Page - 229 - in Der Arkadenhof der Universität Wien und die Tradition der Gelehrtenmemoria in Europa

organisations within which it operates). With- in the academic spatial context, accumulating portraits form a kind of visual archive of an or- ganisation’s leadership, and portrait collections inventory an accumulation of institutional hon- our. The financial barriers alone ensure commis- sioned, painted portraiture remains an elite form for an elite few. If photographs and born-digit- al imagery are ubiquitous, painted portraits are rare. A painted portrait is a privileged utterance. With this portrait, the ‘new’ University of Hert- fordshire signals its occupation of the symbolic territory of the ‘traditional’ university. The mo- tivations for commissioning a portrait are in- extricably linked with tradition – defined here as an active accumulation of heritage assets – but this particular portrait may also be regarded as a public statement of achievement and ambition. That picture is a quite cool but psychologically ac- curate portrait of Tim in a certain circumstance. Many people in the University will recognise it. He’s actually more jovial than that in reality. …As the studies were done, he was thinking about the ser- iousness of the job, the work he’s doing in HE, in terms of the reputation of that work for the coun- try, and how we are exposed all around the world.17 The mnemonic technique of the portrait underscores what has been described as the vic- arious nature of cultural memory; it is a per- formance of an interpersonal encounter between artist and sitter from which the viewer is always excluded, always spectating from the outside af- ter the fact of the process of painting. Yet the painted portrait has often been thought to of- fer a uniquely truthful means of apprehending the subject. The act of gazing upon the portrait allows the viewer a borrowed sensation of rela- tionship to the individual portrayed. The materi- al construction of the portrait, which contains so many hours of skilled labour and so many Fig. 3: UH Art Collections Showcase Gallery. The portrait of Sir Tim Wilson can be seen second from right. Contemporary portrait Commissioning in British Universities 229 17 Interview with Chris McIntyre.