Grant will allow Yale Press to create e-portal for art and architectural history content

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded to Yale University Press an $840,000 grant to establish a new electronic portal on which curated and customizable art and architectural history content will be made available to consumers and institutions.

The grant will allow Yale University Press, one of the world’s leading publishers of art and architecture books, to expand both the utility of and the readership for its award-winning and critically acclaimed art and architecture backlist by making text and images available electronically at a reasonable cost or for free. Users also will be able to customize the content, making course packs or creating other digital publications from a variety of texts. The Art Institute of Chicago, one of Yale’s exclusive museum publishing partners, is joining in the initial launch by adding core backlist titles to the site. The project’s long-term goal is for other museum and art book publishers to bring content to the platform.

Patricia Fidler, publisher of art and architecture books for Yale Press, says, “Yale University Press believes creating an authoritative portal, through which individuals and institutions can easily access curated art and architecture publications, will prove meaningful to the field and to publishing.”

John Donatich, director of Yale University Press, says, “We at Yale University Press are greatly excited and grateful to the Mellon Foundation for this chance to explore the new possibilities of art publishing in the digital landscape. We are eager to discover just how the new model can become scalable, extensible, and sustainable.”