An estate on paper
A catalogue of the drawings associated with Wimpole Hall emphasises why such works need to be in printed form, writes Anthony Geraghty.
Anthony Geraghty, Sunday, 29th June 2008
This is indeed so, and Adshead’s ‘hybrid’ is an important exemplum. The future of architectural catalogues is increasingly doubted, and one leading institution, Sir John Soane’s Museum, has now largely abandoned hard-copy publication in favour of online resources (as its director, Tim Knox, explains elsewhere in this issue). Adshead’s book, however, forcefully demonstrates something all too often overlooked in this debate: that the scholarly catalogue is not the same thing as the virtual archive. Adshead’s ‘hybrid’ prises these two things apart and assigns each its proper medium: the scholarship occupies the book (freed from the burden of total illustration), while the archive is replicated on the CD-ROM (ideally this material would also be made available online). None of us can see into the future, but I doubt the internet will ever confer the status and permanence of the book. By all means make primary material available online. But for the time being at least, scholarship belongs on the page – especially scholarship of this calibre.
Anthony Geraghty is a lecturer in the history of art at the University of York. His catalogue of Christopher Wren’s drawings at All Souls College, Oxford, will be reviewed in a future issue.
The Gallery at Wimpole Hall by W.B.E. Ranken (1881-1941), 1937. Watercolour on paper, 79 x 57 cm. The National Trust
LATEST NEWS & COMMMENT
Seeing Sound
Moma's show on the impact of new media in the 1960s and 1970s recalls an idealistic age, before art aspired to control its audience.
Palladian games
The 500th anniversary of Palladio's birth is rightly being celebrated, but his influence on architects has in many ways been pernicious.
The Treasury's little rays of sunshine
The National Galleries in Edinburgh and London and the National Trust have formidable fund-raising tasks in hand, but the targets would be even higher were it not for Britain's tax laws – which could be about to get better.
Comments
Post a comment