Getty launches online ancient ambers catalogue

Associated media

The J. Paul Getty Museum is launching the first of many planned
online collection catalogues with Ancient Carved Ambers in the J. Paul Getty Museum (Getty Publications, 2012, online publication). These catalogues aim to make the latest research, provenance, and technical data on a wide range of objects available, free of charge, to scholars around the world.

Exquisite high-definition images with full zooming capability allow the
objects to be viewed in great detail.  The catalogue entries will be updated as new information becomes available.
Ancient Carved Ambers in the J. Paul Getty Museum opens with  a general introduction to amber in the ancient world and then presents
56 Etruscan, Greek, and Italic carved ambers in the J. Paul Getty
Museum – the second largest collection of this material in the United States and one of the most important in the world. Each piece is given a full description, including typology, style, chronology, and iconography, and is beautifully illustrated in colour.

The catalogue concludes with technical notes about scientific investigations of these objects and the Baltic amber from which they are carved, work that resulted from a collaborative partnership between Museum conservators and conservation scientists from the
Getty Conservation Institute, both programs of the J. Paul Getty Trust.  
This catalogue has benefited from research and innovations from
the Online Scholarly Catalogue Initiative (OSCI), a joint effort by the
Getty Foundation and J. Paul Getty Museum.  Collaborating with eight other museums, OSCI aims to transform how museums disseminate scholarly information about their permanent collections by making it available through web-based digital formats.

 Author Faya Causey is the head of the academic programmes department at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.  She has lectured and published on a variety of subjects, but primarily on amber, antiquity, and contemporary artists and architects whose work has ancient aspects.

Publication information:

Ancient Carved Ambers in the J. Paul Getty Museum by Faya Causey is published by J. Paul Getty Museum
Online Publication, Free
ISBN 978-1-60606-051-3
Available at http://museumcatalogues.getty.edu/
<http://museumcatalogues.getty.edu/