History

Amatller Institute of Hispanic Art

The Amatller Institute of Hispanic Art’s library of 26,000 titles, photographic archive and photo library of 350,000 negatives are at the disposal of researchers and art historians.

Phone: +34 932 160 175

Fax: +34 934 670 194

Opening Times
Library and photo library (main floor of the Casa Amatller): open Monday to Friday - 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Photographic archive and digital laboratory (first floor of the Casa Amatller): open Monday to Thursday - 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. / 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., and Friday - 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

July from 9 p.m. to 3 p.m.

August closed.

The negative collection, started soon after 1900, contains glass plates as well as nitrate and acetate film. The negatives are archived in different groups according to size (35 mm / 4 x 4.5 cm stereoscopic/ 6 x 9 cm / 9 x 12 cm / 13 x 18 cm / 18 x 24 cm), with a sequential registry number within each group.
The information is accessible via three indexes: A historical artistic index (architecture and planning / sculpture / painting and drawing / illuminated manuscripts / prints / metalwork including gold and silverwork / glass / ceramics / textiles / archaeology), subdivided into chronological periods, and, can also be classified by art centres and/or artists. A topographical index ordered by provinces with towns and cities in alphabetical order and subdivided into general views, civil and religious buildings, museums, institutions, and private and public collections. An iconographic index with index cards detailing the reference number of each negative.

Currently the main efforts of the Amatller Institute of Hispanic Art are concentrated on the transference of the traditional system, photographs as well as index, to a digitised system. With the aim of preserving the large amount of information contained in each large-format negative, the photographs are digitalised as images as large as currently available technology easily allows (up to 50MB) and stored as uncompressed TIFF files on CD-ROMs. Smaller reference images (the largest being 720 pixels) are stored in JPEG format on a server’s hard disk for on-line consultation. The database manages registry files divided by buildings, furniture, photographs, digital images, people, institutions, bibliography, documentation etc, with corresponding cross-referencing. As of December 2007, 70.000 images have been digitalised while some 40.000 objects have been registered.