Some of you may be interested in a new resource that has just been added to the Royal Academy of Arts Collections website.

The Royal Academy Winter loan Exhibition catalogues from their inception in 1870 to 1939 have been digitised in their entirety and are now available to search and browse online via the Royal Academy Website. www.racollection.org.uk<http://www.racollection.org.uk/>

From their inception in 1870 through to the outbreak of the First World War the format of the RA Winter exhibitions remained fairly constant; generally consisting of Old Master paintings borrowed from private collections accompanied by works by recently deceased British artists. From 1920 onwards the exhibitions programme began to evolve and the RA started to organise major art historical survey exhibitions drawing upon expert scholarship such as Flemish & Belgian Art 1300-1900 (1927), Italian Art 1200-1900 (1930) and French Art 1200-1900 (1932). In addition, for the first time, supplementary illustrated catalogues began to be published, in tandem with the traditional un-illustrated `lists of works`. As well as including reproductions of c.3000 of the works shown in the exhibitions, these illustrated catalogues included introductory essays by renowned art historians such as Sir James G. Mann (1897-1962), Sir Robert Witt (1872-1952) and Adolfo Venturi (1856-1941). These catalogues are now available to browse and search online via the Royal Academy website<http://www.racollection.org.uk/ixbin/indexplus?_IXACTION_=file&_IXFILE_=templates/pages/exhibition_list.html>

Many of the works lent to these exhibitions now reside in major museum and gallery collections such as Tate, National Gallery of Ireland, Yale Center for British Art, Wallace Collection, etc. We have included thumbnail images of many of these works, with embedded hotlinks to take the researcher to the pages on the owner institutions website where larger images and more information can be found. We've also digitised a selection of installation photographs from the RA's Photo Archive which show how the exhibitions were displayed.

How it works:
Click on the RA Collections<http://www.racollection.org.uk/> landing page (www.racollection.org.uk<http://www.racollection.org.uk/>)

Browse
On the RA Collections page click on the Exhibition Catalogue<http://www.racollection.org.uk/ixbin/indexplus?_IXACTION_=file&_IXFILE_=templates/pages/exhibition_list.html> link to view thumbnail images of the title pages of each catalogue. Click on a thumbnail image to display a large image of the title-page. Use the Next & Previous buttons to browse through the catalogue. You can also enter search terms in the Search within the catalogue box to search for artists, titles and lenders within the catalogue. This will display a list of the pages on which your search terms were found.

Below the catalogue pages you will also find thumbnail images of some of the works that were exhibited in the exhibitions. Clicking on a thumbnail image will take you to a page displaying a larger image and more information about that work.

Searching
You can search across all the catalogues in two ways:

1: Enter a search term in the quick search box at the top of the RA Collections homepage. This will search through all the exhibition catalogues as well as the RA's own collections of works of art, historic books and archives.

2: Click on the Search Exhibition Catalogues<http://www.racollection.org.uk/ixbin/indexplus?_IXACTION_=file&_IXFILE_=templates/search/exhibitions.html> option on the RA Collections homepage.
From here you can search by exhibition title, exhibition date, or carry out a free-text search of the entire contents of the catalogues for the names of artists, lenders or titles of works.

We are very excited to be able to make this resource available electronically to the international research community via the web. This project was made possible with funding from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, to whom we are extremely grateful.

Any feedback and comments that you have about the resource will be gratefully received and will help us to refine and improve it in future.


Regards,

Adam

Adam Waterton
Head of Library Services
Royal Academy of Arts
Burlington House
Piccadilly
London
W1V 0DS

T: 020 7300 5740 | F: 020 7300 5765 | E: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>

Royal Academy Library and Archive
www.royalacademy.org.uk/collectionsandlibrary<http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/collectionsandlibrary>

The Royal Academy of Arts Collection Online
www.racollection.org.uk<http://www.racollection.org.uk/>


The Royal Academy of Arts is a registered charity under Registered Charity Number 1125383 and is also registered as a company limited by guarantee in England and Wales under Company Number 6298947. Registered office: Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, W1J 0BD.

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