The Baltic Notebooks of Anthony Blunt
Dear Friend,
We invite you to contribute to The Baltic Notebooks of Anthony Blunt, a British art historian and Soviet spy[*]
Anthony Frederick Blunt (26 September 1907, Bournemouth, Hampshire – 26 March 1983, Westminster, London), known as Sir Anthony Blunt, a Knight Commander of Victorian Order between 1956 and 1979, [an] art historian, Professor of the History of Art, University of London and director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, London (1947-74). Blunt was an acclaimed art critic and the Fourth Man of the Cambridge Five, a group of traitors and spies working for the Soviet Union from some time in the 1930s to the early 1950s. – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Blunt
A manuscript currently kept under lock and key in the British Library, closed to the public until around 2009, may or may not shed light on one of the most sphinx-like figures of the British arts establishment. The document, an unfinished memoir by the art-historian Anthony Blunt, was deposited in the British library in 1987, four years after the author's death. It was written as an apologia, just after Blunt's public exposure as a Soviet spy by Margaret Thatcher in 1979, - John-Paul Stonard at http://www.artandarchitecture.org.uk/insight/stonard_blunt.html
. We address you as someone who might use better knowledge of what is out there in the Baltic countries, or what has once been. If Sir Anthony Blunt was alive, he would most likely be the first person to keep his eye on things. Besides, words generate realities and a good wording can free space for good work. Therefore we invite you to send entries to a
GLOSSARY
of terms important, active or in some way relevant to the culture of contemporary art in the Baltics. Those can be expositions of keywords, neologisms, titles, phenomena, gestures, dates, names, addresses, databases, etc., defined in full, by reference, association, their regional meaning or any other instrumental way. As long as you see a connection, the contributions do not have to necessarily deal with art or the Baltics directly. Both new and existing entries, glossaries and their parts are welcome. It will never be exhaustive. You can contribute now or later. Please spread the word. The entries will be published online and updated by way of revision or on demand.
We also invite you to propose a larger project or an article that may not necessarily fit into a glossary slot.
The Baltic Notebooks of Anthony Blunt will occasionally manifest as a printed issue, but will continuously run online at www.blunt.cc. It is an editorial project aimed to mediate, generate and suggest real events.
The Baltic Notebooks of Anthony Blunt supports text, images, sound and video files.
All entries are published in English and original (when it’s other than English) languages when possible.
2009 07 28, Vilnius