V&A curtails access to its national collections of slides and books

Despite protests, the National Art Slide Library, currently housed in the V&A, is to close at the end of this month prior to its transfer to Leicester Polytechnic and a postal service, (see the letter from Professor Martin Kemp in the February issue of The Art Newspaper). Although the slide library was never intended to operate as a public service, the growth in the teaching of art history in recent years has meant that the removal of this resource will cause severe problems for free-lance art historians who are prevented both by copyright laws and expense from building up their own slide collections. A meeting of representatives of the Association of Art Historians with the Director of the V&A, Elizabeth Esteve-Coll, on 7 February, discussed a compromise solution of housing a limited selection of the most-used slides in the London area during the eighteen-month move. A suitable location is now being sought. Due to lack of seating space the V&A now allows only final year students to use the National Art Library regularly. First and second year students have “five lives” per year and have to produce a card on which each visit is struck off in turn.