The Getty Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the J. Paul Getty Trust, has awarded a grant of $280,000 to CIC in support of the CIC Survey of Historic Campus Architecture and Design. The new grant brings the Getty’s support of this project to a total of $431,000.
      “This grant makes possible the second phase of the program—the creation of the first national architecture and landscape database and website of independent college campuses,” said CIC President Richard Ekman. “America’s private colleges and universities include most of the oldest institutions of higher education in America and their evolving physical campuses tell us a lot about American education. Documenting the historic buildings on college campuses provides a new window into understanding the distinctive educational mission of a college, the values of its founders, and the ways in which the physical campus embodies—and supports—the educational program.”
      The first phase of the project, begun in 2002, surveyed independent colleges and universities across the country to identify and evaluate places of historical importance. More than 360 institutions have submitted data, which has been entered into a database. The website will contain 3,600 images and other documentation of approximately 1,900 buildings and sites of historical significance.
      CIC Senior Advisor Barbara S. Christen, an architectural historian, directs the project. “We are thrilled that this new Getty Foundation grant enables us to develop a web-based image archive tool and gallery. The website, which will be open to everyone, will make the data widely available and provide an interpretive framework for it,” said Christen. The website will contain historical and visual documentation of buildings and sites, and make possible cross-referencing between institutions regarding architectural styles, and the historical, educational, and religious contexts in which an institution was working. “This information will serve as a scholarly foundation upon which subsequent studies about the architectural and planning histories of higher education can be based,” Christen added.
      An advisory committee guiding the project includes Randall Mason, associate professor of architecture in the graduate program in historic preservation at the School of Design, University of Pennsylvania; Therese O’Malley, associate dean of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; Damie Stillman, professor of art history emeritus at the University of Delaware and editor-in-chief, Buildings of the United States series; John Strassburger, president of Ursinus College (PA); Thomas C. Celli, president of Celli-Flynn Brennan Turkall, Architects and Planners (PA); and Russell V. Keune, former director of international relations at the American Institute of Architects.