Olana Puts More Than 200 Hi-def Frederic Church Works Online for Free, 1,000 More to Come
A Henry Luce Foundation grant is funding the digitization of Church's full body of work at Olana, launching in the middle of the artist's bicentennial year.
"Autumn" by Frederic Church. New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Olana State Historic Site. Gift of Olana Preservation, Inc. and Museum Purchase.
A graphite study Frederic Church made for "The Icebergs," one of his best-known paintings, is now viewable from anywhere with an internet connection. So is his watercolor design for a window on Olana's own east facade, and a small oil sketch of ridges in Jamaica's Blue Mountains, painted on a trip in 1865. All three are part of the first batch of Church's work that Olana State Historic Site has made searchable online, through a new digital catalog built with a $300,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation.
More than 200 works are live so far, out of the roughly 1,300 paintings and sketches by Church that Olana holds. The foundation approved the grant in November 2024 to fund what it calls Phase 1 of the project, and the timing lines up with Church's 200th birthday: 2026 is the center of Frederic Church 200, the yearlong bicentennial celebration The Olana Partnership has organized with museums around the country.
The full Olana collection runs well beyond Church's own output—more than 90,000 objects in total, including work by other 17th- through 19th-century artists, decorative art, historic garments and textiles, thousands of photographs, and archival material. A large share of it consists of objects that were simply still in the house in 1966, when New York State acquired the site; Olana's curatorial staff have continued adding to it since, seeking out material with a direct connection to Church or Olana itself.
Digitization and cataloging are ongoing. Olana says content will keep being added as staff work through the rest of the collection. The searchable catalog lives on a separate platform, run through the New York State museum system, rather than on Olana's own site—a practical answer to the scale of the project.
Olana State Historic Site, 5720 State Route 9G, Hudson, NY 12534
Browse the collection at nysparks.emuseum.com.
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After a decade of writing for RI (along with many other publications and organizations) Jamie took over as editor in 2025. He has a masters in journalism from NYU, a wonderful wife, two kids and a Carolina dog named Zelda.
