecture, and artifacts

Online Catalog The online digital collection of the Visual Resources Collections, part of the Department of the History of Art, consists of images representing art and architecture from all eras and geographic regions of cultural history. These images have many different sources: field photography donated by current and emeriti faculty, archival negatives and prints, illustrations digitized from books, 35mm slides and lantern slides, as well as digital images licensed from vendors. Images and cataloging information are added twice weekly to this site as we continue to digitize the precious research of our globe-trotting faculty.

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Recent News

Sinai Image of the Week: "Virgin Kyriotissa Enthroned with Samuel and Abraham"

Join us as we take a look each week into the extensive Sinai collection housed right here at the University of Michigan, Visual Resources Collection.

Sinai Image of the Week: "Saints Peter and Paul"

Join us as we take a look each week into the extensive Sinai collection housed right here at the University of Michigan, Visual Resources Collection.

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The VRC maintains nearly 500,000 images of art. The collection’s roots are more than 90 years old and developed as a teaching collection to support faculty and students. As the University of Michigan’s History of Art evolved and became a center for scholarship, so did the VRC collection become an international resource.