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Purdue University Galleries Launches Permanent Collection Website

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University Galleries recently launched a fully digitized and searchable website showcasing its permanent collection.

With the 2022 Henry Luce Grant, Purdue University hired Kirstin Gotway, curator of Purdue University Galleries' Permanent Collection, and developed a website to make the collection more accessible. For the first time, Purdue's permanent collection is publicly searchable, benefiting not only the university community but also global classrooms and art researchers. The website is updated regularly with ongoing scholarship, showcasing the diversity of the collection and raising its visibility, as only 2% of the artworks in the permanent collection can be displayed publicly at any given time due to a lack of exhibition space. 

“Our galleries’ permanent collection has been an underutilized resource on campus. We hope the launch of the collection’s website will help students and scholars, both on campus and around the world, be able to access our spectacular holdings,” said Gotway.

Erika Kvam, Director and Head Curator of Purdue University Galleries, continued, “Making art accessible and inclusive is a driving motto for Purdue Galleries and digitizing our collections has been a primary goal of mine since taking on the director’s role. I am elated to have all 7,255 objects and object records available online to anyone via our new, bespoke website.  I am also very grateful to the Luce Foundation for supporting this project that is so important to fulfilling our mission of sharing our permanent collections with art researchers worldwide.”

Purdue University Galleries’ permanent collection is comprised of over 6,000 objects from around the world and through time, with artwork ranging from ancient Peruvian textiles to 21st-century American printmaking.

Gotway added, “We are indebted to the Henry Luce Foundation for supporting this project. This new website represents a major step forward in our mission to make art accessible and inclusive and, hopefully, spark a lifelong engagement with artists among Boilermakers and non-Boilermakers past, present and future. We look forward to continuing to add to our collections records and producing first-rate scholarship.”

About the Galleries

All Purdue Galleries exhibitions and events are free and open to the public. For class and group visits, contact Erika Kvam at Purdue Galleries at 765-494-3061. For more information, visit http://www.purdue.edu/galleries or follow @PurdueGalleries on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

About Purdue University

Purdue University is a public research institution demonstrating excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities and with two colleges in the top four in the United States, Purdue discovers and disseminates knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 105,000 students study at Purdue across modalities and locations, including nearly 50,000 in person on the West Lafayette campus. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its first comprehensive urban campus in Indianapolis, the Mitch Daniels School of Business, Purdue Computes and the One Health initiative — at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.

Media Contact: Steve Hustedt, shustedt@purdue.edu

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