CAA News Today

CAA’s RAAMP project is an online repository for resources pertaining to museum professionals at university art collections. One of RAAMP’s newest resources is Descriptive Terminology for Works of Art on Paper, developed in 2014 by the conservation team at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This document provides “guidelines,” as its subtitle suggests, “for the accurate and consistent description of the materials and techniques of drawings, prints, and collages.” The Terminology was supported by the federally funded agency the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), which recently partnered with the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to create a Digital Humanities Advancement grant-making program. The Association of Print Scholars, one of CAA’s Affiliated Societies, has promoted this resource as an especially refined and technical manual to characterize the processes of manufacturing an array of works. Its riches include the diversity of drawing media and their distinctions, as in “distinguishing black chalk from graphite and charcoal.” Other areas include the categories of print varieties and their processes, such as relief, intaglio, and planographic prints.

Visit the resource on RAAMP, add your insights on Humanities Commons, and submit your own resources here.