Print room
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Print room is either a room or industrial building where printing takes place, or a room in a museum or a library, where a collection of old master prints, usually together with a collection of drawings, are held and viewed. The latter meaning is the subject of this article.
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[edit] What a print room looks like
Since these works cannot be permanently displayed for conservation reasons, they are kept in special boxes, albums or portfolios behind closed doors. This may be in the same room as viewing is done, but as the largest collections have well over a million items, there are often storage rooms as well as offices for the curators. The visitor sits at a table or desk, and the material requested is brought out for them by the curators. Table-stands will normally be used to view. Most material is mounted. Normally plenty of natural light is available.
[edit] How to visit
In most museums the collections can be seen by the public more easily than is often realised. Because visits must be supervised, museums sometimes do not make efforts to publicise the arrangements for visiting. There are links to lists of print rooms at the end of the article. Most lead to the museum's own web-page, which explains how to visit. Opening hours and days are usually restricted, appointments are needed in many cases, and proof of identity should usually be produced. Usually, it is important to be as clear as possible as to what you want to see, including catalogue numbers, which may be available in books or online. In some cases, some academic or professional need to see material must to be demonstrated in advance. Not all material may be available to view without special arrangement.
[edit] Often not in the expected museum
Because of the need to keep them stored, prints and drawings were often associated with library collections rather than collections of paintings. This means, especially in Europe, that print rooms are often not in the main art gallery of a city, but a library. For example in Paris the main print (but not drawings) collection is in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France not the Louvre. In London, the National Gallery has no prints, and the main collection is in the British Museum. In New York and Washington, both the main art museums (Metropolitan Museum of Art and National Gallery of Art Washington) and the libraries (New York Public Library and Library of Congress)all have important, though very different, collections. What is by general consent the world's best collection overall is in a separate institution, the Albertina (Vienna), which has been closed for some years for reconstruction. Material from other traditions than the Western, in particular, Asian material, notably Japanese prints, may or may not be in the same department, or the same institution.
[edit] External links
- Delinavit et Sculpsit — the major print rooms of the world.
- Print Alliance of America — a long list of print rooms in the USA & Canada only. Numbers given refer to contemporary art prints only; most collections have other works as well.
- Bodkin Prints — a virtual print-room. Links to well over 10,000 online images of prints.
