Output details

Nameless: anonymous drawings of 15th- and 16th-century Italy

Exhibition catalogue with introductory essays by A. Wright, H. Chapman and E. Vegelin van Claerbergen. Catalogue entries by A. Wright

This portfolio comprises:

(i) Catalogue Nameless: Anonymous Drawings of 15th- and 16th-Century Italy from the British Museum, the Courtauld Gallery, National Galleries of Scotland including essay by Wright

(ii) Installation shots, record of opening and visitors in the gallery. Documentation of accompanying programme of related talks, and Early music programme that coincided with the exhibition.

(iii) Press coverage, visitor records and recording of public gallery talk

Wright was the curator of the exhibition and wrote the catalogue which was published to accompany it at the Moray Art Centre in Scotland. In addition to the introductory essay 'Life in the 'Anonymous' Box', she wrote the catalogue entries for the 15 drawings exhibited, drawn mostly from the British Museum, and was responsible for devising the exhibition and selecting the works. The project set out to explore a key methodological/historiographical problem in the history of art and to bring to public visibility works on paper and parchment which had hitherto been overlooked by virtue of their present-day lack of attribution (in a field completely dominated by connoisseurship and the needs of the print room and the market to classify works by named artist). The exhibition was a complement, but also a corrective, to the parallel-running master drawings exhibition ‘Fra Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Drawings’ at the British Museum. Wright’s focus was on the drawings as material objects and records of an act of making that speak of their time - and to ours - without the burden of biography and prescription in an established 'oeuvre'. The exhibition was also crucially designed to bring publically-owned works into visibility by making them available to audiences for whom visiting the British Museum was not easy, helping to accomplished the educational and outreach role of the British Museum and the Art Centre itself.