The digital archive of the Städelschule (1920-1950)

• Applicants: Caroline Fuchs; Daniela Poth
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 523868108

In 1817, the Städelsche Kunstinstitut was founded in Frankfurt/Main, and in 1921, the school was separated from the museum, resulting in the Städelschule and the Städelmuseum as independent institutions. The archival holdings of the school have been preserved almost without exception and without significant loss since the founding years in the 19th century, and thus offer an interesting scholarly view of the development of artists and thus of art and culture in Germany over more than two centuries. What is unusual about this is the Städelschule's strong international appeal and influence - established artists from all over Europe and overseas came to Frankfurt as teachers, and their students in turn carried these concepts and the resulting further developments out into the world. A special feature of the archive holdings is that they are distributed among various institutions. While the holdings of the Städelschule's teaching activities between 1817 and 1923 are in the possession of the Städel Museum, the holdings between 1923 and 1950 are stored at the Städelschule, the Frankfurt Institute for Urban History, the Hessian State Archives, and the archives of the Goethe University Frankfurt. From a scholarly perspective, this collection is of great and international significance, and in a unique way it allows for a historical, art-historical, but also - or perhaps above all - an artistic examination of the material in equal measure. However, this access by science and art is only possible if the distributed provenance is made accessible to research in a virtual way by means of digitization and publicly accessible infrastructures. The project is being implemented with the cooperation partner and co-applicant University Library Johann C. Senckenberg. The cooperating institutions, the Städel Museum and the Institut für Stadtgeschichte, will make their holdings on the Städelschule (including the associated metadata) available for digitization under the CC-BY-SA/CC-BY licenses. The digitized material with its metadata will be made available on the platforms Arcinsys, VL of the UB JCS, DDB and Archivportal D. In addition, an expert advisory board will be consulted during the project.

• DFG Programme: Cataloguing and Digitisation (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)