History
The Performing Arts Index was founded in 1989 by Constance Old. The project was known as the Metropolitan Museum of Art Dance Index (MMADI) and was undertaken under the auspices of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Musical Instruments Department. In the early 1990s the MMADI was expanded to include images relating to music and theater. The MMADI became the Performing Arts Index (PAI) to reflect this expanded focus. At this time an association was formed with the Research Center for Music Iconography (RCMI).
The Research Center for Music Iconography, directed by Zdravko Blazekovic, is the American center of the Repetoire Internationale d’Iconographie Musicale (RIdIM) and is located in the Graduate School of the City University of New York.
The Performing Arts Index has provided source material for museum and university conferences, seminars, lectures and tours. Articles and information have appeared in Dance Magazine, RIdIM/RCMI Newsletter, Mary Bopp’s Research in Dance: A Guide to Resources (New York: G. K. Hall, 1994), newspapers and other publications. For example, images from the project were used in the MMA publication, Dance: A Very Social History (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art/Rizzoli, 1986); in Drumming at the Edge of Magic, a Journey into the Spirit of Percussion (Mickey Hart, with Jay Stevens and Frederic Lieberman, San Francisco: Harper, 1990); in the Channel thirteen/WNET eight-part series Dancing (1993); as models for the cover designs of compact discs by Julie Prospero of Lyrichord Discs (1995); and the Recorder Iconography web project compiled by Nicholas Lander (2002). In addition, images have been selected for the forthcoming International Dance Encyclopedia to be published by Oxford University Press.
The PAI has been supported by the MMA’s Musical Instruments Department.