Yale University holds a wide array of images from the Middle East across its encyclopedic collections. The goal of the Visual Resources of the Middle East (VRME) project is to collect works of art, documentary photographs, and diverse objects from different collections onto one platform, with the aim of introducing the materials to a diverse audience at and beyond Yale.
With particular strengths in textiles and ceramics, the YUAG also holds many manuscript paintings from early modern Iran and India. The photography department holds a moderate collection of orientalist photography, as well as works by contemporary photographers like Shirin Neshat and Fazal Sheikh. The Modern and Contemporary department holds a selection of works from Middle Eastern diaspora artists, and these holdings are slated to expand as the YUAG aims to widen its global coverage.
One of the most renowned rare book and manuscript collections in the Western Hampshire, Beinecke holds extensive and diverse resources in the Middle East, from Shahnama manuscripts from Safavid Iran to photographs of F.T. Marinetti on his visit to Egypt in 1937. Additional material includes calligraphy primers, ketubahs, Qurans and medieval cartographic works. Beinecke acquired the Carney photography collection of Orientalist 19th century photography.
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The Cushing/Whitney Medical Library holds rare medical manuscripts from around the world, including many from the Middle East. There are 26 fully digitized Persian and Arabic volumes available through AMEEL. These illustrated volumes will be a unique addition to the collection as they are, like the Peabody objects, not primarily categorized as art works, but rather entered Yale’s collection through the medical school.
The Middle East collection at Sterling offers visual resources in Middle Eastern books and periodicals published throughout the Middle East in Persian, Arabic, and Turkish. Ranging from Qur’an manuscripts to Arabic movie posters, this is probably the largest and least well-documented of all the collections because the majority of the visual material is embedded within textual sources. Many of these sources are already digitized through the AMEEL system.
Included among the Peabody’s vast natural history collection are a small subset of objects from the Islamic world, mostly discovered through archeological digs. Including some interesting examples of medieval and early modern Persianate ceramics, these objects will be particularly interesting within the VR for their diverse provenance and categorization as artifacts instead of art objects.
Housed in a farmhouse in Farmington, CT, the Lewis Walpole Library is a comprehensive collection of books and manuscripts related to 18th century Britain. Included among these, are a group of representations of the Middle East as imagined in British prints. Highlights include famed caricaturist James GIllray’s “Intercepted Drawings” which satirize Napoleon’s “savants” and their documenting of Egypt during the 1798 military campaign.
