Fragile Works in the Digital Age

The Kunsthaus Zürich holds around 720 historic Dada documents and artworks: paintings, sculptures, photographs, works on paper, letters, notes, books, magazines, flyers, posters and manuscripts. To mark 100 years of the Dada movement, all the documents and works on paper are being digitized, and in some cases restored, to make them accessible to a global audience.

The project has been made possible thanks to support from the Ernst Göhner Foundation, Helvetia Insurance and the Federal Office of Culture FOC. The technical implementation of the digitization has been carried out by the Zentralbibliothek (Central Library) in Zurich.

Largest Dada Collection after New York, Paris and Berlin

The Kunsthaus Zürich holds one of the world’s most extensive Dada collections. The two largest groups are the approximately 180 works in the Collection of Prints and Drawings, and 540 Dadaist publications and documents in the library. The library also collects research literature on Dada. The original publications and documents of the historical Dada movement as well as the research literature are fully indexed in the library’s online catalogue. There are also plans to publish the works on paper from the Collection of Prints and Drawings online.

Publicize, promote research, conserve

The digitization project, in which the restoration department and the library are heavily involved, is being overseen by curator Cathérine Hug supported by Dada specialist Raimund Meyer. There are a number of reasons for the digitization. Strong interest in Dada around the world means that the artworks and documents are frequently lent out to exhibitions at museums in Switzerland and abroad. However, because paper was often of very poor quality in the early 20th century, and especially during the First World War, many of the originals are in fragile condition. For this reason, restrictions have to be placed on their use. In some critical cases, these irreplaceable objects cannot withstand any further wear. To promote future research internationally without the need to move the fragile originals and expose them to the bleaching effect of light, documents of more than one page are being digitized in their entirety – and not just the title page, as is common practice in many places. For the museum itself, the digitization project is an opportunity to compile up-to-date condition reports, collate new findings and initiate conservation measures where necessary.

Focus on the essence

The historical Dada movement lasted barely a decade; but the artists dubbed ‘Dadaists’ remained active after the period from 1916 to 1925 and lived on into the second half of the 20th century. To maintain a focus on the core of Dada, however, the Kunsthaus team working with Cathérine Hug and Raimund Meyer have limited their work to specific time periods. The digitization project covers all the original documents – works on paper, manuscripts, vintage photographs, autographs and typescripts – created between 1916 and 1925, together with books and exhibition catalogues from the early days of the movement through to around 1950. It does neither include reprints and secondary literature nor paintings, reliefs and sculptures. The holdings of drawings and prints from the precursors in the 1910s through to the final offshoots in the 1925s are planned to be digitized in full, too.

Digitization and restoration process

The Kunsthaus Zürich has scanned large parts of its Dada collection in close collaboration with the Digitization Center (DigiZ) of the Zentralbibliothek Zürich. Its head, Peter Moerkerk, has digitized thousands of pages of texts and images in first-rate quality in the Center’s rooms together with the paper restorer Jean Rosston and the head of the Kunsthaus Library Thomas Rosemann.

Decisive for this choice were the Digitization Center’s many years of experience in handling valuable documents. The Center can rely on state-of-the-art scanners and the most recent equipment—a key prerequisite for optimal scans considering the wide range of media and different documents of the Dada collection. The i2s, Rencay and Microbox high-end scanners used guarantee a gentle scanning process with a variable opening angle (30°–180°) in best colour quality.

All the texts are being scanned in their entirety, including covers, spines and backs. A single volume may contain anything from a few dozen to several hundred pages, so the aim is to ensure that they will not need to be digitized again in the near future. Once the hue and brightness have been corrected to the best possible approximation of the original, they are therefore being saved as very high resolution TIFF files at 400 dpi. Many texts are intended to be used via OCR for easy content searches and manual commenting. Documentation on the restoration process is available on the website of the conservation and restoration department, where Jean Rosston describes the challenges involved.

Presentation online and in exhibitions

Dada on Paper presents the first results of this complex process. Each illustration of the selected highlights focussing on Dada Zurich is accompanied by a text by Raimund Meyer. Numerous cross-references illuminate the links between the artists, their works and the places where Dada found an audience. Some of the restored originals will be displayed in two exhibitions that curator Cathérine Hug is preparing for the anniversary year: Dadaglobe Reconstructed (5 February to 1 May 2016) and Francis Picabia – A Retrospective (3 June to 25 September 2016). Following their premiere in Zurich, both will be shown at the Museum of Modern Art New York. In a next step it is worked on providing the digitized material of the complete Dada collection of the Kunsthaus Zürich offline as well as online.