UT Libraries Arrowmont grant project showcases interactive art gallery

Fine art pieces from the Arrowmont School for Arts and Crafts can now be examined, inspected, spun and swiveled from the comfort of your computer. A digital art gallery that provides 360-degree views of art objects was recently unveiled as part of the University of Tennessee Libraries’ digital project From Pi Beta Phi to Arrowmont: Bringing Education and Economic Development to the Great Smoky Mountains, 1910-2004. Click here to visit the gallery Web page.

To date twenty art pieces, which include sculptures, vases, baskets, and teapots, are included in the online exhibit. Kate Stepp, the project’s digital coordinator, and Chip Hays, a student digitization assistant, created the 360-degree views through a painstaking process. They placed the art objects on a rotating pedestal and then photographed them with a high-resolution digital camera at every ten degrees. The photographs were compiled into a Quicktime file, which allows them to be examined from different angles.

“There are very few people who have used the technology in this way, and we think we are the first library to use it in a digitization grant,” Anne Bridges, UT librarian and co-principal investigator for the grant, said. The details of creating the 360-degree gallery are compiled a nearly 80-page manual that explains the process. Click here to go to the manual on the gallery Web page.

“This exhibit helps highlight the distinctive nature of the Arrowmont arts,” Bridges said. “The clarity and detail of the images is great–they almost come off the screen.”

When complete, the collection will comprise 30 art pieces. The 360-degree image gallery complements other components of the Arrowmont digital research collection, which include historical photographs, scrapbooks, letters and essays about the Pi Beta Phi Settlement School and the School of Arts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

From Pi Beta Phi to Arrowmont: Bringing Education and Economic Development to the Great Smoky Mountains, 1910-2004 was made possible by a National Leadership Grant for research and demonstration from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Learn more about IMLS.

From Pi Beta Phi to Arrowmont is just one of the many digital collections available at the University of Tennessee Libraries. These collections provide open access to materials of scholarly, cultural and historical significance to academics, scholars, researchers, educators, students and citizens of Tennessee. The University of Tennessee Libraries is a member of the Digital Library Federation. Click here to visit the digital collections at the University of Tennessee Libraries.

For additional information about the institutions participating in From Pi Beta Phi to Arrowmont: Bringing Education and Economic Development to the Great Smoky Mountains, 1910-2004 visit these home pages:

Pi Beta Phi Elementary School
Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts
Great Smoky Mountains Regional Project
University of Tennessee Libraries Arrowmont Project