The Digital Scrolling Paintings Project was initiated in the Department of Art History to create a resource for teaching about Chinese paintings at the University of Chicago and resulted in the East Asian Scroll Paintings website.
Handscroll paintings mounted as horizontal scrolls and viewed by unrolling section by section comprise one of the major formats for traditional East Asian painting, first produced more than fifteen hundred years ago. Surviving examples preserved in museum collections are fragile and seldom exhibited in order to protect them from damage from handling and exposure to light. The public website and innovative software allow interactive engagement with East Asian scroll in ways that allow close examination and simulate the viewing of the actual works of art (see https://scrolls.uchicago.edu).