About Art Atlas

The Art Atlas platform provides an interface for the mapping and photography-based projects of Columbia University's Department of Art History and Archaeology. The projects feature still images and 360° panoramas taken by Columbia faculty, staff, fellows and students at various cultural sites around the world. These same teams later add textual data and historical materials to provide detailed information about each site alongside the visual resources.

Projects & Fieldwork Campaigns

The materials hosted in Art Atlas fall into two categories, Projects and Fieldwork Campaigns. The Projects are faculty-led and have a scholarly focus. Because of the collaborative nature of these projects they are not open to the public before completion so that participants can add information and content before presenting a final product.

Alternatively, Fieldwork Campaigns are collections of Fieldwork taken by Faculty, Students, Media Center Staff, and others which are displayed in a site-focused format. These Campaigns present the visual materials of fieldwork but do not contain scholarly textual data at present.

How to use Art Atlas

Art Atlas sites can be viewed by either clicking a site's marker on the map or by selecting a site from the listing under the map of each collection.

All text that has been added to Art Atlas sites is available in tabbed sections. If a section is not showing on a particular page that simply means that no text has been entered for that field.

The Image and Panorama Galleries allows users to click on a thumbnail for a full resolution zooming image. The cataloging for each image can be viewed by clicking the link at the bottom right of the image. To view a complete image record, click the Link to Full Record in the cataloging window or to view the image by itself, click Link to Presenter Mode. To navigate between images users can either click the arrows in the bottom right of the window or use the keyboard's arrow keys to navigate back and forth.

When viewing a cataloging record, users can return to an Art Atlas site page by clicking the name of the site or collection in the metadata section of the record.

Select Art Atlas sites include VR Tours — linked panoramas which can be moved between by clicking on arrows within the panorama. These tours also work with VR Headsets to allow users to look around the panoramas and look at hotspots to move to their next destination. Additionally, all individual panoramas can be viewed in VR headsets on their own.