National Gallery Shows Prints

An article in the Washington Post detailed the National Gallery's attempts at offering greater public and scholarly access to its vast print collection.

Earlier this week, the Washington Post offered its readers a good tip; if you are in the D.C. area and plan on heading to the National Gallery, you can call ahead and schedule an appointment to look at works in one of the museum's print study rooms. Or you can simply explore the collection by viewing the museum's new exhibit, "Master Drawings From the Woodner Collections".

The exhibit, according to the Washington Post article, "selects more than 100 wonderful works donated over the past 15 years by the Woodner family of New York". Woodner was a real-estate developer and avid collector of works by artists such as Leonardo, Durer, Raphael, Rembrandt, Fragonard, and Goya. The display also includes works by lesser known artists such as Andrea del Sarto, who the Washigton Post suggests, "ought to be a star but has been overlooked".

Most museum visitors, as the Post article alludes to, are simply unaware of the massive behind the scenes holdings or collections of most large museums. While some museums have attempted to display a larger percentage of their collections via methods such as visible storage, most museums still only display a small fraction of their collections.

Museums like the National Gallery should be applauded for attempting to innovate methods by which museum visitors and scholars alike can gain access to these collections. Perhaps other museums will learn from the success of the National Gallery and attempt to offer easier public access to study collections such as the National Gallery's.