Collecting is an obsession that goes back to the mists of history. While spare time and spare cash seem an absolute necessity for this kind of activity, every collector has his or her own approach to the formation of a collection. The way in which one’s treasures are displayed is another important instance in which one collector differs from another. Glass cases, niches, trays, cupboards, or drawers have been adopted; sometimes cards offer information on the subject, its age and provenance; an overall theme may have prompted the choice of the actual objects displayed together; security reasons suggest one room over another. While some collectors keep their treasures as close as possible—in their bedroom, throughout their living quarters, or in a locked up closet nearby—others may find that they want to be able to show off their collection without being disturbed by visitors in the rooms in which they actually spend most of their time. Certainly, our notions of private and public have changed considerably over the centuries and this has had an impact on questions of display and on the separation of particular parts of the house from other less accessible ones, in particular in great houses that allow for the establishment of a museum. The museum, in such cases, is quite separate from the living quarters, for example situated on the ground floor off the main hall. Not all displays were so defined; there were many forms of exhibition just as there were many forms of collections. The aims and ambitions of the collector are often discussed in terms of the display of their collections; in part because we believe that analysing how a collection was shown and how it was received are key contributors to our understanding the role and purpose of the collection. In lieu of any other documentation, inventories, sales catalogues and wills remain essential tools for the historian of collecting, both in terms of what was owned and where it was housed. This volume, the second in a series of four, presents ten articles that explore the connection between collections and their display in, near, or separate from the princely apartment within a time frame that runs from the sixteenth century to the early nineteenth and within a geographical area that includes courts on the Italian peninsula, in England, France, The Netherlands and Germany.

To celebrate the first ten years of the international forum Collecting and Display, as well as the launch of a dedicated series of publications “Collecting Histories”, in 2014, a conference dedicated to new directions in terms of collecting, display, visitor experience and the use of modern media in today’s museums was held at museums of the city of Memmingen in Bavaria. Speakers looked into whether and how the engagement with the history of collections, in their diverse permutations, has influenced and modified modern museology. This volume looks forward towards a future which oftentimes looks bleak due to funding cuts, lack of appreciation of cultural history and a sometimes dubious art trade in times of looting and vandalism. On the positive side, the future of museums and museology nonetheless offers exciting prospects as far as diverse possibilities of display, as well as museology courses taught at universities worldwide, are concerned; not to forget the rising visitor numbers at many of the great museums worldwide. Collecting and Display (www.collectinganddisplay.com) is an international forum founded by three scholars in 2004. The group has been running a research seminar at the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London since 2005 and in Florence from 2008 to 2012. The forum has organised international summer conferences in London, Ottobeuren, Florence, Irsee and Jerusalem since 2006.

Cabinets of prints and drawings are found in the earliest art collections of Early Modern Europe. From the sixteenth century onwards, some of them acquired such fame that the necessity for an ordered and scientific display meant that a dedicated keeper was occasionally employed to ensure that fellow enthusiasts, as well as visiting diplomats, courtiers and artists, might have access to the print room. Often collected and displayed together with drawings, the prints formed a substantial part of princely collections which sometimes achieved astounding longevity as a specialised group of collectibles, such as the Florentine Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe at the Uffizi (GDSU). Prints and drawings, both bought and commissioned, were collected by princes and by private amateurs. Like the rest of their collections, the prints and drawings were usually preserved and displayed as part of, or near, the owner’s library in close proximity to scientific instruments, cut gems or small sculptural works of art. Both prints and drawings not only documented an encyclopaedic approach to the knowledge available at the time, but also depicted parts of the collections in the form of a paper museum. Prints and drawings also served as a guide to the collections. They spread their fame, and the renown of their owners, across Europe and into new worlds of collecting, both East and West. This volume explores issues such as: when, how and why did cabinets of prints and drawings become a specialised part of princely and private collections? How important were collections of prints and drawings for the self-representation of a prince or connoisseur among specialists and social peers? Is the presentation of a picture hanging in a gallery, for example by Charles Eisen for the Royal Galleries at Dresden, to be treated as documentary evidence? Are there notable differences in the approach to collecting, presentation and preservation of prints and drawings in diverse parts of the world? What was the afterlife of such collections up to the present day?

This collection of essays highlights the enduring significance of provenance and its implications for historians and art historians, as well as students and researchers engaged in museum studies. It also offers an opportunity to demonstrate its relevance to other fields of expertise, such as conservation, visual culture studies, aesthetics, authentication and connoisseurship versus technology as a means of establishing attributions and detecting forgeries. Provenance is still of vital importance to jurisdiction, whether it concerns property law or ownership. It also remains topical because of the ongoing debates over looted art in the 1930s and 1940s and the illicit trade in antiquities conducted from Iraq and Syria by terrorist groups.

The Getty Research Journal publishes the original research underway at the Getty and seeks to foster an environment of collaborative scholarship among art historians, museum curators, and conservators. Articles explore the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum and Research Institute, as well as the annual themes and ongoing research projects of the Research Institute. Shorter texts highlight new acquisitions and discoveries, and focus on the diverse tools for scholarship being developed at the Getty. This issue features essays on early modern alchemy; portraits of the Orsini family; a decorative design for a Borghese palace; the Eruditi Italiani archive; the collecting habits of Louis-Philippe, duc d'Orléans; Félix Bracquemond's sketches of the Paris Commune; the art dealer David Croal Thomson; the Russian avant-garde book Mirskontsa; Malvina Hoffman's Heads and Tales; and Yves Klein at Galerie Schmela. In a new section about tools of art historical scholarship, authors discuss the Spanish translation of the Art & Architecture Thesaurus® and the creative potential of digital architectural taxonomies. Short texts examine ancient Roman terracotta fragments, prints by Albrecht Dürer, designs for the Palacio Salvo in Montevideo, the textile collection of Ulrich Middeldorf, a New York "pottery happening," and the German writer Christa Wolf.