Center for Virtual/Material Studies News

The Center for Virtual/Material Studies (CVMS), a collaborative, University-wide research center headquartered in the Department of Art History, facilitates advanced research in technical art history and digital humanities. The center is directed by associate professor of art history, Sarah Rich, in conjunction with John Russell, digital humanities librarian in the Penn State University Libraries and associate director of the center. Carolyn Lucarelli manages the center, and Catherine Adams is the digital support specialist. Hands-on engagement with historical materials and processes is encouraged, as are ways in which these materials can be better conveyed and explored through digital means.

In 2022, the center initiated a multi-year focus on the materiality of historic textiles in the arts, titled "Fabrication: Virtual and Material Approaches to Global Textiles,” a theme that has continued to develop throughout 2023. This project included the acquisition of tools for forensic and material study of textiles, such as an Olympus Cx microscope that enables the identification of fibers and offers sufficient magnification for the study of more challenging materials such as pigments. The CVMS collaborated with colleagues in Penn State’s Institute of Energy and the Environment (IEE) in the acquisition of a portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) machine to conduct material analysis of a diverse range of objects. Thanks to their relationship with the IEE, the CVMS staff also have access to a new benchtop Fourier-Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscope that can be used for the non-destructive analysis of art historical objects.

To introduce the theme of global textiles, the CVMS initiated a large project on flax—the plant from which linen is made and one of the most important fibers in ancient weaving. This included a small exhibition, “Flax: First Fiber of the Arts,” in the department’s display cases and online, which was curated by the center’s graduate student assistants. During the summer of 2022, the CVMS also partnered with Penn State’s Arboretum to grow a field of flax and held several public harvesting and processing events throughout the fall and into 2023. In partnership with the Pasto Agricultural Museum, the CVMS exhibited materials about the relevance of flax in the history of art at Penn State’s Ag Progress Days in August 2023. Hands-on exhibits related to flax were on display, including tutorials on optical microscopy for fiber identification and examples of linseed oil and linen canvases. Members of the public were invited to help process some of the flax that the CVMS grew at the Arboretum the previous summer. More information about the center’s flax initiative is available on their dedicated flax website.

The CVMS has been collaborating with the School of Theatre to create a publicly accessible digital inventory of their Fashion Archive, a hands-on collection of clothing and fashion accessories, dating from the 1850s to the 1980s. The archive is used as a teaching tool for textile conservation, manufacturing, fibers, dyes, and material studies. Together with Fashion Archive Director Charlene Gross, associate professor of costume design in the School of Theatre, CVMS manager Carolyn Lucarelli received two grants to fund undergraduate student work in the archive: the 2022 Visual Resources Association (VRA) Project Grant and the College of Arts and Architecture’s Rusinko Kakos Student Success Grant in 2023.

The CVMS hosted several lectures and workshops over the past two years, including some by invited scholars. In September 2022, Lisa Pon (professor of art history at the University of Southern California) presented a lecture, “Raphael Working Remotely: Handiwork and Manufacture of the Acts of the Apostles Tapestries," and participated in a demonstration of tapestry weaving techniques. In spring 2023 the CVMS welcomed Elena Phipps, independent textile scholar and curator, for a lecture and workshop, "Woven Brilliance: The Subtle Art of Andean Textile Traditions," which explored the construction of shimmering cloths in the Andes.

The science, art, and history of textile and paper dyes and their uses in books and manuscripts is the focus of the current exhibition "Sad Purple and Mauve: A History of Dye-Making," co-organized by the CVMS and the Penn State University Libraries’ Eberly Family Special Collections Library. Sylvia Houghteling, associate professor of history of art at Bryn Mawr College, presented a lecture titled “Perishable Dyes and the Season in Early Modern South Asia” in conjunction with the exhibition, which will be on view until January 15, 2024.

Center director Sarah Rich received a Kress History of Art Grant of $20,000 to facilitate research into the transatlantic trade in pigments from the mid-18th century to the mid-19th century. The grant, generously supplemented by funding from the Penn State University Libraries, will fund convenings of scholars at Penn State to study relevant materials and sources. A centerpiece of the convenings will be a growing dataset with which the CVMS has been documenting advertisements for pigment sales in newspapers from colonial North America and the early republic.

More information on the center’s projects and events can be found on their website.