About the Site
Project Credits
We would like to thank the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for their generous support of this project. Shan Kuang and Dianne Modestini worked to create the website, with the design developed in collaboration with C&G Partners and the back end developed by BMM Art & Computer.
This site contains the contributions of all students and staff - past of present - of the Kress Program. To accompany the treatment, the conservators provide a full report, photographic records, art historical research, and analytical results. These source materials have been adapted for the online Conserved Artworks entries, and all images and written content have been edited and organized by Dianne Modestini and Shan Kuang.
We wish to acknowledge the contributions of Peiyuan Sun, who digitized and organized the vast majority of archival conservation records, and Laura Turco, former Kress Fellow in Paintings Conservation, who worked as one of the content managers by scanning, compiling, and writing site content.
Using the Site
The Kress Program in Paintings Conservation website provides open access to examination reports, treatment records, research, scientific analysis, photo-documentation, and technical imaging of the paintings treated as part of the program. Thumbnails that are greyed-out are of conserved paintings with existing records, but not yet uploaded online. More files will be updated - as ongoing treatments are completed - to keep the site current.
Browse
The default Curated View allows general browsing of paintings studied and conserved by the Kress Program. We also encourage the use of the “Browse by Regions and Schools” page to explore varying stylistic influences and artists’ techniques across different regions.
Search and Filters
The search function can locate specific object records by artist, title, or Kress number. In addition to these categories, it is possible to filter by repository, date, and medium.
IIIF Viewer
Within each conserved artwork entry, the IIIF viewer allows close viewing of high resolution photographs and comparison of various technical and treatment images. To open the function, click on “Get a closer view of this artwork” over the selected image. Comparison images are available in some instances, listed as “Views” in the upper right corner. Clicking on the label(s) will pull up the related image(s). “Sync” mode will show side-by-side comparisons, whereas “Curtain” mode enables panning back and forth - activated by mouse movement - among the different views. It is possible to zoom in at any time to see details of the artwork.
Related Resources
Each conserved artwork entry contains links to related resources and archives, mainly the Kress Collection Digital Archive and the Kress Collection of Historical Images at the National Gallery of Art. The Digital Archive contains historic papers and other materials related to the Kress Collection, its formation, and its eventual distribution to regional and academic art museums throughout the United States. The Collection of Historical Images contains the sizable holdings of Kress photographs and negatives donated to the Gallery photographic archive for preservation and reproduction. These negatives were made by various photographers from about 1910 to 1969, and represent objects from the Kress gift. Among the photographers represented are Murray Keyes, Alfred Martin, Siegfried Colten, and Paul Kiehart, National Gallery of Art staff photographers; and Sonja Bullaty and Angelo Lomeo.
