Ingalls Library & Museum Archives

As Art and Power in the Central African Savanna closes in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s special exhibition space,  visitors are reminded that the Ingalls Library maintains copies of every catalog for every exhibition we present.  Museum publications are available for browsing in the reference department of the Library.  This fascinating catalog is no exception, you will find it on the shelf at NB1099.C6 P48 2008.

With the unveiling of the collections in the East Wing of the Museum fast approaching, events in and around the opening are lining up.  Certainly it can be hard to keep up.  If you take a minute to become a fan of the the Ingalls Library on Facebook, you can be sure to recieve the latest updates on what’s happening.  Pages for the Museum and programs like the Cleveland Museum fo Art Film Series and  VIVA! and Gala around Town are sure to be lively as well.  If that’s not enough, the Summer of CMA blog is updating regularly.  It’s an Internet Party!

This catalogue raisonné unites a fairly disparate body of Warhol’s graphic work, the record covers he designed for LP records.  This is the second publication on this somewhat esoteric topic and the first in English; an earlier German title exists, a former dissertation published in 2001.  While the literature on Warhol is formidable, we hold over 100 exhibition catalogs on the artist alone, this collection is compelling.  The arc of the work is fascinating, from the early modernist sketches at the beginning of his career to the pop art portraits that close the volume.  Represented here are his most famous covers, for the Velvet Underground and Nico and the Rolling Stones, as well as the less well known covers he did for John Cale and Debbie Harry and others.  A number of inclusions seem curious at first, including that of Andy Warhol’s Index, a book which is justified in this collection because of the enclosed flexi disk of recorded material.  Nonetheless, this is a fine catalog, highlighting yet another example of Warhol’s massive oeuvre.  NC1883.3.W37 A4 2008

As mentioned recently in the New York Times, Sotheby’s and Christie’s have begun utilizing USB memory devices for auction sales catalogs.  Both firms mailed hard copies of the select catalogs along with credit card sized USB drives, with flip out interfaces.  The catalog contained on the drive is as easy to use as the similar online versions.  Conceptually, the electronic auction catalog is not new.  Many firms provide full online catalogs for their sales.  A transition to solely electronic delivery for either house has not been announced.  But it will be interesting to see how these new forms of delivery will fair in the long and short term.

This recently published three volume set is, like so many previous Grove volumes, immediately essential.  The Encyclopedia of Islamic Art and Architecture fills in an unoccupied space in the reference collection, covering topics heretofore not published in a single volume or set.  Entries are concise but thorough, with up to date bibliography.  Illustrations and photographs are in black and white.  An index follows in the third volume.  One cannot overlook the most obvious, but perhaps most important aspect of this set; it is published in English.    The volumes reside in the reference collection, where they will certainly be appreciated.  N6260 .G75 2009