Many researchers believe it was Bonnard’s outstanding lithographic illustrations of Paul Verlaine’s poems in Parallelement that was the modern precursor to the livres d’artiste. It was the high quality, a new benchmark, published by the father of livres d’artiste Ambrose Vollard in France 1900 and set a new standard of excellence. It was Bonnard’s red drawings going into the margins, entering the space usually reserved for text creating a new genre uniting images and text. This integration of image and text seems commonplace today but in the mid 19th century, it was new, experimental and contemporary. No wonder the bibliophile establishment questioned whether it was a book or whether it was art.

Progress.

In the first two weeks I spoke with Charlotte Cox, Exhibitions Registrar, Erica Drew, Senior Exhibitions Manager, Susanne Briggs, Media Relations Manager, Hendrick Kolenberg, Senior Curator Australian Prints Drawings and Watercolours and Peter Raissis, Curator European Prints and Drawings’ Tony Bond and Josephine Touma. I learnt that the AGNSW was a well organised curating machine. I have begun to document the curating process. This will have to be continually revised. I spent some time getting to know the AGNSW website and its own intranet. This is a very rich and well populated website with considerable useful material. I have also commenced preliminary research on the Livres d’Artistes that I want to include in the exhibition. However I found there was a danger of spreading my limited time in all directions and decided to strictly discipline myself and give priorities to my work. I felt it was important to first do a preliminary flow chart of the AGNSW curating process