ANN: The Met’s Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art Launches Digital Archive Initiative

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art has launched the Digital Archives Initiative (DAI), a new project developed through partnerships with institutions and artists’ estates worldwide, and in collaboration with the Museum’s Digital Department. Through the initiative, rare documents and materials related to modern art that are largely unknown or inaccessible are made available online. The first DAI collection, made possible through a partnership with the Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, is Vincenc Kramář’s unpublished notes on one of Pablo Picasso’s first solo exhibitions outside France—at Heinrich Thannhauser’s Moderne Galerie in Munich in 1913, now available at: www.metmuseum.org/LauderDAI

Kramář was a leading collector of the work of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso and was one of the earliest art historians to intensively study Cubism. He played a central role in promoting Cubism in Prague and shaped its reception among Czech artists and audiences. As part of his work, he visited Picasso’s retrospective at Heinrich Thannhauser’s Moderne Galerie in Munich in 1913 and made comprehensive records of his experience. The first DAI collection, Vincenc Kramář, Notes on Picasso’s exhibition at the Thannhauser Gallery, 1913, includes an interactive reproduction of Kramář’s handwritten notes as well as a Czech transcription and English translation. Additional resources include Kramář’s annotated copy of the exhibition catalogue and footnoted identifications of some of the artworks on the checklist.