The Visual Resources Collection and the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University announce The Icons of Sinai collection.

From 1956 to 1965, Princeton University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Alexandria carried out a series of expeditions to the remote Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai—the oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery in the world, with a history that can be traced back over seventeen centuries. The documentation collected by these joint expeditions, under the direction of Princeton’s Professor Kurt Weitzmann and Professor George Forsyth of the University of Michigan, continues to have profound ramifications for Byzantine studies.

The Visual Resources Collection at Princeton University holds a key archive for the study of Byzantine icons, namely, the color photographs of the collection of icons owned by the Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai taken during these expeditions. This rich body of material stretches from Late Antiquity until the modern era and encompasses the history of the icon.  The collection is unique in that it documents, in color, the condition of these icons after the cleaning and restoration carried out in the 1950s and 1960s. Photography of the expedition was under the direction of Fred Anderegg, head of photographic services at the University of Michigan. The VRC has digitized and catalogued the collection of several thousand color images (5 × 7 inch color Ektachrome transparencies and 35mm slides) of icons in the Monastery of Saint Catherine made by the joint expeditions. This project was funded by a David A. Gardner '69 Magic Grant from the Princeton University Council on the Humanities.

The images obtained by the Michigan-Princeton-Alexandria Expedition to the Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai, Egypt are the copyrighted property of the Regents of the University of Michigan and the Trustees of Princeton University,

The images of the icons at the Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai are available for noncommercial educational and scholarly purposes (instruction, study, research, and scholarship). This includes classroom projection, display on computer monitors, and use in class assignments. These images may not be published (in electronic or print publications, including scholarly publication and websites, exhibitions, or broadcasts) without prior written permission.