Archives and Library
Work in the Archives & Library (A&L) this year has focused on audiences. A series of projects were undertaken with the aim of developing a better understanding of existing users; exploring new means of promoting access; and widening and removing barriers to engagement. There have been many strands to this work including, but not limited to, carrying out a detailed statistical analysis of existing audiences; taking part in externally organised audience surveys; investigating new and innovative means of providing access across the sector; reviewing Collection Development policies to ensure they adequately address developments in the field going forward, and liaising with donors accordingly. All of this work has resulted in changes to A&L practices. The Centre made two joint acquisitions during the year, the first of which demonstrates audience development work. Deanna Petherbridge donated her archive and library to the Centre in November 2022. Born in 1939, her multi-faceted career – as artist and freelance curator, writer and teacher – demonstrates new routes into the art-historical profession. As a woman who worked – particularly at the beginning of her career – to promote British drawing outside the UK, her papers also contain voices previously underrepresented among the Centre’s holdings. Petherbridge’s archive includes material spanning the whole of her career, from the 1960s to present. Alongside correspondence with scholars and colleagues, the highlight of the collection is a series of ‘annual files’, which meticulously document her varied activities and engagements, including visits outside the UK, for example to India and Iran. The library contains fifty volumes of Petherbridge’s writings, catalogues of exhibitions she curated and of her own work. The acquisition of Michael Kerney’s library and archive, donated in March 2023, continues to develop the Centre’s collecting of decorative arts. Michael Kerney, who died in October 2022, devoted over thirty years to the detailed study of Victorian (and later) architecture and decorative arts. He was an acknowledged authority on the history of English stained glass during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Along with scarce twentiethcentury publications, his library is full of rare nineteenth-century books 36
