Curating the Catalogue Raisonné

Ribera’s Drawings Disseminated

Abstract

This article explores the problems and possibilities of translating the genre of the catalogue raisonné into a curated exhibition. It takes as its focus the first complete catalogue raisonné of the drawings by Spanish Baroque artist Jusepe de Ribera (1591–1652). Timed to coincide with the publication were the 2016 exhibition at the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid—Ribera: Maestro del dibujo—and its 2017 counterpart at the Meadows Museum in Dallas—Between Heaven and Hell: The Drawings of Jusepe de Ribera—which showcased a cross-section of sheets by Ribera in the context of related paintings and prints. Like linguistic translation, curatorial translation involves issues of framing and interpretation. This article argues that such a process is neither seamless nor straightforward, requiring considerable curatorial and authorial license when adapting a scholarly publication for the museum walls. Distinct from an exhibition catalogue, which typically accompanies an exhibition and serves as a guidebook or record of the works on view, the Ribera drawings catalogue raisonné was not conceived as “a book of the show.” Rather, the two-venue exhibition was designed as “a show of the book,” transforming the comprehensive volume into a distilled display which addressed simultaneously a general and a discerning audience. The article offers a critical self-reflection on the process of conceiving both the catalogue and the exhibition from the perspective of a co-author and curator.