Where has Old Ken been?

The leaves have fallen from the branches. When visible at all, the sun hangs low in the sky. The fly-tip, once the haunt of many a daring yob or football hooligan, is now boarded up. Even the Polar Bar has affixed dueling inflatable snowmen to its porch roof. Yes, winter is surely on its way. But, where has Old Ken been?

Well, I'd like to think that I'm one to come clean about such things, not to get bogged down in the hussle and bustle—the hurly-burly, if you will—of London life. But sometimes, as Steve Groppi would say, situations develop. Certain "events" (say, Thanksgiving) arise; certain "opportunities" (say, having to present a work-in-progress chat) exist. And, before you know, almost a month has passed without sharing these happenings with the world via that singular communication medium, the blog.

So, friends, here I am back again, just a sittin' and a tappin,' so the song says. But, I'm afraid that what I have to share with you won't be all that interesting unless you're interested in the occult or intellectual history or that stuff they call "art" ... well, come to think about, those topics should interest just about everyone. So, let's hop to it.



The Warburg Institute: let the connotations ripple through your memory banks, as I remind you that over here, they do not attempt a Germanic pronunciation of Warburg. (Along these lines, you should hear how they mangle the name Jose; they simply can't believe there is no "Joe" involved). As we know, the Warburg was the institution built around the library of eclectic scholar Aby Warburg, who fled the Nazis to Britain in the run-up to WWII. Home to intellectual giants like Edgar Wind, Ernst Gombrich, Frances Yates, and many, many more. A proud history, I hear you conceding. But what kind of a place is it now?




Well, before we go much further, I want to make one point crystal clear. That first photograph you see up above: you know, the one with the Art Deco looking building all illuminated through the trees? That is not the Warburg. That is my nemesis—the building that tried to kill me—Senate House Library. Conventional wisdom has it that Senate House Library survived aforementioned WWII unscathed because Hitler had seen it and liked it so much that he designated it as his future personal library in Britain. Thus, the Luftwaffe were instructed not to bomb it. All this rings a bit too painfully true to me, as the building once tried to throw me down a flight of stairs to my bloody end. But, perhaps this is a story for another time.



Now, I had been told that the Warburg is a great place to study. But I had my doubts. The organization of its book collection is famously idiosyncratic. That is, with four floors of books, each level is given over to divisions that made sense to Warburg himself: Image, Action, Word, and Orientation. Thus, as opposed to a standard academic library (especially in the States) where you just find the floor where a given topic is and, with a basic familiarity with the LC categorization, you can find your book in a matter of minutes, the Warburg is a bit more complicated. And wasn't it all just a place of the past—a musty old haunt, filled with the kind of codgers one sees in Manuscripts at the British Library?

In short, Old Ken felt a bit daunted.





Well, after having worked there fairly consistently over the past month, I have to report that I'm sold. The collections are really amazing and, what is more, all of it is open access. There are really amazing early modern books just there on the shelf, ready for the plucking. As it is just around the corner from UCL, the British Library, and the British Museum, there are plenty of places to eat; it's open late three nights a week and open Saturdays; and the people who study there seem much more pleasant than elsewhere. And they have all these weird light cords hanging in the aisles. At first, this seems slightly strange, but it is probably a more effective solution than having to search all around for the hidden light switches (as one has to do at a certain research library at a certain midwest university which will go nameless here).




Not to take things down a notch, but one disadvantage is the bathroom facilities. What you see above is the first floor urinal. I was thinking I might get a bit poetic about how we should imagine Gombrich, Baxandall and co. relieving themselves here. But the fact of the matter is that the place smells like it might not have been cleaned since the '70s. Talk about an elephant house!

Thus, Old Ken's verdict: Warburg Institute—great place to study, lousy place to pee.