“Picturae put a huge amount of detail into the tender, and answered every question asked in a way which gave us confidence that they could undertake this huge task with ease. They understood the material they were working with, communicated with us in a clear way, and engaged an excellent network of subcontractors who also delivered high-quality work”, states Tom Bilson, Head of Digital Media at The Courtauld Institute of Art. From the very first idea in 2015 to digitise a small part of the British section of over 500,000 images within the prestigious Witt Photographic Library, to the final project of digitising the remaining 1.5 million, Picturae has had the honour to manage the whole process from tender, transportation, digitisation and transcription.

The Witt collection

Tom explains: “The Witt is an extensive collection of over 2 million photographs, reproductions, and cuttings of paintings, drawings, and engravings of Western Art from circa 1200 to 2009. The collection features a comprehensive range of artists, including not only the well-known but also those less frequently spotlighted. It stands as one of the largest collections of its kind, comparable to that of the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the RKD in The Hague.”

Massive digitisation project

Stefanie Al, Project manager Picturae: “To give you an idea: that is about 1.4 kilometres of shelf space. The digitisation of the Courtauld Institute of Art’s Witt Photographic Collection at Picturae started in 2024 and was completed in December 2024, but the preparations started earlier. Picturae has digitised the 2 million images, the 90,000 folders and also the spines of the boxes in which the items have been stored. The latter will be used as thumbnails on the collection website, which allows users to browse through the online collection as through the physical collection on the shelves. A massive undertaking and a great project to work on.”

The need for digitisation

Tom continues: “Before digitisation, people visiting the building needed a degree of knowledge and familiarity to be able to browse through the Witt. The collection was only presented in groups: first by country, then by artist name, box name and folder name, but not by image, which limited access considerably. Picturae suggested Alembo, an organisation that helped them transcribe the names of the folders and boxes to enable a very useful degree of searching to take place as well as browsing online. In a future phase of work, we aim to add keywords to each image, link concepts, actions and artists to well-known art historical thesauri such as the Getty Institute’s AAT and ULAN, and consider more innovative forms of keywording and linking. However, we have now completed the important first step of digitisation, and the collection is online, for anyone to access, with the same amount of cataloguing information as was formerly presented to users visiting the collection in person.”

Relocation of collection

For digitisation at Picturae, the collection was relocated in October 2023 from Somerset House to the Netherlands by Imming Logistics Fine Art  B.V. Tom praised their work, saying: “It was a joy to work with Imming, they handled our collection with care and understanding, methodically packing all of the Witt’s 19,000 boxes and placing them carefully into four giant double-decker trucks, a process which took nearly two weeks.”

Co-operation with Picturae

Why Picturae? Tom states: “Picturae put a huge amount of detail into the tender, and answered every question asked in a way which gave us confidence that they could undertake this huge task with ease. They understood the material they were working with, communicated with us in a clear way, and engaged an excellent network of subcontractors who also delivered high-quality work. They are also lovely people to work with! We kept in touch with regular online meetings, and I visited the Picturae studio several times, always with a warm welcome. I can truly recommend Picturae as a digitisation partner for your collection.”

Please have a look at the Witt’s collection portal: https://photocollections.courtauld.ac.uk/menu-item1/witt-library and be amazed.