Peter J. Kaiser
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©2025 Peter J. Kaiser
Archival Work
Cataloging Image Assets from Pratt Institute’s Material Lab Special Collection
As a Graduate Assistant at Pratt Institute School of Design’s Material Lab, which houses over 25,000 unique material samples, I captured various design materials from a small special collection to upload to their digital collection management system (JSTOR Forum). I researched and catalogued these asset records for better discovery and access online.
The primary collection is organized within 9 categories: Textiles, Glass, Ceramics, Stone, Wood, Polymers, Metals, Composites, and Surface Finishes.
Digitizing, Researching, and Cataloging Slides from the Noguchi Museum and Image Assets from the NYPL Picture Collection
Image credit: © The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York / Artists Rights Society [ARS]
For my final project in my Visual Resources Management class, we were encouraged to reach out to an artist foundation or museum to ask if we could digitize assets in their collection. I was allowed to borrow duplicate photo-positive 35mm slides from the Noguchi Museum to digitize. I also borrowed images from Isamu Noguchi’s folder in the NYPL’s Picture Collection to supplement my collection.
Utilizing a Nikon slide scanner and a flatbed scanner, I created 30 high-resolution digital surrogate images curated around themes in his sculpture work, such as memorials, playscapes and gardens. I described this lengthy digitization process and my curation choices in a research paper and a pecha-kucha-style slide presentation utilizing only the images.