New research into art exhibition catalogues
At Winchester School of Art Library we have a huge range of exhibition catalogues covering a wide range of subjects for you to explore. I recently attended the 2013 ARLIS conference and was able to hear Dr Sally Hughes’ presentation on her research into art exhibition catalogues. Visitors to exhibitions most frequently buy catalogues as a souvenir of their visit and they are sold in huge numbers. At the recent Leonardo exhibtion at the National Gallery 42,000 were sold. I found it fascinating to learn that alongside these sales the bestselling items at museum and gallery shops are fridge magnets and 21,000 of these were sold at the Leonardo exhibition!
Interestingly her research has shown that visitors want more pictures and less text and are not interested in extensive footnotes. So we are likely to start to see a move towards this in the future with the more traditional academic essays having a different outlet.