Elizabeth Glassman, president and chief executive office, and Marshall Field V, chairman, Terra Foundation for American Art, with Richard J. Wattenmaker, director, Archives of American Art, have announced that the Terra Foundation has awarded a grant of $3.625 million to the archives in order to dramatically increase the accessibility of its resources.

A unit of the Smithsonian Institution, the Archives of American Art, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, is the world’s largest and most widely used resource on the history of art in America.

The grant will fund a comprehensive, five-year program to digitize a substantial cross-section of the archives’ most important holdings, including the papers of a highly diverse range of artists and arts-related figures from the Eighteenth Century to today.

At the end of the program, nearly 1.6 million digital files will be available to the public on a newly redesigned website. Access to the files will be free-of-charge. The grant signals the foundation’s growth as an active grant-making organization, and is the largest the foundation has made to date.

Ms Glassman stated, “Last year, the board voted to devote greater resources to the support of the foundation’s fundamental mission, which is to foster a broad appreciation and understanding of the art of the United States. We are delighted to invest substantial funding for this important and far-reaching project. The foundation grant to the archives has the potential to revolutionize research in American art, creating free and open access to important documents not just for the academy, but also for schools, libraries and homes, from St Louis to Shanghai.”