Overview of the project
The Georgetown-IDP Project started with the objective to build upon previously-initiated discussions with some North American institutions and to further develop partnerships with institutions in the region holding pieces relevant to the framework of the IDP.
The Project also aimed to document any manuscripts and other materials pertaining to the overland Silk Roads that are currently housed in institutions in North America in order to make them digitally available on the IDP database and website.
Finally, another important goal of the project was to spread knowledge of Silk Road pieces in North American collections.
Timeline
The project was led by Miki Morita, a post-doctoral researcher with the remit of researching artefacts from the eastern Silk Road held in both public and private North American collections. Miki also acted as primary liaison between IDP and North American institutions.
The project unfolded in two distinct phases:
- The First Phase, was supported by the Luce Foundation and took place between 2016 and 2017, under the joint supervision of Michelle Wang at Georgetown University and Susan Whitfield at the British Library;
- The Second Phase, was funded by the Dunhuang Foundation from 2019 to 2021, under the supervision of Michelle Wang at Georgetown University and Luisa Elena Mengoni, Mélodie Doumy and Anastasia Pineschi at the British Library.
Results
As part of the project, 1,445 manuscripts (including fragments), artefacts, textile pieces, and archival records have been identified as falling within the scope of the IDP.
The project completed 14 agreements between several North American institutions and the British Library, allowing for the sharing of these materials through the ingest of metadata and nearly 1,300 new images to the IDP database.
Miki Morita composed six IDP blog posts introducing North American Silk Road pieces for both academic and non-academic readers. These are accompanied by selected bibliographies of scholarly publications to encourage further exploration.
Finally, the project also organised ‘The Georgetown-IDP Lecture Series: Following the Silk Roads to North America’, which was sponsored by the Henry Luce Foundation and was hosted online in July and August 2021. For more information on the presenters in this lecture series, please see our blog post detailing the event or the recordings posted on our YouTube channel.
Find out more
IDP Newsletter no. 49-50, Autumn 2017
The Georgetown-IDP Project: Prospects for Collaboration and Research (Youtube)
The Georgetown-IDP Lecture Series: Following the Silk Roads to North America (IDP Blog)
Miki Morita’s six IDP blog posts:
- North American Silk Road Collections: In Search of Provenance
- North American Silk Road Collections: From Germany to North America
- North American Silk Road Collections: A Kizil fragment in the Detroit Institute of Arts
- North American Silk Road Collections: A Mañjuśrī’s prayer sheet from Dunhuang in the Cincinnati Art Museum
- North American Silk Road Collections: the East Asian Library and the Gest Collection of Princeton University
- North American Silk Road Collections: the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
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