Installed within the gallery are five XVIIIc British door-surrounds (some with original or early doors), which give context to our collection. These descriptions were written to provide the opportunity to look slowly at these works of domestic architectural art, and to appreciate their bringing the natural world and the distant past into built spaces.
While in the modern era “Brits Abroad” is shorthand for ill-behaved culture-averse pleasure-seekers littering the warm expanses of the world, Albion’s denizens have a distinguished — if still largely-ill-behaved — history of exploration outside of package holidays. It is perhaps natural for island-dwellers to be curious, but Great Britain got that way because of the enthusiasm with which she investigated and capitalized on the rest of the globe. The list is broken into five categories: Piracy, Exploration, Empire, Tourism and Natural Science.
Happy as I am to be at 1016 Madison Ave. through August, the aspirational European in me wishes I were in Greece. A Classicist by training and a proud Philhellene (Hellas (Ἑλλάς) is Ancient Greek for Greece; it's Ελλάδα these days), my heart is always, in some sense, there. Luckily, the literature and cartography of Greece fills these beaux-arts rooms, and so you can join me — whether you’re here in sweltering New York or dangling your toes in a Hamptons pool or even Matala bay — in a bibliophilic tour through that most sublime place.
In support of the groundbreaking work of reattribution and reappraisal of natural history watercolors carried out by our watercolor curator, Alison Petretti, here collected are books relating to, written by, made by or owned by (the #HerBook movement, which has looked squarely in the eye the falsehood that women have not always been bibliophiles) women.
Seeking to avoid tokenism, this is part of a broader commitment to give proper credit to the women involved in the book trade since the earliest days.
The history of medicine ought to be taught much more consistently to medical practitioners; its relegation to academe is a pity. The volumes that follow should, it is hoped, show how valuable a sense of trajectory would be not only for the treatment of patients today but for the broader imagination of the frontiers of care.
Opera is unparalleled in its marshalling of spectacle: dance, costume and scenery. These three volumes are linked by their illustrations, conveying the spectacular effect on the noblest and most distinguished patrons.
Bibliophily might be thought to be its own kind of religion, though that veers toward blasphemy. Rather, religion runs through the history of book like a spine, or better still, like a network of arteries. It is no accident that the first major European printed book is Gutenberg’s ca. 1455 42-line Bible (from Greek τὰ βιβλία, tà biblía, little pieces of papyrus (βίβλος, biblos), i.e., books (subdivisions of a larger work)). A botanical book doesn’t become a flower, but a religious book becomes sacred; that merits some thought about how essential religion is to books, and in turn books to religion.
The Hunt Botanical Library (now the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation) mounted an exhibition of Redouté’s books and paintings in 1963, and the catalogue, Redoutéana, remains the essential checklist of his output. Our collection of Redouté's works, named in homage to the Hunt's landmark celebration of his output, follows.