The John C. and Susan L. Huntington Photographic Archive of Buddhist and Asian Art represents nearly fifty years of field documentation photography by John and Susan Huntington. In 1986, partnering with the History of Art department at The Ohio State University where they were both professors, the Huntingtons created an institutional archive of their photographs to make them available to the public. Over the decades, the photo collection continued to grow, with a primary focus on the Buddhist art and substantial coverage of Asian art more broadly. In 2016, the Archive moved to the University of Chicago, where we have continued to add new photographic materials to the collection and make improvements to our database and online presence.
the john c. and susan l. huntington photographic archive of buddhist and asian art
The Huntington Archive Receives Substantial Ho Family Foundation Support
The University of Chicago has received significant funding from the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation over three grant awards in support of the Huntington Photographic Archive. During the grant period, 165,608 photographs of works of Buddhist art have been prepared for uploading to the Archive's database. These photos represent 39,824 individual works of art and monuments at Buddhist sites and in 490 worldwide museums and collections. Special highlights include exhaustive documentation of the art of Nepal (39,806 photographs), Borobudur (8,658 photographs), Alchi in Ladakh (7,420 photographs), Pala-period art (7,097 photographs), the art of Gandhara (4,561 photographs) as well as numerous other Buddhist materials. The photographs were taken by John and Susan Huntington over the course of their field research in Asia.
The Huntington Archive would like to express our deepest gratitude to The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation 何鴻毅家族基金 for recognizing the importance of our work and providing us with their generous support. This work could not have been completed without the generosity of the Foundation.
The Huntington Archive is very grateful to the following
for assistance and support over the years:
- The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation
- The National Endowment for the Humanities
- ArtStor
- The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
- The Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education
- The Samuel H. Kress Foundation
- The Ohio Board of Regents, Challenge Grant program
- The Battelle Endowment for Technology and Human Affairs
- Tim and Sandra Collins
- H.E. and Carolyn Schmidt
- The Henry Luce Foundation
- BETHA (with gratitude to the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at The Ohio State University)
- The University of Chicago
The Huntington Archive accepts donations of photographic collections of Asian art. The Archive also collaborates with scholars to preserve their personal collections and make them publicly available for research and teaching. If you are aware of photographic collections that need a home now or in the future, please contact us.