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An exhibition catalogue is a printed list of what is on show in an art or other exhibition. Art exhibitions are traditionally the space in which Art objects (in the most general sense meet an Audience. It may range in scale from a single printed sheet to a lavish hardcover "coffee-table book". A hardcover (or hardback or hardbound) is a Book bound with rigid protective covers (typically of cardboard covered with Cloth

The advent of cheap colour-printing in the 1960s transformed what had usually been simple "handlists" with several works to each page into large scale "descriptive catalogues" that are intended as both contributions to scholarship and books likely to appeal to many general readers. Printing is a process for reproducing text and image typically with ink on Paper using a printing press The catalogues for exhibitions held at a museum are now often far more detailed than the catalogues of their permanent collections.

In the early 21st century, exhibitions that gather items from other institutions (museums, galleries, libraries, etc. ) and that are elaborately publicized very often have catalogues in the form of substantial books.

Contents

Format

Book-sized exhibition catalogues in the West typically have a colour photograph of every item on display, and also of other relevant works not in the exhibition (these usually smaller and often in black and white). There will be a short formal catalogue description of each item, and usually interpretative text often amounting to one or more pages. The resulting book will have at least one introductory essay, often several, footnotes, bibliography and other critical apparatus. Bibliography (from Greek grc βιβλιογραφία bibliographia, literally "book writing" as a practice is the academic study of Books The critical apparatus (or Latin: la '''apparatus criticus''' is the critical and Primary source material that accompanies an edition of a text It is usually only in the language of the location, although if the exhibition is travelling internationally, local translated editions will be produced for each location. The book may be published by the institution that hosts the exhibition (or one of these institutions), but is distributed by and often co-published with a larger publisher. It will not dwell on the fact that it is the catalogue of a particular exhibition, and often will not contain a plan of the exhibition. Visitors to the exhibition will anyway know this, and the intention - often successful - is to create a book which has a permanent usefulness. Nearly all are produced in paperback; a hardback edition is a sign of serious intentions. Paperback, softback, or softcover describe and refer to a Book by the nature of its binding. Most major catalogues are sold in at least some bookshops, and are available for order more widely through the booktrade. Many receive specific sponsorship to finance them, and usually a number of authors contribute.

Giants

In recent decades, exhibition catalogues have grown to prodigious sizes and may be the most comprehensive sources for even rather large subject areas. Probably the largest to be produced were in the 1970s in a competitive spree by Italian provinces and German lander to promote the significance of their region by mounting huge exhibitions on the period when its cultural production was at its peak. Germany (Deutschland is a Federal Republic consisting of sixteen States, known in German as Länder (singular A typical example is the three-volume Die Parler und der schöne Stil 1350-1400. Europäische Kunst unter den Luxemburgern from Cologne of 1978, with a further two volumes published in 1980 on a colloqium held in conjunction with the exhibition. The three volumes covering the exhibition proper amount to over a thousand pages and it would have been unfeasible to have taken them into the exhibition itself. Another example is The History of Japanese Photography, 432 pages long and with over four hundred plates.

This trend was led in Britain by the Royal Academy of Arts and in the USA by the Metropolitan Museum of Arts in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington. This article refers to an art institution in London For other meanings of Royal Academy see Royal Academy (disambiguation. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is an art museum located on the eastern edge of Central Park, along what is known as Museum Mile in New York City, This article is about the National Gallery of the United States for other National Galleries see National Gallery.

Japanese catalogues

Japanese exhibition catalogues often provide captions, a certain amount of text, or both in a second language (usually English), and occasionally also a smaller amount in a third language. This is not always so: the large catalogue (over 360 pages) for a major exhibition of the wood-block artist Yasunori Taninaka is in Japanese alone. Woodblock printing in Japan (木版画 moku hanga) is a technique best known for its use in the Ukiyo-e artistic genre however it was Meanwhile Works by 25 Photographers in their 20s is completely bilingual, Japanese and English.

The great majority of Japanese exhibition catalogues are only available directly from the galleries or museums that host or hosted the exhibitions. These catalogues are acquired and shelved by libraries together with other books and are available on the used book market, but lack ISBNs. However, exceptions do exist: the catalogue of an exhibition of the photographs of Nakaji Yasui was produced via an independent publisher and distributed as a regular book. ( December 15, 1903 - March 15, 1942) was one of the most prominent

Catalogues referred to

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