About the Hite Institute of Art & Design Exhibition Catalogs
The Department of Fine Arts at the University of Louisville was founded in 1937. In 1946, the Department was endowed as the Hite Art Institute in recognition of the bequest of Allen R. and Marcia S. Hite.
The first exhibition catalog in the Hite exhibition series is from March 1947, a memorial exhibition of Marcia S. Hite’s works. Catalogs appeared regularly thereafter, usually 6 to 9 times a year until about 1965 when only 4 to 5 catalogs were produced. By 1970, even fewer catalogs were produced, although exhibits continued regularly.
Overall, the exhibition program was robust and ambitious, including painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking and photography as well as architecture and city planning. Works of many countries and many time periods were exhibited. Local art and collections were not ignored and the Department regularly exhibited its new acquisitions, student work, and work of its faculty.
Only the numbered catalogs have been included in this digital collection; the last one was published in December 1978. An active exhibition program has continued since then with catalogs produced for most of the shows. The numbering system, however, was abandoned.
The collection currently contains 117 catalogs from the Hite exhibition series (University of Louisville), dating from 1947-1978 and covering painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and architecture and city planning from many countries and time periods, including local, student and faculty work.
Acknowledgements
Colton Wilson scanned the exhibition catalogs in the spring of 2012 as 600 ppi, 8-bit grayscale TIFF files, using a flatbed scanner.
Heather Fox created metadata in accordance with the University of Louisville Digital Initiatives data dictionary (PDF). Gail Gilbert provided subject knowledge and collection assistance. Terri Holtze designed the HTML pages.
In 2022, the University Libraries moved to a new digital repository called Hyku. This process was completed by Rachel Howard in Fall of 2022. Terri Holtze designed the HTML and LibGuide pages.