Gezicht op het British Museum, te Londen 1841 - 1885

Curator: Looking at this etching and engraving dating from around 1841-1885, "Gezicht op het British Museum, te Londen," or "View of the British Museum in London," I feel a curious mix of ambition and constraint, doesn’t you? All those classical lines… it yearns to inspire awe! Editor: Immediately, it makes me consider the laborious printmaking processes involved here: the time spent etching and engraving must have been considerable, but also who was doing the work? Was it piece work for print shops churning out endless impressions for popular consumption? And where were the raw materials sourced? Curator: Well, there’s something deeply ironic about this very reproduction of a museum, etched into what, metal? And multiplied endlessly. Museums, generally speaking, seem to prefer originals! Perhaps this cityscape was made to propagate neoclassicism... Editor: True. But isn’t the neoclassical itself a reproduction—or rather, a re-staging—of previous aesthetics? I’m struck by the almost industrial precision rendered by hand, an interesting tension. One has to consider also the cost. How affordable would this image have been? And thus who precisely, gained access to the museum and in which forms? Curator: Exactly! Who *could* visit the actual museum, and who had to make do with this print? It really makes you consider who has access to culture, literally and figuratively. Though there’s something strangely affecting in those little figures populating the foreground, almost overwhelmed by the scale of the building, almost dreaming and romanticized by the drawing lines... What a delicate contradiction to render this human size by lines with such clear social context, and a good amount of poetry! Editor: I wonder how many impressions were struck from the plate, how many hands touched each one? The social life of an image. To consider labor not only on canvas but in multiples. Curator: Indeed. Seeing the artwork from that perspective opens an interesting debate... a question on legacy and labor, how images can also question a cultural institution by themselves.