Print room Totally Explained

Everything about Print Room totally explained

A print room is either a room or industrial building where printing takes place, or a room in an art gallery, museum or archive, where a collection of old master and modern prints, usually together with drawings and watercolours, are held and viewed. The latter meaning is the subject of this article. A further meaning is a room decorated by pasting prints onto the wall in a quasi-collage style to form a sort of wallpaper, an 18th century fashion, of which several examples survive.

What a print room looks like

Since for conservation reasons these works can't be permanently displayed (light, temperature and humidity conditions leave them vulnerable to damage, limiting the hang to no more than 6 months), they're kept in inert, acid-free boxes, albums or portfolios behind closed doors. Where possible, works on paper are mounted on archivally safe supports. Storage may be in the same room as the viewing is done (the 'Reading-' or 'Study Room'), but as the largest collections have well over a million items stores are often located 'behind the scenes', along with the curators' offices. Typically, the visitor sits at a desk equipped with a stand or easel, and the material requested is brought out for them by the curators, who are happy to offer further information about works and artists.

How to visit

Most national collections can be seen by the public more easily than is often realised. Usually, visitors of all sorts, whether researchers or not, are entitled to view works on paper not on display in the galleries, which will form the great majority of an institution's collection, thereby making print rooms an essential resource for enabling our understanding and appreciation of works on paper - in particular, how artists conceive of finished paintings through preparatory studies, and how printmaking traditions and techniques have evolved over the centuries. On a national level, print rooms tend to differ, each having their own specialism, however collections often overlap in content.
There are links to lists of print rooms at the end of the article; most lead to the gallery's or museum's web-pages, which explain visiting arrangements. In most cases appointments require to be made in advance, and proof of identity should usually be provided. While it's helpful to outline what you'd like to see (including artists' names and catalogue numbers, which may be available online or in books), visitors are also usually welcome to discuss their needs more casually by phoning or emailing in advance of their appointment. It is important to remember that not all material will be available to view, depending on current loans and exhibitions commitments and the condition of works.

Often not in the expected museum

Because of the need to keep them stored, prints and drawings are sometimes associated with library collections rather than collections of paintings. For example in Paris the main print (but not drawings) collection is in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, not the Louvre. In New York and Washington, both the main art museums (Metropolitan Museum of Art and National Gallery of Art Washington) and the libraries (New York Public Library and Library of Congress)all have important, though very different, collections. What is by general consent the world's greatest collection overall is in a separate institution, the Albertina (Vienna), which has been closed for some years for reconstruction. Material from non-Western traditions - in particular, Asian material, including Japanese prints - may or may not be in the same department, or the same institution.
In London, the National Gallery holds no works on paper; only paintings and sculptures of the European tradition. The main collection of Western prints and drawings is held in the British Museum and includes fine examples by the Old Masters. Originally known as the national gallery of British art, Tate Britain holds British prints and drawings, which include the world's largest collection of watercolours, sketches and engravings by JMW Turner, historic works on paper from the late 18th and 19th centuries, and modern and contemporary British and International prints. The Victoria and Albert Museum's works on paper collection has a particularly broad remit, encompassing works of fine and applied art (including posters) as well as ephemera.

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