Supported by a $100,000 grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., the Indiana Historical Society (IHS) will curate collections already in the archive and begin to acquire new materials to be included in its Indianapolis History Collecting Initiative. 

The initiative is the first step in IHS’s Indianapolis Bicentennial Project, and its goal is to identify resources about the people, places and events that have shaped the city over the past 200 years. Many of these documents, oral histories and photographs will be processed, digitized and made available to the public through IHS’s digital archive, exhibitions, programming and cross-collaborative projects. 

The finished collection will be available through IHS’s digital archive, which is free and available to the public at images.indianahistory.org. It will also be available for exhibition at the History Center, launching alongside the city’s Bicentennial celebrations in 2020 and remain open through August 2022.