History of stained glass artwork being preserved digitally

An ongoing project at Western University is working on preserving the intricate and detailed art work of stain glass windows across the country.

It started during the COVID-19 shutdowns when Cody Barteet, an associate professor of art history, who was focusing on colonial Latin America research at the time, needed another avenue for his work.

“Logically, I could not travel to Mexico. I had been involved for a period of time with the Church of Saint John, the Evangelist and I here in London, and I decided to see about developing a project that looked at the art and architecture of St John’s,” Barteet said.

Through an internal grant at Western the project began, and through conversations with colleagues at Western’s Library the scope grew.

“This is a huge image collection and we have a platform called Scholarship in Western, which is an open access repository. So we're able to host a lot of these images,” said Courtney Waugh, a research and scholarly communication librarian at Western Libraries.

Digitally preserved stained glass artwork. (Source: Western University) Adding to the catalogue provided by the Anglican Diocese of Huron was the next step to include images of work not just in churches. Katie Oates, an art history PhD and postdoctoral fellow began visiting locations with a camera.

“Visiting local churches, but also on campus. We have quite a bit of stained glass as well within city hall. So documenting those to be uploaded to the database and then also conducting lots of archival research in local collections,” she said.

This work is ongoing and is looking to add to the collection from across the country

“Because so many individuals, particularly of our generations and older, you know, they were brought up in these communities, in these churches, and so they experience them. And so now we're trying to kind of uncover who these individuals were and tell their stories on that,” said Barteet.

“It's very exciting,” Waugh added. “[Adding] also to the unique collections at Western libraries. I think it expands our digital collections and offers us like new opportunities for teaching and research and engaging with the local community. “

To view the catalogue of stained glass artwork you can visit, the Western University website.