Morpurgo’s pavilion for the Ara Pacis in summer (?)1938 (note interior scaffolding)
The Rutgers Classics lantern slide collection consists of more than 1000 original exposures taken in the 1930s as part of archaeological research done in Italy, Greece, and Turkey, by faculty members of the New Jersey College for Women—now part of Rutgers and known as Douglass Residential College.
The collection—which we thought we completely digitized a decade ago—provides a glimpse into the NJC academic and teaching culture of the 1930s, as well as American women in archaeology and ancient history in the pre-World War II era. For the dramatic story of how these images came into being, and then reemerged after a half-century or more of neglect, see this article in the 20 February 2006 issue of Rutgers Focus.
Well, last month another 150+ lantern slides cropped up in the department’s study collection, enhancing one of the core strengths of the collection, namely images of Mussolini’s Rome in the late 1920s and 1930s.
rutgersclassics.com 