Staff
Gretchen Witthuhn
Director, Visual Resources Collection
Cochrane-Woods Art Center Room 261A
773.702.5048
g.witthuhn@uchicago.edu
She says she's a librarian, but that's just cocktail party talk. It's a
little known fact she's much more than that: computer wiz, cataloger with a
vengeance, disinfector, and grape peeler. While not fast enough to put the
fear of God in Joan Benoit Samuelson, or any kind of fear for that matter,
she has been known to post some not too shabby marathon times. But, does
Joan have a B.A. in Art History and an MLIS? I think not. Other achievements
include 2nd place in her 5th grade spelling bee, Pepper Festival Princess,
co-chair for the CARLI Digital Image Database task force, and presenter at
several VRA conferences. Gretchen also knits scarves, but that's so
librarianish of her...
Megan Macken
Assistant Director, Visual Resources Collection
Cochrane-Woods Art Center Room 261
773.702.0261
mmacken@uchicago.edu
Megan has a background in language, literature, and art history and is well-qualified to appear in a Jane Austen novel. While she studied a dead language during her college career, she awoke to the work of living artists during graduate study. Although genetically predisposed to several careers with splendid stereotypes and marvelous eyewear, she chose Librarian over Latin teacher, Art Historian over Artist, and Commuter-Citydweller over Farmer-Homesteader. A prairie girl at heart, Megan explores the wide open spaces of physical and virtual communities in her spare time. Visit the place she staked out on the Web.
Mission
The mission of the Visual Resources Collection is to expertly support the Department of Art History and the University of Chicago community through the provision and development of high quality, visual resources for the study and teaching of Art History. Established in 1902 along with the department of Art History, the collection began with an extensive lantern slide collection and has grown into holdings of more than 350,000 35mm slides and more than 25,000 digital images. Coverage ranges from prehistoric to contemporary time with media coverage in, to name a few, painting, sculpture, decorative arts, architecture, film stills, and didactic materials. The purpose of the collection is to support teaching and research needs of the departmental faculty and students. Other departmental faculty and students are encouraged to make use of the collection after a brief orientation with either the Director or Assistant Director.