Dear Colleagues,
My name is Miki Morita, and, as the Georgetown-IDP Postdoctoral Research Fellow for North American Silk Road Collections, I am writing to draw your attention to a new initiative of the International Dunhuang Project (IDP) and Georgetown University, funded by the Luce Foundation, to catalogue manuscripts, artworks, and archaeological artifacts from northwestern China and eastern Central Asia that are presently housed in North American library and museum collections.
The International Dunhuang Project is a partnership of museums, libraries and other institutions which aims to make all manuscripts, paintings, artifacts and textiles from northwestern China and eastern Central Asia freely available to scholars on a multilingual website (
http://idp.bl.uk/). Its directorate is at the British Library and its partners include the Dunhuang Academy, the National Library of China, the Guimet Museum, Paris, the Museum of Asian Art, Berlin, among others. It also has included over twenty other collaborating institutions.
This year, the IDP’s new joint project with Georgetown University aims to cooperate with North American libraries, museums, and private collections to incorporate any manuscripts, art works, and artifacts from the region into its database. The IDP has already begun discussions with several North American institutions, yet we anticipate that there are many more materials whose existence in North America we have not noticed. I am therefore writing to request that you inform us of any information regarding pieces from northwestern China and eastern Central Asia in North American collections.
The target objects of this project can be defined as follows:
- Various types of media, such as manuscripts, woodblock prints, paintings, artifacts and textiles.
- From a geographical region covered by archaeological expeditions in the early 20th century (roughly corresponding to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, western Inner Mongolia, and Gansu Province of the People’s Republic of China). We are also interested in objects considered to originate from “Central Asia,” “Mongolia,” and “Tibet” as potential material for the database.
- From the period between 200 BC and AD 1400.
- Any archival records (ex. letters and photographs) related to archaeological expeditions in the early 20th century which covered a geographical region defined above.
Exemplary pieces can be found in the IDP’s database. Please be reminded that the scope of the IDP database also encompasses possibly forged pieces.
If your institution holds pieces that are possibly relevant to the IDP’s database, please contact Miki Morita (
mm3846@georgetown.edu). Please feel free to circulate this announcement to your colleagues at other institutions. Thank you very much for your time.
Sincerely yours,
Miki Morita
Georgetown-IDP Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Department of Art and Art History
Georgetown University
1221 36th Street NW, Walsh 102
Washington, DC 20057-1210