It is one of the basic responsibilities of major collections to research and publish the works of art in their care. Such projects can take many years to mature and are often abandoned because of a lack of funding or shifting institutional priorities. It might be imagined, therefore, that because of these threats and the formidable cost of producing specialist and richly illustrated books, that collection catalogues would have become an extinct species. However, happily, a close reading of this Magazine in recent months would suggest otherwise, across a wide range of media and in terms of a broad chronological span.