ABSTRACT
Catalogues—permanent, exhibition, raisonnes—occupy a particular relationship to collections that highlights the scholarly functions of the publications. These texts form the permanent public record that documents the objects, biological and geological specimens and art works, their provenance, acquisition, ownership and conservation history, discovery and in the case of art objects, their attribution. One of the mainstays of art gallery publications is the catalogue of the permanent collection. Historically, as these early collections in Western Europe were created, the printed catalogue publicised the collections to a wider audience. Limited copies of these documents were printed at the expense of the wealthy owners of the collection, and the best of these illustrated the art works with the technologies of representation that were available at the time, such as engravings. At the end of the nineteenth and into the late twentieth century, the books that shaped art history, with one exception, were published by commercial companies.
