by Jon Lackman | 27 April 2010 | Uncategorized
Apparently no one’s going to report on the recent art-bibliography conference in New York, alas. The L.A. Times art critic Christopher Knight has asserted that the Getty shouldn’t be expected to shoulder the BHA alone: “Outside LA, art folks commonly (& mistakenly) assume the Getty can & should pick up the tab for everything. Get over it.”
Given that we’re at this impasse, I’ll agree that all institutions with an interest in art-history research should look at each thing they’re doing and ask, is this more important than the BHA? To take one example, The Getty has apparently made a “large donation” to the Hollywood sign.
I see this as part of a larger cultural problem and shift, where both scholars and librarians are abandoning traditional indexes in favor of full text searching (Google and JSTOR). While I do find the BHA useful in my own work at times, as someone interested in nontraditional approaches to visual culture I often find my key sources outside the BHA. It would be interesting to know who exactly is using this resource most heavily today, and if they are tied to institutions that could form a consortium.
As a side comment, I would also just like to point out that visual culture is notoriously difficult to index in an effective way.
It seems to me that one fundamental question is whether the BHA is a basic and necessary resource that serves a general good, or if it is a specific tool only useful to a few people working in a non-essential field. It’s difficult to image what my research would have been, and would be, like without it. Probably slower and less comprehensive.
I would also suggest that the BHA’s primary uselfulness lies not in those who take a traditional approach to art history, but with those who study Western art between the Renaissance and Modernity. It is only a tool, with which one could build many different things.