Andrea Meyer Ludowisy

The Pringsheim Catalogue and Beyond: Displaced Maiolica, Ghost Catalogues, and the Shaping of Curatorial Expertise and Public Memory

My career centres on the stewardship of cultural heritage, moving naturally from iconographic collections and historical records to specialist libraries. I began in visual and architectural archiving at the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Wellcome Library, establishing a strong foundation in print culture, documentation, and iconography. This path led to over fifteen years as a specialist librarian at the Warburg Institute, the Arcadian Library, and the University of London’s Senate House Library, focusing on European arts and collection history. Supported by an academic background in art history, this trajectory connects directly to my current role as a Research Affiliate at the V&A Research Institute, National Art Library and Archives. Here, my work focuses on the institutional histories and provenance of physical collections.

Selected publications

• “The Collective Unconscious of the University of London’s German Studies Collections.” Angermion, 15, 2022, pp. 171–207.
• “Archive Fever in Exile.” Lecture at Deakin University, Melbourne, 2022.
• “Between the Couch and Two Cultures: William Rose, Psychoanalysis, Translation and the Creation of Cultural Capital by Literary Exiles.” In Cultural Translation and Knowledge Transfer on Alternative Routes of Escape from Nazi Terror, edited by Susanne Korbel and Philip Strobl (Routledge, 2022), pp. 173–197.
• “Redemption through Collecting or Invisibility?” Lecture at German Literature Archive Marbach, 2021.
• “The Case of Curious Collections.” Oxford University, Medieval and Modern Languages Lecture Series, 13 May 2021.