Digitization Blog
The Williams College Museum of Art is home to the world’s largest repository of the work of the artist brothers Maurice Prendergast (1858–1924) and Charles Prendergast (1863–1948). Throughout these web pages, you can learn more about the collection itself and get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the museum staff’s efforts to digitize the Prendergast collection for the purpose of increasing access to these resources. These collections, as well as their family archives, came to the museum during the years 1983 to 1995 for research and educational purposes.
Header image: detail of oil on canvas by Maurice Brazil Prendergast; Snowscape ca. 1907-1910 (91.18.22).
Prendergast & Assyrian Reliefs
Maurice Brazil Prendergast wrote in his letters to his brother Charles from 1911 about his interactions with Lady Layard in Venice, widow of Sir Austen Henry Layard, the donor of the Assyrian reliefs here at the museum.
Focus on Frames
Charles Prendergast was a successful framemaker, and the museum has in its collection 67 of his hand-carved frames. As part of our digitization project, we are treating these frames like the decorative art objects that they are.
Re-discoveries
Through the process of unframing the Prendergast works so that the project staff can photograph the versos, many interesting stamps, inscriptions, sketches, and even paintings have reemerged.
