GOAL: To promote a wider understanding and appreciation of the "Cornish Art Colony," through an image resource and information data base on laser disc.

The Cornish Art Colony was an extraordinary grouping of over seventy artists, playwrights, architects, landscape designers, writers, actors and patrons of the arts, that lived and worked in Cornish, N.H. during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Members included renown figures like Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Maxfield Parrish, Thomas Dewing, Charles Platt and Kenyon Cox. The colony also helped shape and furthered the careers of prominent women artists like Lucia Fuller, Annetta Johnson St. Gaudens, Carlotta Dolley Saint-Gaudens, Edith Prellwitz and Frances Grimes. In addition to visual artists, there were playwrights like Percy MacKaye, performers Isadora Duncan and Ethel Barrymore, and the novelist, Winston Churchill. For three years Cornish even served as the site of Woodrow Wilson's "Summer White House."

This project involves research, acquisition, identification and description of approximately 3,000 color slides relating to the "Cornish Art Colony." Approximately fifty slides with interpretive text will be included for each visual artist, with images of his/her art, and historic photographs of their homes, studios, family and associated social events. Images of other colony members will be included to form a complete picture of this important artistic community.

The resulting resource will be put into a laser disc format. The use of computers and laser discs as important educational tools, is growing rapidly among schools, museums and libraries. Laser discs hold huge amounts of information and images in a form that is readily accessible, of high quality, and almost indestructible. Laser discs have an interactive capability that allows users to access information in ways best suited to individual needs. An increasing number of museums and historic sites, such as the National Gallery, are successfully using this effective and efficient format in their interpretive and educational outreach programs.

In 1994, Saint-Gaudens NHS completed a 1,200 image, laser disc compendium on the works of Augustus Saint-Gaudens. This companion project, featuring the other artists of the colony, will add a valuable resource on the history and significance of this important chapter in American art.

A laser disc player and computer controller, will be available at Saint-Gaudens NHS, and also through the educational outreach program for off-site presentations.

Saint-Gaudens NHS is looking for historical photographs and images of works by artists of the Cornish Colony, as well photographs relating to the other members of the colony who were not visual artists. We are also collecting information and images relating to Saint-Gaudens assistants, many of whom are also well known sculptors. For more information on this project please contact Gregory C. Schwarz, Chief of Interpretation, Saint-Gaudens NHS, (603) 675-2175, or via e-mail.