The con­cept for the struc­ture of Palimpsest derives from the Renais­sance stu­di­o­lo ‑a small, self-con­tained pri­vate cham­ber with­in a palace or the vest­ment room of a church. These spaces were intend­ed to serve as emblem­at­ic visu­al for­mu­la­tions of a par­tic­u­lar phi­los­o­phy of life, and to com­mend the mutu­al respon­si­bil­i­ties of the indi­vid­ual and the rul­ing pow­ers with­in the urban cul­tur­al con­text My piece offers the view­er, as it did the schol­ar, prince, or priest, a dis­crete van­tage point from which to pon­der the larg­er world ‑an occa­sion, per­haps, for fath­om­ing a sense of order in a par­lous time.

Reviews:
“Immag­i­no Nancy,….girare per Par­ma con la macchi­na fotografi­ca, osser­va­trice soli­taria: il rap­por­to con i seg­ni del­la sto­ria e’ cosi forte da evo­care non solo la cul­tura che ha stu­di­a­to ed ama­to, ma insieme ad essa, il sen­so del pro­prio lavoro, quel­lo del­la vita, la filosofia con cui ha volu­to guardare il mon­do: Par­ma e’ diven­ta­ta cosi, stra­da per stra­da, foto per foto, lo Stu­di­o­lo di Nan­cy Goldring.”

“I can imag­ine Nan­cy, all the Nan­cys I have described (i.e. trav­el­er, pho­tog­ra­ph­er, artist, professor)wandering through Par­ma with her cam­era, a soli­tary observ­er: the rela­tion­ship with the traces of his­to­ry are so pow­er­ful that they evoke not only the cul­ture she has loved and stud­ied, but also a sense of her work, her life, and the phi­los­o­phy which con­di­tions the way she sees the world; Par­ma, then becomes, street by street, pho­to­graph by pho­to­graph the Stu­di­o­lo of Nan­cy Goldring.”
Mas­si­mo d’Alessandro, Pro­fes­sor of Indus­tri­al Design, Uni­ver­si­ty of Rome, Depart­ment of Architecture.

“Goldring’s recom­bi­nant mem­o­ry is more like the mem­o­ry the­atre described by Frances Yates in the Art of Mem­o­ry (1966) in which all the world has its place, its names and depart­ments being attached to rooms, stat­ues and nich­es. In the mind’s eye these rooms form a com­plex net­work, with log­i­cal and illog­i­cal hier­ar­chies con­nect­ing all objects. The mov­ing tem­ple of images on the axis of the stu­di­o­lo promis­es much, bring­ing to life a space where­in this dis­solved world objects and atmos­pheres can col­lide, ani­mat­ing Goldring’s Palimpses­ts with a strange new beau­ty and het­ero­topic poetry.”
David Gra­hame Shane, Adjunct Pro­fes­sor of Archi­tec­ture at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty and Coop­er Union.