Exhibition Catalogues

So, I have a weakness for exhibition catalogues - and this is not helped by Jen working at the Kimbell, or my volunteering at the Carter. Exhibition catalogues are usually beautiful with phenomenal scholarship and images. They are, though, incredibly expensive books - with the hardback versions being between 70 and 100 dollars. I understand that even at this price, the museum subsidizes part of the cost - meaning that on every catalog purchased, the museum takes a loss. Much of my time cataloguing is consumed with cataloging small, "normal" and large publications created in conjunction with an exhibition. So, the article that Mary Jane and Sam at the Carter shared with me is especially pertinent, and got me thinking about exhibition catalogues:

Cataloguing The Changes: Museums Start To Shift From Traditional Exhibition Catalogues To Print-on-Demand and Online Versions, by Judith H. Dobrzynski, The Art Newspaper, September 2010

So, why do museums keep publishing these prohibitively expensive works? I would say, first, that the catalogue is an important record of the scholarship behind an exhibition. Curators don't just throw a show together willy-nilly. There is an incredible amount of research, scholarship, and work that goes into crafting and, indeed, curating (in the strictest sense of the word) what constitutes an exhibition. The catalogue is, then, the place to showcase and highlight this scholarship - and that's why museums, art libraries, and scholars collect exhibition catalogues so prodigiously. The catalogues usually include essays and other writings that one would never see otherwise. I'll give you a recent example - the last show at the Kimbell, From the Private Collections of Texas, was a wonderful show, and the accompanying writings were very illuminating and really made the whole exhibition make sense to me. I am more likely to buy a catalogue for an exhibition that is challenging to me rather than one I think I just like. Ms. Dobrzynski points this out in her article:

Yet as few as 2% of people visiting an exhibition actually buy the catalogue. When 5% buy, that's not a bad seller. Paradoxically, the more popular an exhibition is, and the more familiar the artist is, the lower the sell-through rate. That's because popular shows draw wider audiences, composed of regular museum-goers who may feel they know the artist and occasional visitors whose interest in art is less serious; apparently, neither category wants to shell out, say, $30 to $60 for a catalogue. On the other hand, lesser-known artists often attract enthusiasts who will pay the price.

Beyond the scholarship, I think many people purchase catalogues for their images. The very nature of an exhibition makes it ephemeral on some level, and if you love the works in an exhibition, the only convenient way to see the works again is with a catalogue. The photographs are usually wonderful, much more so than the online counterpart. The fear here is, of course, image piracy, which is discussed in the article. In addition, people love catalogues because (just like books in general) they look impressive and help people foster an image about themselves: "Oh, this lady has all of these beautiful catalogues about XXX artist, she must be really cultured." They do look nice and massive sitting on a shelf, though.



But, the issue still remains - the books are prohibitively expensive, both for the customer/patron, as well as the associated institution. What, then, is a museum to do?

My first proposition would be to make the catalogues themselves smaller. Many of the ones I see are massive - and what requires these books to be so large? I think the Carter has done a great job of this - many of the museum's more recent publications are of a smaller, but still wonderful, size. Also, printing only a paperback edition would be helpful to lowering cost (as much as it pains me to say that - as I really prefer a hardback book).

Of course, another alternative is print on demand (pointed out in the article) - which might be a lovely middle way. However, can we maintain the high printing quality of catalogues with this method? Also, will this method be fast enough to meet that impulse buy one often feels after seeing a good exhibition?

I think the (to me) optimal solution would be the formation of cultural printing consortia - a pooling of publishing resources. For example, the Carter, Kimbell, and Modern here could form a catalogue printing consortium for their catalogues and other print needs; and the FWMSH and Cowgirl could form one with a more historical bent. It's just a thought.

What do you think? Where does this go from here?

Oh, and have a great weekend!