The Visual Resources Center provides responsive support to the Department of Art History and the Humanities Division through the expert provision and development of high-quality visual resources for teaching and research. Established in 1902, the VRC began as an extensive collection of glass lantern slides, most of which were gifted to the Rebuild Foundation and are now accessible for research in the Stony Island Arts Bank.
Today the VRC collection comprises nearly 400,000 digital images and is always growing to meet current curricular and research demands. In addition to a large teaching collection of reproductions, the VRC also hosts several collections of original content in collaboration with the Renaissance Society, the Smart Museum, the South Side Community Art Center, and others. VRC staff also provide access to the Center’s digitization lab equipment and consultations for image-based reference questions, photography and scanning advice, personal image management, fair use and copyright concerns, and visual literacy. The VRC is home to the Joel Snyder Materials Collection and collaborates with the art history faculty in overseeing CWAC Exhibitions.
The VRC is located in Cochrane-Woods Art Center, Suite 257.