Jahrbuch des Kunsthistorischen Museums Wien, Vol. 15

Jahrbuch des Kunsthistorischen Museums Wien and contents of Volume 15 (Vol. 107) The Jahrbuch des Kunsthistorischen Museums Wien is among the oldest continuously published periodicals on art and art history issued by a museum. The first volume appeared in 1882 (although it bears the date 1883) under the title Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses. By 1925 thirty-six volumes had been published. In 1926 a new series was inaugurated as Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, a title that had been adopted in 1920. The present title of the periodical was introduced when the museum was given the status of Scientific Institution under Public Law in 1999 The latest volume (Number 13/14) was published in 2012 making it the 105/106th in the history of the entire series. The Jahrbuch owes its origin to a decision by Emperor Franz Joseph I: The plan he approved in 1876 for the systematic organisation of the imperial collections, which had hitherto been dispersed over a number of locations, included the founding of an annually published academic journal. The Jahrbuch thus considerably antedates the opening of the new building of the museum on the Ringstrasse in 1891, which was to bring together at a single location the greatest part of the historical collectionsunique in their diversity, quality and extentwhich had been amassed over the centuries. The foreword to the first volume of the Jahrbuch set out the guidelines for the new publication, which retain their validity today. Historical and critical studies were to be published researching objects belonging to the imperial collections, as well as sources on their history and the dynastys interest in the arts. Thus did the museum, as a consequence of its long history and its relationship with the imperial house, initiate with the Jahrbuch fundamental research on art and cultural history founded on critical analysis, the rigorous scientific objectives of which have been maintained to the present. The extraordinary importance of the periodical, whose editions of historical sources lend it the character of a reference work, led to the issue of reprints of Volumes 1- 36 by Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt of Vienna and Johnson Reprint Corporation of New York and London in the 1980s. The library of Heidelberg University made these volumes available online on its website (http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/jbksak). The planned fifteenth volume continues the basic research on primary sources representative of the periodical. The sheer extent of the sources examined for this volume commended that the issue be devoted entirelyand differently from the established two-part formatto an edition of source material. The volume deals principally with the records of the office of the Oberstkämmerer from the period 1777-87 in the Austrian State Archives. The volume thus represents a continuation of the edition by Heinrich Zimmermann encompassing the years 1744-76 that was published in the 1903 Jahrbuch, a supplement to which is included in the present edition. Criteria decisive for the selection of the sources was their relevance to the broadest spectrum of questions relating to art, cultural and social history, as well as interdisciplinary approaches to the study of this phase of the Age of the Enlightenment. This period of change witnessed the momentous decision to open the imperial collections to the public, and thus for Austria signalled the birth of the museum as an institution accessible to the population at large with attendant wide-ranging changes, for example, in the presentation of the objects and the publication of commercially sold catalogues. The documents, which were largely unknown hitherto, have been systematically registered for the first time in this volume and provide the basis for further research on the various collections, their changing locations, and the objects preserved or exhibited, as well as the activities of the staff of the collections and court artists. They thus permit differentiated insights into the cultural life of the Viennese court during the reigns of Maria Theresia and Joseph II. The recently published double volume edited by Gudrun Swoboda, Die kaiserliche Gemäldegalerie in Wien und die Anfänge des öffentlichen Kunstmuseums (2013), production of which was supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), draws on some of the sources presented in this issue of the Jahrbuch. Applicant Dr. Franz Pichorner Stellvertretender Generaldirektor Direktor des Archivs Generalsekretariat & Publikationen Vienna, february 17th 2014 Seite 2 von 2