Displaying items by tag: reproductions

The Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has acquired what is widely considered to be a masterpiece of 20th century art by Marcel Duchamp.

The newly-acquired work of art by Duchamp, “From or by Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Sélavy,” is a so-called “boîte” (box) containing 80 small-scale reproductions of the artist’s works. These range from his avant-garde paintings, such as the famous “Nude Descending a Staircase” that scandalized the New York art world at the Armory Show in 1913, to his provocative “ready-mades,” including the 1917 “Fountain,” an inverted urinal signed with the pseudonym “R. Mutt.”

The V&A have announced the re-launch of  the newly refurbished Italian sculpture Cast Court. Measuring 24 meters in height, the two galleries house some of the V&A’s largest objects and are among the most visited galleries in the museum.

Collecting plaster cast reproductions and electrotypes reached the height of popularity in the mid to late 19th-century when few people could afford to travel abroad. The South Kensington Museum (as the V&A was then known) was at the forefront of this enthusiasm, enabling visitors to admire and study faithful reproductions of important European monuments and works of art.

While a lot of time, thought, and care goes into the creation of exhibition catalogues, their lifespans tends to be short-lived. Unhappy with this accepted cycle, Thomas P. Campbell, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, decided to change things. The Museum’s new online resource, MetPublications, allows users to browse more than 600 catalogues, journals, and museum bulletins, including 368 out-of-print publications. It will even be possible to get copies of 140 of those out-of-print catalogues along with paperbound editions with digitally printed color reproductions through Yale University Press.

Spanning from 1964 to the present, topics covered include art, art history, archaeology, conservation, and collecting. MetPublications includes a description and table of contents for almost all of the periodicals and even offers information about the authors, reviews of the books, and links to related publications and art in the museum’s collection. The comprehensive resource will also provide links to purchase in-print books. If a reader is in need of a book but is not close to the museum or the book is not in the Museum’s holdings, MetPublications will direct them to WorldCat, a global library catalogue. Over time, the Met plans to add publications dating as far back as 1870, when then the museum was founded.

While other museums such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Los Angeles County of Museum of Art already have scholarly resources online, it is a welcome addition to the Met’s offerings.