(6 June 2017) American scholar Everett Fahy expressed his wish to donate select pieces related to Italian painting from his photographic library to the Federico Zeri Foundation in a letter to the Rector of the University of Bologna, Francesco Ubertini. Fahy's desire to donate a portion of his collection developed over the years thanks to his friendship with Zeri and to the recognition for the Foundation's extraordinary scientific work and achievements with the innovative project that led to the creation of the most important online database of Italian painting. Everett Fahy, art historian and Italian Renaissance scholar, was the director of the New York Frick Collection (1973-1986), then head of the European Painting Department of the Metropolitan Museum (1986-2009). He met Federico Zeri in the late 1960s and they cultivated a fervent relationship of intellectual exchange, research, and discovery. He has been a member of the Scientific Board of the Federico Zeri Foundation since its establishment. Francesco Ubertini expressed: "We are honoured to welcome Everett Fahy's collection of photographs of Italian paintings from his photographic archive. This is an important legacy which further enriches the already precious heritage of the Federico Zeri Foundation and the University of Bologna. As a university, we are strongly engaging with Digital Humanities: a field where the digitisation of works of art is useful for cataloguing this material". (Red)

FAHY PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE

The Fahy photographic archive is of great value for the history of Italian art. It consists of more than 40,800 photographs and documents gathered in 398 containers. The donation, currently linked to the King Baudouin Foundation United States, has been at the Federico Zeri Foundation in Bologna since March 2017. "Hypotheses for cataloguing and proper scientific appreciation of the materials are being studied for them to be accessible to scholars and to integrate the online database with new works and images. The Zeri Foundation seeks to grasp the complexity and importance of this archive to develop an experimental digital conversion project that involves the application of new technologies to Digital Humanities (image recognition software, special equipment for photographic scans, etc.). The focus of the collection is Italian art from the 13th to the 19th century consisting of 380 boxes with a clear prevalence of documentation on the 15th and 16th centuries. The archival containers are classified by geographic area, from the Abruzzo to Verona, followed by a chronological classification by centuries, and single authors".