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IN a quiet, windowless room deep inside Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum, a digitisation specialist places a 900-year-old Quran into the cradle of the Stokes Imaging System. She turns a page, lowers a wedge to hold the book in place and snaps a picture. She raises the wedge, turns the page, lowers the wedge and repeats. And repeats. And repeats. It’s painstaking work, photographing one of the most important collections of Islamic manuscripts in North America, and slow. But scholars say the two-year project has put the museum at the vanguard of a movement that is transforming the study of ancient texts. Working with a $300,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Walters is placing its entire collection of Qurans and other Islamic pieces online, where high-resolution images of the roughly 230 often richly illustrated pieces may be viewed free by anyone with an Internet connection. In a field where such documents typically are locked away in various museums and universities, to be seen only by credentialed experts who are able to secure appointments for viewing, allowing such access is unprecedented. "In many ways, what they’re doing is a model for many other collections to emulate and follow up on," says Massumeh Farhad, chief curator at the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution. "What the Walters is doing, which is slightly different from other institutions with collections of illustrated manuscripts, is they are putting all of their folios online." The project is raising the profile of the Walters’ collection. The Qurans, poetry, histories and other texts acquired by early 20th century rail magnate Henry Walters date from the ninth through 19th centuries and come from a geographical area stretching from North Africa to India. "It will really promote collaboration between the Walters and other museums and organisations," says Fahmida Suleman, curator of modern Middle East holdings at the British Museum. "Because of the level of accessibility that they’re giving us, it will be so easy for someone like me to trawl through their collection, figure out what they have, and then get in touch with them immediately and say, ‘Right, I think we can collaborate’." Amy Landau sees another benefit. The Oxford-trained expert in Islamic art, who joined the Walters in October as assistant curator of rare books and manuscripts, turns the pages of a leather-bound Quran lavishly illuminated in still-bright gold and lapis lazuli. Landau calls it a masterpiece of calligraphy, of illumination and of bookbinding—"one of the most stunning examples of Quranic production that we have in our field." The codex is believed to have been produced in northern India during the Timurid dynasty of the 15th and 16th centuries. Beyond that, little is known. In letting the world at large have a look, Landau is hoping to get some answers. Suleman, who was in the audience for a presentation in London by Landau and others from the Walters, says the project is helping to foster "a proper democracy of education and of academic scholarship." "Research is no longer something that only a rich scholar can do now," she says. "It’s open for discussion." Which is precisely the point, Landau says. "The project is all about access: global, unlimited access," she says. "The age of the closed museum, and the curator just having a few scholars having access to the information, is over. We’re inviting students to make use of all of our data, our catalog and our images, and to run with it." The National Endowment for the Humanities grant runs from September 2008 through August 2010. — By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington
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