DIGITAL CROSSROADS: Digitizing Collections

The HADC project examines the current landscape of Haitian art resources and their accessibility, with the goal of building new, publicly available tools. With the support of a Humanities Collections and Reference Resources (HCRR) grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, it began as a collaboration between Grinnell College Libraries and the Waterloo Center for the Arts (WCA). Together, the HADC team established best practices for photographing artworks and developed a metadata schema tailored to Haitian art. Working with the WCA and additional partners, we are now creating an accessible, multi-institutional database for scholars, researchers, and anyone interested in Haitian artistic production.

The project launched in the summer of 2019, when student researchers surveyed major public collections of Haitian art in the United States and reviewed significant exhibitions dating back to the 1970s. They also worked with the WCA’s existing metadata, preparing it for a prototype database with guidance from Grinnell’s librarians. The summer concluded with the photographic documentation of more than 100 works from the WCA collection, completed in partnership with photographer Jerry Grier and guided by standards specific to Haitian art objects.

Throughout the academic year, the Advisory Board met regularly to assess the project’s progress. Encouraged by the quality of the newly produced images, the team began planning a conference to address key issues in Haitian art history and foster new collaborations.

In December, supported by Grinnell College’s Institute for Global Engagement, the research team traveled to Miami to meet with leaders in the field and visit major collections across South Florida. The group consulted with the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) at Florida International University about possible partnerships and spent time at the NSU Museum of Art–Fort Lauderdale. They also met with artist Edouard Duval-Carrié at the Haitian Cultural Arts Alliance.

From March 5–8, 2020, Grinnell College and the Waterloo Center for the Arts hosted a workshop bringing together leading scholars, museum professionals, and digital humanities specialists working on Haitian art and culture. The gathering addressed both the specific needs of the WCA and the broader field of Haitian art history. As the collaboration deepened, Dr. Petrouchka Moïse joined the team in August 2020 as a CLIR/Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Data Curation for Haitian Visual Art and later became an Assistant Professor and Cultural and Community-Based Digital Curator at Grinnell College Libraries.

In 2023, HADC received an NEH HCRR implementation grant, enabling the development of the HADC platform that includes artworks from public collections in both Haiti and the United States. Since joining Grinnell, Dr. Moïse has created the Going Beyond Provenance™️ methodology, an expanded metadata framework shaped by archival silences and the Kreyol language. As co-principal investigator alongside Dr. Rivera, she has played a central role in strategic planning and building partnerships across institutions.

The project continues to welcome new collaborators. Questions may be directed to Dr. Petrouchka Moïse at moisepet@grinnell.edu