Antony Griffiths

Keeper

Print collection

Department: Prints and Drawings

Telephone: +44 (0)20 7323 8405
Email: agriffiths @ thebritishmuseum.ac.uk

The job of Keeper requires the planning and management of the work of a staff of seventeen permanent and (at present) five temporary as well as other part-time staff and volunteers. The department has a heavy public demand through visitors to the Student Room, loan and photographic requests, and a busy exhibition programme. Acquisitions are another major area of concern, as well as maintaining links with patrons and donors.

Over the past thirty years, research interests have covered a wide area, and included most western schools of printmaking and most periods. Earlier publications were in the modern area, and were tied to acquisitions, but in recent years have moved back in time, and have centered on eighteenth-century prints, especially those made in France.

Current British Museum projects

The major project by far is project-managing and personal involvement in the cataloguing of the department’s entire collection on computer. Linked with this is the role of project sponsor of the British Museum’s project (known as the Merlin Plan) to upgrade and put on-line the entire collections database of all departments on the web in stages between 2007 and 2009.

Previous British Museum projects

Numerous exhibitions and publications attached to them; numerous articles in learned journals; the re-organisation of the entire print collection with new taxonomy, new indices and new storage.

External fellowships/ honorary positions/ membership of professional bodies

Fellow of the British Academy since 2000

Chairman of the scholarly journal Print Quarterly, and member of the editorial board

Member of the Council of the Walpole Society; member of the advisory council of the Art Fund.

Publications

A. Griffiths, Prints for Books, Book Illustration in France 1760-1800: the Panizzi Lectures 2003 (London, The British Library, 2004)

A. Griffiths, The Print in Stuart Britain 1603-1689 (London, British Museum Press, 1998)

A. Griffiths, Jacques Bellange (c.1575-1616): Printmaker of Lorraine, with C. Hartley, (London, British Museum Press, 1997)

A. Griffiths, German Printmaking in the Age of Goethe, with F. Carey, (London, British Museum Press, 1994)

A. Griffiths, Prints and Printmaking (London, British Museum Press, 1980; second revised edition 1996)