A New Resource Based on Old Principles: The Warburg Institute Iconographic Database

Abstract

The aim of this short essay is to present the status quo of the Photographic Collection of the Warburg Institute (University of London, School of Advanced Study) and its digitization program, as given shape in the online Warburg Institute Iconographic Database. It is not intended as a historiographical essay in the strict sense of the word, but rather as a contribution to the future historiography of the Warburg Institute and specifically the Photographic Collection. It is not written on the basis of historical research (hence there are no references to primary sources or secondary literature), but purely as a summary of the current state of affairs in the department. Presenting such a summary at this moment in time is particularly useful as the Photographic Collection is in a state of transition, moving from the analog into the digital era. The focus of the essay is therefore on the design of the current vehicle for the digitization of the collection, the Warburg Institute Iconographic Database, and on how the existing collection of paper photographs, with its unique iconographical classification system, is being translated into a digital format.

Towards a Semantic Documentation of Heritage Objects through Visual and Iconographical Representations

“…Art history and iconography are essential for the creationofaframeworkofdescription, butthetools in use in the art historical tradition, such as ICONCLASS (van de Waal, 1973), the Warburg Classification System (Duits, 2014), and the Thesaurus Iconographique of Garnier (Garnier, 1984), use the same object-centric and flat structure aforementioned. Moreover, those tools are normally biased towards a specific art historian tradition.…”