Welcome to this issue of PMC Notes. There is much news to report. First of all, this autumn will see the launch of the Paul Mellon Centre’s online photographic archive. Producing, collecting and cataloguing reference photographs of works of British art was, for many years, a central strand of the Centre’s activity. Our photographic archive, consisting of more than 100,000 works, has now been scanned, catalogued and optimised for a new digital collections platform. Users will be able to search, compare, study and download high-quality images in ways that have never previously been possible. Our platform will also include a series of newly commissioned scholarly texts that highlight the archive’s interest and relevance for contemporary researchers, while a set of short films will explore the archive from the points of view of an artist, curator, art historian, dealer, archivist and photographer. This resource will open up a new world of research possibilities, and I urge you to explore it when it goes live in November. I would also like to alert you to the packed research and learning events programme we have in store for the coming months, which testifies to the kinds of scholarly collaboration that are at the heart of the Centre’s work. The programme includes a new series of Paul Mellon lectures, organised with our colleagues at the Yale Center for British Art, in which a group of leading museum directors will address the state of the museum and gallery today. We will also be hosting an
3