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The Robert L. Van Nice Collection
The Robert L. Van Nice Collection
A processing blog for the Robert L. Van Nice Records and Fieldwork Papers (1937-1985) at the Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives of Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C.
About
This is a blog created by the staff at the Image Collections
and Fieldwork Archives of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and
Collection in Washington, D.C., to chronicle the assessment and
processing of the Robert L. Van Nice Records and Fieldwork Collection
(1937-1985).
The Collection:
The 70+ boxes of reseach materials and drawings of Van Nice
collection document the large scale architectural survey of Hagia Sophia
conducted in Istanbul, Turkey from the late 1930′s to the mid 1980′s.
Dumbarton Oaks took over responsibility for publication of the detailed
architectural plates that Van Nice and his assistants produced from
their fieldwork, the first installment of which appeared in 1965. This
installment, published as collotypes in an elephant folio edition has
drawn universal praise for its beauty and high standards. In 1986 the
second installment was published as a series of plates designed to be
added to the same portfolio as the first installment. A more synthetic
narrative to accompany the plates was planned but never finished.
Materials produced during Van Nice’s survey include notebooks,
research papers, rubbings of graffiti, brick stamps, and mason’s marks,
blue prints, drawings, B&W photographs, slides, negatives,
correspondence, and administrative papers. The papers have never been
fully processed until now, and we hope to describe here the new things
that we find and the lessons we learn while tackling this large and rich
collection.
The Creator:
Robert Lawrence Van Nice (1910-1994) was born in Portland, Oregon,
and graduated from the University of Oregon before receiving a Masters
degree in Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He conducted a large scale study of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey,
from 1937-1985. William Emerson, a professor of Van Nice’s at MIT,
sponsored the architectural survey from 1937-1957, with Van Nice as his
assistant. Dumbarton Oaks then sponsored the project from 1957 until
1985. Van Nice was a Research Associate of Dumbarton Oaks starting in
1955.
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