The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the largest\u2014and arguably most highly regarded\u2014art museums in the world. The Metropolitan Museum is actually a large collection of museums\u2014and choosing which part of the museum to visit has been likened to choosing a fancy dish from a five-star menu. Each one of the museums that make up the Metropolitan in its entirety is deserving of multiple visits. That\u2019s because their collection includes more than two million works of art spanning five thousand years of world culture. The art on display spans from prehistoric to present, and every part of the globe is represented under one roof. Founded in 1870, the Met is located in New York City\u2019s Central Park along Fifth Avenue. In 2014, more than five million people visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, many of which came to see their recently archived collection of very, very old Islamic Carpets.<\/p>\n
The Metropolitan Museum\u2019s collection of Islamic art is the most comprehensive in the world. It includes more than 12 thousand of the finest objects, dating from the 16th to the 20th century and reflecting the cultural and geographic sweep of historic Islamic civilization. Among their many collections of eclectic and beautiful Islamic pieces, the museum holds more than 450 Islamic carpets\u2014the largest collection in the United States. With such a large collection of fine carpets, the Curator for the Islamic Art section of the Metropolian Museum was conerned about compromising the integrity of the handmade pieces. Curators worked with their photography studio to come up with a solution that would allow them to display the rugs digitally so as to avoid any further degradation to pieces\u2014some as old as the 16th century. Although these carpets are handmade with the type of durability than can\u2014and has\u2014withstood hundreds of years of handling, the aging process has taken a toll on the craftsmanship that the museum so desperately wants to preserve.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why Barbara J. Bridgers, General Manager for Imaging and Photography at the Met, decided that they needed to create a digital archive of all of their Islamic rugs using high-resolution photography. This would enable careful inspection of each and every weave, stitch, and tiny detail of their more than 450 Islamic rugs without ever having to handle them in person. With the help of her Chief Photographer, Joseph Coscia, Jr., Barbara came up with a plan to bring their Islamic rug digital archive to fruition. It required a careful, exact operation in order to successfully record and photograph sections of each rug and assemble them using Photoshop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1552,"parent":0,"template":"","class_list":["post-1551","case_study","type-case_study","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n