For instigating and nurturing this multifaceted digital project, we have many people to thank. Most important are the major funders, beginning with the Getty Foundation, which offered the raison d’être and ongoing financial support. We extend our sincere gratitude and admiration especially to Deborah Marrow, Director of the Getty Foundation; Joan Weinstein, Deputy Director; Rebecca Martin, Associate Director; and Anne Helmreich, Senior Program Officer. The David and Mary Winton Green Research Fund has also provided tremendous financial support for the research expenses, and for this we wish to thank Mary Winton Green, who has closely followed and applauded our progress. We also thank Max Marmor, Director of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, for appreciating the potential value of the marriage of art history and technology, and providing valuable financial support for a digital assets and research assistant and a Kress Fellow in Paintings Conservation. Scientific research on materials and the technical study of paintings was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. We would also like to thank the support of the late Eloise W. Martin and the Community Associates of the Art Institute for their support of the X-ray fluorescence analyzers that have enabled noninvasive palette determination for the paintings. The Community Associates also supported the purchase of a new infrared camera, greatly enhancing our ability to study the works.

In its early stages, the project was supported by the Art Institute’s former director, James Cuno, who has since been appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of the J. Paul Getty Trust, and by Susan F. Rossen, the former head of the museum’s Publications Department, whose success in publishing scholarly printed catalogues was a crucial factor in the Getty’s consideration of the Art Institute for its initiative. Critical at all stages of the project were the insight and support of Douglas Druick, in both his former roles as Searle Chair and Curator of the Department of Medieval to Modern European Painting and Sculpture and Prince Trust Curator and Chair of the Department of Prints and Drawings, and now as President and Eloise W. Martin Director of the Art Institute. We are also grateful to Martha Tedeschi, Deputy Director for Art and Research, for her support of the OSCI program, and to Sylvain Bellenger, Searle Chair and Curator, Department of Medieval to Modern European Painting and Sculpture. Our special thanks go to Jill Shaw, formerly Research Associate in the Department of Medieval to Modern European Painting and Sculpture and now Senior Curator of Collections at the Picker Art Gallery at Colgate University, who was the first to translate our original ideas for accessing multiple research disciplines into a visual model that allowed us to articulate our expectations with the technological teams in the early stages of the project. In addition to her primary role as catalogue researcher and author, she tirelessly served as the project’s first coordinator. Ably assisting her with every aspect of the curatorial research and content production was Genevieve Westerby, formerly Digital Assets and Research Assistant and now OSCI Research Assistant. Her unremitting diligence and passion for the project was critical to its success. Samantha Schroeder provided important assistance in the final stages.

Essential to the critical conservation component of the project has been the support and guidance of Frank Zuccari, Grainger Executive Director of Conservation and Senior Paintings Conservator. Kimberley Muir, Assistant Research Conservator, and Kelly Keegan, Andrew W. Mellon Fellow from 2010 to 2012 and presently Assistant Paintings Conservator, worked unflaggingly to complete examinations, analyses, and writing, in addition to creating the annotated overlays and photomicrographs for the digital format that so brilliantly reveal the artist’s working process. Thanks are also owed to Kirk Vuillemot, Assistant Conservator for Framing and Preparation, for his detailed descriptions of the picture frames. As much as possible, this project has incorporated the most up-to-date analyses of pigments and grounds, and for this we are grateful to Francesca Casadio, Andrew W. Mellon Senior Conservation Scientist, and Inge Fiedler, Associate Research Microscopist. A number of junior scientists also contributed on many of the paintings: Federica Pozzi, Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Conservation Science; Marc Vermeulen, formerly Assistant Conservation Scientist; and Anna Vila-Espuña, formerly Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Conservation.

The same intensity of examination, technical reporting, and imaging that has taken place for oil paintings has also been applied to the artists’ works on paper under the supervision of Suzanne Folds McCullagh, Anne Vogt Fuller and Marion Titus Searle Chair and Curator of Prints and Drawings. The talented team that has worked on the various OSCI volumes includes Antoinette Owen, Senior Paper Conservator; Harriet Stratis, Senior Research Paper Conservator; Kimberly Nichols, Associate Paper Conservator; and Dawn Jaros, formerly Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Paper Conservation. Research and writing have been the charge of Nancy Ireson, Rothman Family Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings, and James A. Ganz of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts in San Francisco. Critical research assistance has been provided by Emily Vokt Ziemba, Collection and Exhibition Manager in Prints and Drawings; and Melissa Gustin, Research Associate.

We also wish to extend a special thanks an eminent scholar who served as reader and provided important counsel and critique: Paul Hayes Tucker, the Paul Hayes Tucker Distinguished Professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

The project would not have been feasible without the expertise and support of the Art Institute’s technological team. Our deepest gratitude goes to D. Samuel Quigley, formerly Vice President for Collections Management, Imaging, and Information Technology/Chief Information Officer, and now Director of the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, Connecticut. We are grateful for his leadership as we developed the project’s concept, for connecting us with the IMA Lab, and for continuing to integrate this project with the larger technological initiatives of the museum. Special thanks go to Elizabeth Neely, formerly Director of Digital Experience and Access, for serving as our main conduit with the IMA Lab and expertly guiding the team through the murkiness of the new (digital) world order; Carissa Kowalski Dougherty, Manager of Collection Information and Technology, for her behind-the-scenes support; Amy Parkolap, Project Coordinator, formerly of Digital Experience and Access and now a member of the Publications Department; and the newest member of the team, Tina Shah, Senior Systems Analyst for Collections. Those overseeing the deeper infrastructure deserve our thanks for maintaining the security and reliability of servers on the back end: Raphael Jaffey, Director of Network Services; Stefano Cossu, Director of Application Services, Collections; and Mike Bingaman, Web Technology Coordinator.

For the magnificent high-resolution color images, the ultraviolet light captures, and the archival photography of the works in these volumes, there are several members of the Imaging Department to whom we owe thanks: Louis Meluso, Director of Imaging Technology; Chris Gallagher, Director of Imaging; Bob Hashimoto, Senior Photographer for 3-D; Robert Lifson, Senior Photographer for 2-D; Amy Zavaleta, Photographic Archive Coordinator; and P. D. Young, Production Coordinator. We are also grateful to Jonathan Mathias, Post-Production Technician, and to a former member of the Imaging team, Casey Gibbs.

To the IMA Lab at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, we extend our gratitude and congratulations for turning our ideas for the ideal research and publications tool into a reality that will serve as a template not only for these volumes but also for the future of online scholarly publishing at the Art Institute and elsewhere. We are especially grateful to two former members of the IMA Lab team: Robert Stein, then Deputy Director for Research, Technology, and Engagement; and Charles Moad, formerly Director of the IMA Lab. Since their departure from Indianapolis, we have relied upon others there who have been personally involved with us at the Art Institute, principally Kyle Jaebker, Director; Gray Bowman, Lead Software Architect; and Matt Gipson, Senior Digital Graphic Designer.

This new hybrid of scholarly publication and technological interactivity has demanded an innovative publishing template that has been developed under the leadership of Robert V. Sharp, Executive Director of Publications, and Sarah E. Guernsey, Director of Publications. Susan Weidemeyer Davidson, formerly of the Publications Department, was the first editor to master the new platform for editing and linking in the digital format, and she saw us through the beta release in 2011. Since that time, every member of the department’s talented editorial team has been involved in the preparation of the Monet catalogue: Maia M. Rigas, with the invaluable assistance of Christine Schwab and critical backup by Wilson McBee and Amy Peltz, and the dedicated efforts of Lara Ditkoff, Stacey Hendricks, Jael Montellano, and proofreader Jenni Fry in the late stages of the project. We are grateful to Hey J Min and Beata Hosea for their excellent design work in the online presentation of these catalogues. At all stages, the print-to-digital project has been assisted by Lauren Makholm, Photography Editor, and Joseph Mohan, Production Coordinator.

 A project of this magnitude would not have been possible without full access to and understanding of archival materials. Our deepest thanks go to Jack Perry Brown, Director of the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, and Bart H. Ryckbosch, Glasser and Rosenthal Archivist, both of whom followed this project from its beginnings and have provided invaluable suggestions and resources. We are also extremely grateful to Melanie Emerson and Autumn Mather for their handling of interlibrary loan requests.

Among the many challenges we faced at the instigation of this project were legal issues, for which we continue to rely on the expertise of Julie Getzels, Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary; and Troy Klyber, Intellectual Property Manager. We would like to thank as well Jennifer Oatess, Director of Foundation and Government Grants, for her continued help with reports and grant applications; as well as Jeanne Ladd, Vice President for Museum Finance; Helena Burke-Bevan, Director of Museum Finance for Compliance and Reporting; and Celeste Diaz, Budget Analyst, for guiding us through the complicated budgets that this ever-expanding project has entailed. We are also grateful to Michael Nicolai, Vice President for Human Resources, for his patience in helping us navigate the corporate waters of employing outside experts.

Also at the museum a number of individuals offered their valuable time, expertise, and encouragement and deserve our sincere thanks: David Thurm, Chief Operating Officer; Dorothy Schroeder, Vice President for Exhibitions and Museum Administration; Erin Hogan, formerly Director of Public Affairs and Communications and now Head of Interpretation; Chai Lee, formerly Associate Director of Public Affairs; and Jeff Wonderland, Director of Graphic Design. We are also grateful to Pat Loiko, formerly Executive Director of Museum Registration; Jennifer Draffen, Executive Director of Museum Registration; Senior Registrar Darrell Green and Registrar Greg Tschann; and volunteer Susanna Rudofsky, who generously offered her translating skills.

We are also grateful to many past and present members of the Department of Medieval to Modern European Painting and Sculpture who have been vital to our pursuit of our goals: Katharine Baetjer, Geri Banik, Robert Burnier, Florence Cazenave, Cole Chickering, Margaret Crosland, Stephanie D’Alessandro, Adrienne Jeske, Stacy Kammert, Marina Kliger, Elizabeth McGoey, Renée DeVoe Mertz, Jane Neet, Jennifer Paoletti, Allison Perelman, Aza Quinn-Brauner, Eve Straussman-Pflanzer, Stephanie Strother, Jonathan Tavares, Heather Whitehead, and Martha Wolff, as well as volunteers Erin Kirk and Morgane Magnin. We also wish to extend a special thanks to colleagues and volunteers within the museum who have provided support, encouragement, and assistance for this project, including Susan Augustine, Christopher Brooks, Gwénaëlle Gautier, Christina Giles, Faye Gleisser, Allison Langley, Leonard Leibowitz, Kristin Lister, Curtis Osmun, Charles Pietraszewski, Jann Trujillo, Seth Vanek, Sara Wohler, and Faye Wrubel, as well as the staff of the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries.

Although this volume constitutes a team effort, the team was located not only within the walls of the museum; it involved many others whom we would also like to thank. For keeping the project on target and assisting in our periodic presentations at the Getty, we thank Christina Lopez and the highly supportive Nik Honeysett, Head of Administration at the J. Paul Getty Museum, as well as two former members of the Getty team, Nancy Micklewright and Hilary Walter. We also wish to acknowledge Maureen Whalen, Associate General Counsel at the Getty Trust; Kristin Kelly, who served as a consultant on the OSCI project; and Holly Witchey, for her part in the preparation of the 2011 interim report. Special thanks are due to the team of scientists whose expertise and innovative research contributed to the project in a number of ways. The accurate registration of images for overlays and annotations employed technology developed by John K. Delaney, Senior Imaging Scientist at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the George Washington University, Washington, D.C.; and Murray H. Loew, Professor, and Damon M. Conover, Graduate Research Assistant, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the George Washington University, Washington, D.C. This challenging task, accomplished using a novel image-based algorithm that they had previously developed, was essential to making the overlay tool fully functional. C. Richard Johnson, Jr., Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.; Don H. Johnson, J. S. Abercrombie Professor Emeritus, Rice University, Houston; and Robert G. Erdmann, Assistant Professor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Program in Applied Mathematics, University of Arizona, Tucson, contributed to the project, providing automated thread counts and weave analyses that have enabled us to compare canvas weaves among works, greatly enhancing our understanding of the sources of artist’s materials. We are also grateful to Robert Erdmann for assembling the digital X-ray composites for most of the paintings. The capabilities for scientific analysis at the Art Institute have been enhanced by access to instrumentation and expertise at Northwestern University, thanks to our longstanding institutional collaboration in conservation science. In particular, we are grateful to Benjamin D. Myers, Electron Microsopist and SEM/FIB Manager, and Kate Venmar, former SEM/FIB Manager, of the Northwestern University Atomic and Nanoscale Characterization Experimental Center (NUANCE) Electron Probe Instrumentation Center (EPIC) facility, Evanston, Ill., for their help with scanning electron microscopy. NUANCE has received support from the MRSEC program (NSF DMR-1121262) at the Materials Research Center, and the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (EEC-0118025/003), both programs of the National Science Foundation; the State of Illinois; and Northwestern University. We thank Professor Richard P. Van Duyne of Northwestern University for opening his laboratory to Federica Pozzi for the red lake pigment analysis with surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.

In terms of the scope of our research, we would like to thank first the Durand-Ruel family—Flavie; her father, Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel; and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts—for their valuable assistance in correcting or confirming provenance of works, which, in many cases, were sold through the gallery of their eminent relative, Paul Durand-Ruel. Thanks also to the many individuals outside the Art Institute who were always willing to share with us their insights and information, whether centered on the history of art or the technical aspects of our project: Claire Barry, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Tex.; Todd Behrens, Sioux City (Iowa) Art Center; David Brenneman, High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Richard R. Brettell, University of Texas at Dallas; Elizabeth Tufts Brown, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Barbara Buckley, the Barnes Collection, Philadelphia; Anthea Callen, author and independent art historian; Guy Cogeval, Musée d’Orsay, Paris; Sylvie Crussard, Fondation Wildenstein; Guy-Patrice Dauberville, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris; Claire Denis, catalogue raisonné Maurice Denis; Michele Derrick, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Anne Distel, independent art historian; Judith Dolkart, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia; Isabelle Gaëtan, Musée d’Orsay, Paris; Paul Galvez, Gauguin catalogue raisonné; Christian Gonzales, Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, Connecticut; Charlotte Hale, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Ann Hoenigswald, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; John House, the Courtauld Institute of Art, London; Uri Kupferschmidt, University of Haifa; Geraldine Lefebvre, Musée d’Art Moderne André Malraux, Le Havre; Deborah Lenert, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia; Teresa Lignelli, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Yuri Long, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Andrew Martinez, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; Jessica McIntyre, Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Connie Meyer, Dwight Foster Public Library, Fort Atkinson, Wisc.; Joe Mikuliak, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Nicole R. Myers, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo.; Erika Namaka, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; Monique Nonne, independent art historian; Kori Oberle, Hoard Historical Museum, Fort Atkinson, Wisc.; Maureen O’Brien, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; Karen O’Connor, Hoard Historical Museum, Fort Atkinson, Wisc.; Donald W. Olson and Ava G. Pope, Texas State University–San Marcos; Richard Rand, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.; Paola Ricciardi, Fitzwilliam Museum (formerly National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.); Anne Roquebert, Musée d’Orsay, Paris; Ashok Roy, National Gallery, London; Anne H. Simmons, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Marcia Steele, the Cleveland Museum of Art; Clare Vasquez, Saint Louis Art Museum; and Guy Wildenstein and Joseph Baillio, Wildenstein and Company, New York. Thanks also to Iris Schaefer and Caroline von Saint-George, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne, for their guidance in shaping the technical report sections.

It has taken a veritable village of talented and supportive individuals to see this project through its first phase, and we happily anticipate that this community will expand exponentially as we venture into future volumes.

Gloria Groom
Chair and David and Mary Winton Green Curator
Painting and Sculpture of Europe
The Art Institute of Chicago