When U.S. art historian Jane Shoaf Turner talks about her latest project, the sheer volume of the thing speaks volumes.
It has 36 books and 30,388 pages, plus 1,081 additional pages for the index. It includes 41,000 articles by 6,802 scholars from 120 countries and 15,000 illustrations.After 14 years, Turner has finally finished editing the new Dictionary of Art. Released on Wednesday, it has been one of the world's biggest publishing projects.
The dictionary cost $51 million to produce. And while it may not be the last word on architecture and fine art, it certainly comes close.
"The statistics set the scene, but when I talk about them the eyes of my audience tend to glaze over after 90 seconds," says Turner, who supervised a staff of about 100, occupying six floors of two London office buildings. "It's been a long haul, but worth it."
With a $9,140 price tag, the dictionary probably won't be found on the bookcases of most homes, but half of the first print run of 6,000 sets has already been sold, mostly to universities and museums, publisher Macmillan says.
Macmillan's chairman, Nicholas Byam Shaw, says he hopes to recoup the dictionary's cost by the year 2007, adding that only a privately owned firm like his could have done it.
"What would shareholders say if you told them the product would take 14 years to make and 11 more years to recoup its costs?" he asked.
The volumes start with Aachen, Germany, and end with Zygouries, a Bronze Age town in Greece.
Biographies of artists range from the American feminist sculptor Judy Chicago to Dat So La Lee, an Indian basket weaver who once worked in Carson City, Nev. Furnituremakers include the likes of Benjamin Randolph of Philadelphia, who made a portable writing desk for Benjamin Franklin on which the Declaration of Independence was drafted.
Every article written before 1994 was returned to its author in 1995 for updating.
"Some authors had died by then so other hands were called in," said Turner, who studied art at New York University and is a specialist in northern European paintings and drawings.
Turner's deputy, Diane Fortenberry of Jackson, Miss., says now that when she agreed to take on the project she wasn't fully aware of what it entailed.