Art Library Crawl blog

Great ongoing project called 'Art Library Crawl' created by Australian library technician/ art theory student Lea Simpson about interesting art libraries and archives around the world. Spanning three continents so far, Lea is also looking for contributors to add further articles and photos of more of these inspirational special collections.

More information and her contact details can be found on the Art Library Crawl blog:

Art Library Crawl

ARLIS Conference 2012 - Tate Prints and Drawings Room visit

I was fortunate to be able to attend Day 2 of this year's ARLIS Annual Conference "From Beijing to Bloomsbury: Art Librarianship in an Olympic Year", on Thursday 28th June. The morning began with sessions on digital futures, and in the afternoon I attended breakout sessions about art classification and its future, and about diversity in libraries. The day was very pleasantly concluded with a reception at the mysterious Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University of London, and dinner at the marvellous Grand St. Pancras restaurant.
Before lunchtime, I went on the visit to the Tate Prints and Drawings Room, and here's my report from excursion:


Being a fan of printmaking I was very excited to visit the Tate Prints and Drawings Room at Tate Britain, and a small group of us got to enjoy a knowledgeable and enthusiastic tour by staff member, Julia Beaumont-Joyce. The items held are essentially divided into two collections, that of the Turner Bequest of watercolours and sketchbooks, works by his contemporaries found in the Oppé collection, and other historic British works on paper; and the modern prints and drawings collection, consisting of around 16000 British and international works. These collections are spread over two rooms, and we got to see a sample of the diverse work, from the complete set of the ‘Tailor of Gloucester’ illustrations by Beatrix Potter and a range of Turner watercolours to large contemporary prints by Paula Rego and Robert Rauschenberg.
With no plan for Turner’s watercolour drawings and sketches after his death, this collection of 30,000 works went with his bequest of his main art works to the National Gallery. This was moved to their new building at Millbank, and the collection was relocated at various points through the 20th century before resettling back at Tate Britain in 1987 with the creation of the Clore wing. Turner predominantly worked on wide format card bound sketchbooks (which are not dated so is often hard to keep a timeline), and smaller pocket sketchbooks when travelling. He didn’t keep written diaries or journals so these sketchbooks are invaluable in following him in his journeys and understanding the artist further. We saw a series of Venice sketches, and examples of how he would revisit a location at various times of the day to depict the changes in light and atmosphere, and how he was famously keen on depicting modern life in his works, such as including a steamboat in a river scene.
This Clore Grade 2 listed room and its fittings does allow for close study of the works, however was not as suitable for the larger pieces in the contemporary collection or for some modern library facilities, and so a separate room is used for the prints and drawings. The Modern prints and drawings room was converted from a gallery space in 1999, and is an excellent place for studying these often large works, with wide tables, wall space for displays and the inspiration of being surrounded by rack upon rack of prints. At the time of our visit, a small display entitled ‘The Body of Drawing’ was on show.
The Modern prints collection was first developed in 1970s and was originally acquired through the ‘Institute of Contemporary Prints’ agreement in which various printmakers donated work to Pat Gilmour, who ran the Tate Print Department from 1974-77. Her passion, connections and acquisition policies helped to further develop this remarkable collection. Julia showed us some fascinating prints including Paula Rego’s Pendle Witches series, a suite of twelve etchings from 1996 based around the Lancashire witch trial of 1612, which was also produced as a book in collaboration with the poet Blake Morrison. Another collaboration entitled ‘El Negro’ by Robert Motherwell and poet Rafael Alberti consists of a beautiful volume of lithographs and poetry published in 1983 by Tyler Graphics. Tate also holds a substantial collection of around 500-600 works by these famous New York based master printers.
Julia told us the majority of visitors to the Prints and Drawings rooms tend to be split into two groups, those coming to admire Turner’s work and other watercolours, and printmaking student groups and artists coming to study the contemporary prints. A previously stricter admissions policy has been relaxed to allow for visitors of all ages, and even groups of enthusiastic four-year old schoolchildren have got to enjoy the works.

Careers in Art History day

Organised by the Association of Art Historians (AAH) Student Members Committee, the Careers in Art History day 'welcomes a wide range of speakers, who will offer informative presentations on career paths into the art world, including museums, auction houses, art education, academia, libraries and archives.'

The event will be held on 27 October 2012 at The Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

Booking can be completed online through the events page of the AAH website.
http://www.aah.org.uk/events

Librarian Internship at the Whitechapel Gallery

Librarian Internship at the Whitechapel Gallery:

An experienced Librarian is sought for a short internship for the Whitechapel Gallery. Their task would be to undertake further organisation of the Whitechapel Gallery’s curatorial collection of books located at the Exhibitions offices. Their main task is to devise a labeling/marking system to make the books more accessible to staff.

The person selected would work closely with the Archivist.

The hours are flexible but it is envisioned that total time would be 15 days which could be spread out over a number of weeks.

London travel & lunch costs would be paid.



It is anticipated the post would start in mid September 2012.

Contact Gary Haines, Archivist, Whitechapel Gallery
garyhaines@whitechapelgallery.org

http://www.whitechapelgallery.org

Survey about library assistants for MA dissertation

MA Library and Information Studies student Lindsay Tudor has created a survey for her dissertation about library assistants. If anyone can spare 10-15 mins to answer it and help in her research, further details and a web link follow here:


"...I am currently writing my LIS MA dissertation about library assistants:
trying to build a picture about what sort of work they do, how their
jobs are affected by budget cuts and technological advances, and what
career development opportunities are available.
I would be very grateful if any library assistants, or those working in
a job that doesn't require a library qualification, would fill out a
short survey in an attempt to find answers to some of these questions.

The survey can be found here http://tinyurl.com/6q5gjyo and should take
10-15 minutes to complete.

All responses will be treated anonymously and no individuals or places
of work will be named in my dissertation or survey analysis.

Many thanks
Lindsay Tudor..."

Blogs of interest

So many blogs, so little time...

here's a couple of lovely library blogs with some useful and insightful info on being a library assistant, a library student, a graduate trainee and the many other library guises. There seems to be an awful lot of gin lovers around, is anybody else unhip like me and likes a nice sturdy pint of beer? Mmm, ale.

Apologies to other bloggers not listed here, but check out the many links through these pages.

http://siobhanbinthelibrary.blogspot.co.uk

http://kris-library.blogspot.co.uk/

http://butidolikecardigans.wordpress.com/