THE CONWAY LIBRARY

Introduction to the Conway Library

The Conway Library has been built up from the nucleus given to the University of London by Lord Conway. As a whole it represents the interests of those who have administered it and the teachers and students who have used it and contributed to its growth by their own photographic efforts or requirements. In this way it reflects the teaching and research that has been undertaken at the Courtauld Institute during the last fifty years and consequently it is exceptionally rich in some aspects and surprisingly inadequate in others. Because of this relationship to the academic needs of the Institute it will probably always remain unbalanced. Its expansion and development will follow the interests of art and architectural historians and at times we hope will encourage them towards the study of neglected areas.

The photographs have been acquired in a number of ways. In recent years the most important has been the photographic campaigns planned and directed by members of the Conway staff. They have used professional photographers provided with the best possible equipment and these campaigns have produced photographs of exceptional quality and interest. Regular expeditions to photograph architecture and sculpture have been made in Great Britain, but a great deal of this work has been done abroad, for example in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Eire, France, East and West Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain. Most of these trips have been made possible by very generous grants from the Pilgrim Trust, The Friends of the Courtauld Institute and the J. Paul Getty Trust. We also photograph a selection of the exhibitions mounted in London, and record most of the illuminated manuscripts that pass through the sales rooms.

We have been fortunate in that a good part of the collection has been acquired from students and teachers. These motivated amateur photographers have contributed by allowing us to make prints from the negatives of material which was taken for their own use and reference in their particular fields of interest. The quality of these negatives is uneven, but the subjects are frequently of great interest and are unobtainable from any other source. The importance of this material lies in the type of monuments represented and the variety and amount of significant details. The photographs are usually the result of many years of research and illustrate the thoughts and theories of the student.

When funds are available we purchase photographs. These purchases are usually made in response to requests from teachers to augment a particular section or to fill an obvious gap. The photographs obtained in this way are, for the most part, very good quality. They are the work of professional photographers and record objects and monuments of acknowledged worth which are accessible and commercially viable. Some of the purchases are made from the major libraries and museums of the world from whom we buy, for the most part, photographs of illuminated manuscripts and architectural drawings and sketchbooks. We are sometimes able to exchange our own material with these collections and other University departments and this enriches our resources considerably.

Important contributions to the collection have been made through gifts and bequests. These have generally been a mixed bag of negatives, photographs and postcards. Some of the material that has come to us in this way has been of immense value in that the monument or object has been destroyed or altered beyond recognition, or is in a part of the world which is now, for one reason or another, difficult to access. At the moment we are in the course of printing some 25,000 negatives bequeathed to the Institute by Arthur Garner in 1972, a project only recently made possible by a grant from the J. Paul Getty Trust.

In earlier years the collection was increased by reproductions from periodicals and catalogues but this is rarely done now, partly because of shortage of staff to check and prepare this sort of material but also because we have found that we often have better examples and in some cases the reproductions were made from our own photographs.

The collection is housed today on three floors of the Institute’s premises in Portman Square and, because of increasing demands made on the existing space by all the departments of the Institute in the past few years, it is in a critical state. The shortage of space has made it necessary to place contact prints for reference in the boxes which house the photographs, notably in the sections devoted to architectural drawings and illuminated manuscripts. When we move to other premises, in a few years’ time, we hope to be able to replace these contact prints with enlargements.

The Conway Library is used by our own students, research students from abroad and members of the public. The collection is arranged on open access and students are allowed to consult the material without supervision. They may remove photographs for use in seminars or for study outside the Institute and are responsible for refiling these photographs when they are returned. This is a system which could lead to chaos but it works surprisingly well and, though there are occasional losses and areas of disorder, they are infrequent. This method of use is really only possible because we have negatives for about three-quarters of the collection so we are able to replace the photographs if necessary. This allows us to give our students a certain freedom in the use they are able to make of our resources. I hope this will also explain any eccentricities of filing or misplacing that may occur in the microfiche.

Over the years the Conway Library has been staffed by people whose qualifications and quality has varied considerably. In recent times we have been able to attract very highly-qualified graduates who, for the most part, have started their own research in the Conway and know the collection’s weakness and strength, both from the users’ and the curators’ point of view. This has led to an increased accuracy in the identification and description of the mounted photographs but, because of our staff shortage, corrections can only be made to earlier acquisitions when attention is drawn to them. We hope that users of the microfiche will be kind enough to do this where they consider it necessary.

Because of the nature of the material, or the quantity, each section of the collection seems to impose its own order. A brief note is attached to each relevant part of the microfiche to explain the particular peculiarities and inconsistencies that might occur there.

The value of the Conway Library for research lies largely in the quantity of the material, which makes it possible to see and compare a great variety of works that themselves may be spread over many miles or many countries. We hope that its growth will continue in the years to come and because of its protean nature will expand into areas now impossible to predict. Fifteen years ago there were only 3,000 photographs of architectural drawings and it was a section that was little used. Today it is estimated that it comprises more than 35,000 and is frequently consulted. Over this period a similar expansion has occurred in the Byzantine and Modern sections. We do not know where the next area of growth will occur, but it will be a response to whatever new area of art or architectural history is interesting the teachers and students of the Courtauld Institute.

Constance Hill
The Conway Librarian

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