It is a century since the art historian Aby Warburg opened a purpose-built library in Hamburg, in which he stored and catalogued the 44,000 reference books he had acquired since his years as a student. By this point, what started as a personal collection had become a semi-public research institute, complete with state-of-the-art systems for communication and transporting books. The Warburg Institute in London, where the library has been based since 1933, is honouring Warburg’s innovative, encyclopaedic thinking – and marking the library’s centenary – in a playful manner: it has conceived a fictional department that began collecting sound in 1926. The Institute has commissioned the DJ duo Time Is Away and the London-based researchers Sam Dolbear and Esther Leslie to create a sound installation for the institute’s gallery, which has been made to resemble a messy office and archive awash with music and sonic fragments of new historical research (17 June–3 October).
Find out more from the Warburg Institute’s website.
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