INTERNATIONAL INDEX TO ART EXHIBITION CATALOGUES, 1895-1991
From the Library of the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art Amsterdam
On microfiche
The Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art
The Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art opened its doors for the first time on 14 September 1895. From the start the Museum collected and exhibited both Dutch and international contemporary art. After the Second World War, especially under the leadership of director W.J.H.B. Sandberg [1954-1962], the Stedelijk developed into one of the most prominent museums for modern art in the world, a development that has been pursued under his successors, E.E.L. De Wilde [1963-1984], W.A.L. Beeren [1985-1992] and R.H. Fuchs [1993-].
The Library
In Sandberg’s term as director, the Museum began the systematic acquisition of literature in the field of modern art. What started as a museum library has grown in the course of time into the most extensive documentation center for modern art in the Netherlands and one of the leading centers in this area in the entire world.
Art exhibition catalogues
The Museum library holds an enormous number of catalogues of national and international art exhibitions and museum collections. When the Library opened for the public in 1956, it already owned 15,000 such catalogues and its holdings have increased ever since to well over 120,000 items today.
The Index to the catalogues
Over the years the holdings of such catalogues were recorded and made accessible through an index-file system kept on cards. In 1992 it was decided to microfilm these cards, thereby making them accessible to other institutions and individual researchers.
The microfiches
The present microfiche collection is the result: 867 microfiches on which the bibliographic data for the entire catalogue holdings of the Stedelijk Museum have been preserved in clear and orderly fashion.
Possibilities for searching
The Index offers several different keys for searching the exhibition catalogue holdings through which it is possible to locate a specific catalogue from the collection. The catalogue of a group exhibition in which Picasso participated, for example, can be located by searching under his name, or under the place and institution where the exhibition was held, or the subject of the exhibition.
By artist is arranged alphabetically by artist. The card records which catalogues are held, both of solo and group exhibitions. For solo exhibitions the card indicates whether the catalogue contains a biography, bibliography or portrait of the artist. The artist’s date and place of birth and death are listed as well.
By city is alphabetically organized by place and within each place by gallery, museum or other institution, so that, for example an overview can be found of the exhibitions held in a particular museum and the catalogues made for those exhibitions.
Travelling exhibitions gives an overview chronologically and by country of the catalogues of (inter)national perambulatory exhibitions.
UDC code divides the catalogue holdings of group exhibitions according to the Universal Decimal Classification system, which permits, for example, a survey of exhibitions held on "art of the sixties" by country or in general. The exhibitions held in the Stedelijk Museum itself have been classified separately using this UDC system.
Museum and private collections lists catalogues arranged alphabetically by name of the collector and museum.
Artists groups associations, biennials, etc. records catalogues issued by groups of artists and associations, as well as catalogues made for recurrent exhibitions, such as Biennials, Triennials, Documenta and so forth, alphabetically by name.
Prizes won by artists provides an alphabetical survey of international art prizes with the names of the artists honoured and mention of any publications issued on the occasion of the awarding of the prize.
Exhibitions in the Stedelijk and Fodor Museums is a chronological survey of the exhibitions held in Stedelijk since 1895 and in Fodor (a daughter museum of Stedelijk concentrating on modern art in Amsterdam) between 1863 and 1991. (Smaller) exhibitions for which no catalogue was made are also included here.
Finding aids
The microfiche set is accessible through the eye-legible headers on the microfiches. A short manual in printed form accompanies the microfiche set. It explains the symbols and abbreviations used in the Index and gives some examples of different search strategies.