Online Exhibition Catalogue - Building the Picture (2014)

Exhibition at the National Gallery, London, 2014

Building the Picture, National Gallery exhibition: online catalogue

Screenshot of the Building the Picture online catalogue on the National Gallery website

The catalogue accompanying the Building the Picture exhibition at the National Gallery, London, was launched online to coincide with the exhibition opening on 30 April 2014. It was the National Gallery's first fully digitised catalogue.

The catalogue was written and edited by exhibition co-curator Professor Amanda Lillie (University of York) with key contributions from co-curators Dr Caroline Campbell (Curator of Italian Painting before 1500 at the National Gallery) and Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) collaborative doctoral student Alasdair Flint.  Other contributors were Dr Caroline Elam (the Warburg Institute), Dr Jessica Gritti (Università Cà Foscari, Venice/ Politecnico di Milano), Dr Charles Robertson (Oxford Brookes), Dr Arnika Schmidt (National Gallery), and Dr Jennifer Sliwka (National Gallery).

Making the catalogue freely available was made possible with the generous support of the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council), and it has meant that the exhibition, as well as the scholarly research behind it, were and continue to be accessible to people all over the world, regardless of whether they were able to visit in person.

In his review for The Sunday Times, Waldemar Januszczek reported that, at first taken aback that there was no printed catalogue, he was immediately absorbed by the essays and information on line for four solid hours after he returned home from the exhibition itself. 

The catalogue was shortlisted for Digital Innovation of the Year in the Apollo Awards 2014.

Read Caroline Campbell's interview with Apollo Magazine: ‘Building the catalogue: the National Gallery and digital publishing’.

Main image: The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius (detail), by Carlo Crivelli (1486); the National Gallery, London

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