Challenges

The Institute’s extensive collection includes a wide variety of documents, such as photographs, gallery stock books, correspondence, art folders, art historians’ research files, sales and exhibition catalogues.

Setting up the WPI digital platform, accessible at wpi.art, required Arkhênum’s assistance at various stages. The team inventoried collections, moved and physically preserved archives, digitised (both on-site at the WPI and at Arkhênum’s premises), and indexed sales catalogues.

Ambroise Vollard Records, Page from Stock Book A, 1899–1904.

A project to promote extraordinary archives

Gauguin, Bonnard, Cézanne – unparalleled archives

The Wildenstein Plattner Institute archives represent a unique source of art history knowledge. The collection of art dealer Ambroise Vollard is perhaps the most significant: the Photographic Reproductions series contains nearly 5,000 black and white photographs of drawings, paintings, and sculptures by Mary Cassatt, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, and Pablo Picasso, making it an impressive collection of original archival documents.

A powerful search tool

To ensure that the resulting online database could be searched efficiently, the Arkhênum team indexed more 10,000 sales catalogues, allowing for advanced searches by date and town. OCR processing allowed for searches by keyword, place of sale, artist, or collector’s name. Additionally, these catalogues feature important handwritten annotations, including the selling price or buyer’s name, for example. Currently, the database comprises of 20,000 catalogues, freely available for consultation online.