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When Professor Emeritus Baruch Kirschenbaum, a longtime member of the Art History faculty, retired in 2001, he began researching an extensive collection of images from RISD’s Slide Library that are no longer in circulation. The images in question are part of the Library’s collection of lantern slides — 3 1/4 x 4-inch glass slides dating from the late 19th century through the 1950s. Although lantern slides were still used in art history classes when he began teaching at RISD in the early 1960s, the advent of 35mm color slides and carousel projectors soon rendered them inactive.

Kirschenbaum sees the slides as source material for the study of the history of taste and methodology in art history instruction and has begun inventorying the uncatalogued portion of the collection, which includes more than 1,000 slides, to determine the scope and significance of RISD’s collection. He also intends to research and write about the entire collection, which numbers between 15,000 and 20,000 lantern slides. When the new Fleet Library at RISD opens in 2006, the collection will be available for further research in the Stephen and Cathy Graham Center for Visual Resources.