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ITHACA, N.Y. (Jan. 31, 2012) - Cornell University Library’s extensive new collection of African-American photographs contains impressive images of iconic leaders of the civil rights movement and world-changing events — but the less momentous moments in black history make up an equally important part of the collection.
 
Among the nearly 2,000 items, recently donated by Beth and Stephan Loewentheil, are images of African Americans going about their regular lives in the 19th and 20th centuries.
 
“Certainly, African Americans were fighting for justice in this country, but at the same time, they were celebrating births and graduations and marriages, mourning deaths, holding family reunions, buying new homes and cars and clothes — the stuff of everyday life,” said Katherine Reagan, curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts. “Those things can be easily overshadowed, but this collection provides a window into the lives of men and women who are so frequently underrepresented in the historical record.”

Images in the collection depict the African-American experience from slavery in the agricultural antebellum South to celebrities of modern media-frenzied America.

“I'm thrilled about the collection for the possibilities it offers for research in African and African American Studies, especially as portraits like those in the new collection are hard to find today in both private and public collections,” said Cheryl Finley, associate professor of art at Cornell. “Images such as these reveal volumes about the social, material, cultural and political lives of the people pictured as well as those who may have lived similar lives or had similar experiences.”

Among the collection’s most memorable images are striking photographs of Martin Luther King Jr. in a jail cell, rare tintypes of freed slaves and personal family photo albums. The photographs also encompass a wide diversity of formats: daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, carte-de-visite photographs, albumen prints, Polaroids and more.

In honor of Black History Month, the Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections will display a sample of the collection in the gallery space between Olin and Kroch libraries on Cornell’s main campus in Ithaca, N.Y. The exhibition will open Wednesday, Feb. 1, and it is free and open to the public.

The collection will soon be open to researchers from all over the world and, Reagan added, “it has a tremendously high research value. It’s a trove of material that will help scholars who are looking for a more comprehensive view of a period that saw enormous changes for people of color in the United States.”

The African-American photographs are the newest component of the Beth and Stephan JD ’75 Loewentheil Family Photographic Collection, a magnificent set of 16,000 historic images that make up a candid cross-section of the early American experience. Many of those photographs are also currently on display on level 2B of the Carl A. Kroch Library as part of the major exhibition, “Dawn’s Early Light: The First 50 Years of American Photography.”

To learn more and see a sampling of the images, visit http://communications.library.cornell.edu/news/afamphotos.

The Library of Congress announced today the acquisition of a rare book to its Thomas Jefferson’s Library. Donated by the United States Naval Observatory, a Latin version of "Sur la Figure de la Terre," written by the 18th-century French mathematician and philosopher Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, will join the more than 6,000 titles already assembled in the collection.

While serving as the American ambassador in Paris in 1789, Jefferson ordered a copy of Maupertuis’ Latin version, "Figura Telluris de Maupertuis," which was published in Leipzig, Germany in 1742. It was one of a number of books he selected from a catalogue issued by bookseller Armand Koenig in Strasburg.

The book was ordered on June 29, 1789, and was sent to Jefferson with a bill from Koenig for £ 2.0.0, dated July 17. Jefferson entered the book without price in his undated manuscript library catalogue.

In 1815, Congress purchased the 6,487 volumes in Jefferson’s collection in order to reestablish the Library of Congress after the burning of the U.S. Capitol by the British during the War of 1812. Of the original volumes that Jefferson had, only about 2,000 remained following another fire on Dec. 24, 1851, that spread through the congressional library housed in the Capitol. These original 2,000 books, plus replacement copies of the other books, constitute a Library exhibition titled "Thomas Jefferson’s Library" (http://myloc.gov/Exhibitions/jeffersonslibrary/Pages/default.aspx). During the past decade, Mark Dimunation, chief of the Library’s Rare Book and Special Collections Division, and his staff have assembled all but about 300 titles that were in Jefferson’s original library.

Over the years, the Library’s own copy of "Figura Telluris de Maupertuis" was lost. The USNO library has two copies of this book - the original French edition printed in 1738 and the Latin version from 1742.

With origins more than 181 years ago, the U.S. Naval Observatory continues to perform an essential operational role for the United States, the Navy and the Department of Defense. Its mission includes determining the positions and motions of the Earth, Sun, Moon, planets, stars and other celestial objects; providing astronomical data; determining precise time; measuring the Earth's rotation; and maintaining the Master Clock for the United States. The USNO’s James M. Gilliss Library was established in 1842. Today it holds more than 80,000 titles and is considered to be one of the world’s premier astronomical libraries.

Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, with nearly 142 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. As the world’s largest repository of knowledge and creativity, the Library is a symbol of democracy and the principles on which this nation was founded. The Library serves the U.S. Congress and the nation both on-site, in its reading rooms on Capitol Hill, and through its award-winning website at www.loc.gov.
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PARIS January 2012 - Sandra Hindman, Ph. D. Owner and President of LES ENLUMINURES, specialists in Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts, Miniatures and Art, has announced that she will expand to New York by opening a new gallery in the penthouse of a townhouse at 23 East 73 Street in May.

“For twenty years we have operated from our main gallery at the Louvre des Antiquaires opposite the Louvre in Paris, and from our offices in Chicago.  Now I feel our growing business will benefit from a more regular presence in New York, which attracts the most important museums and private collectors and where so many exhibitions, fairs, and auctions occur.”

“We know from the people we sell to now that they appreciate the opportunity not just to see our latest acquisitions but also to have the face to face contact with me and my staff.  With an additional gallery in New York we can stage three or four important shows in New York each year in addition to the ones we already mount in our Paris gallery and at the most important international fairs.”

Les Enluminures is a featured exhibitor at many prestigious art and antique fairs including the Winter Antiques Show in New York each January, TEFAF Maastricht each March, the New York Antiquarian Book Fair, the Salon du Dessin in Paris, Masterpiece London, and the Biennale Firenze in the fall.

The opening show at Les Enluminures new gallery in New York will be titled “12 Books of Hours for 2012” and will feature important Books of Hours from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries.

Hindman says, “This exhibition gives us an opportunity to display some of our most important Books of Hours which were “best sellers” during a 300-year period when more Books of Hours were made than any other type of book, even the Bible.  From c. 1250, when the first Books of Hours began to appear, to 1571, when during the Counter-Reformation Pope Pius V prohibited the use of all existing Books of Hours, nearly every European family of a certain means owned at least one Book of Hours.”

“Textually interesting, aesthetically beautiful, Books of Hours survive as rich storybooks from the Middle Ages.  Unlike the Bible, whose text was carefully regulated and whose picture cycle was relatively uniform, each Book of Hours is wholly unique. Every Book of Hours reveals a whole world through its stories.”

Dr. Sandra Hindman is Professor Emerita at Northwestern University, where she twice headed the Art History Department.  A specialist in Gothic and Northern Renaissance Art, it was her years spent studying Medieval manuscripts that sparked her interest in acquiring key pieces, which led to her opening her Paris gallery.
 
She says, “When I worked as an expert for other dealers and handled these manuscripts on a daily basis, I gradually came to realize how coupling my academic knowledge with the purchase and sale of medieval art could lead to a shift in my career.  I feel being a dealer and an academic, for me anyway, are two parts of the same thing, my left arm and my right arm, so to speak.  I still write, publish, and teach, at the same time that I help museums and private collectors find important works for their collections.”

As a result, Les Enluminures is known for its ability to use its expert research capabilities to discover new facts about important Manuscripts and Miniatures.  Most recently that resulted in a six figure sale to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art of a Book of Hours composed late in the reign of Francis I, a manuscript that is now considered to be the only extant Book of Hours with contemporary illumination made for and with a portrait of King Francis I.

American museums and libraries that buy from Les Enluminures include The Metropolitan Museum, The Morgan Library, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, Harvard University Library, Newberry Library, Huntington Library, Princeton University Library, and Columbia University, among many.  Overseas Les Enluminures has sold important works to the Musee de Louvre, The British Museum, the Victoria and Albert, the Musee National du Moyen Age (Musee Cluny), Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the British Library, Bibliothèque Royale, Brussels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague, Musee National de la Renaissance, and the Museum of the Abegg-Stiftung Foundation in Switzerland, as well as many regional libraries and museums in the US and abroad.

Les Enluminures New York gallery is located in an elegant townhouse at 23 East 73 Street just off Madison Avenue.  The seventh floor penthouse space was previously occupied by Trinity Fine Art.  It comprises three rooms and about 1200 square feet. Hindman is familiar with the building, having staged several important shows at C.G. Boerner gallery (one on Pen to Press in January 2010 and one on France 1500 in January 2011).  C.G. Boerner also has its gallery in the townhouse.

“We are delighted to have found an ideal space to showcase important Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts and Illuminations.”
 
The Les Enluminures web site --- www.lesenluminures.com --- includes video “tours” of the space, where Hindman provides background and history on the collections and special exhibitions.  The site offers a dynamic “turn the page” feature to assist with viewing manuscripts, and four separate sections of areas of specialty to make visits by customers more convenient.

Les Enluminures also produces comprehensive catalogues on subjects related to its collections, most recently for its twentieth anniversary year.  Its “20/20 Les Enluminures 1991-2011” catalogue featured twenty important sales of its first two decades and twenty items now on offer.  Another 2011 publication, “Before the King James Bible” was timed to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the first King James Bible.  Dr. Hindman has authored more than ten books in her field and numerous articles on the history of illuminated manuscripts and early printed books.

Hindman is a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, the Syndicat national de la Librariie Ancienne et Moderne, the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, and the Syndicat des Antiquaires.  She is also a long-standing member of many professional organizations; including the College Art Association of America, the Medieval Academy of America, the Historians of Netherlandish Art, and the International Center for Medieval Art.
Hindman adds, “Opening a gallery in New York is an important step in our gallery’s development.  New York is an exciting city for art lovers on many levels, not the least of which is the buzz that attends the many important art exhibitions and shows there.  We are delighted that Les Enluminures will now have a greater presence in New York and look forward to seeing many of our clients, and to meeting new ones too.”
 
LES ENLUMINURES  in New York
23 East 73rd Street
7th floor
New York NY 10021
By appointment or 10am - 6pm during exhibitions
 
LES ENLUMINURES
Les Louvre des Antiquaires,
2 Place du Palais-Royal,  75001 Paris (France)
Tel: +33 1 42 60 15 58
info@lesenluminures.com   www.lesenluminures.com

Washington, DC (Updated January 13, 2012)—Following a two-year renovation, the galleries devoted to impressionism and post-impressionism in the West Building of the National Gallery of Art reopen to the public on January 28, 2012. Among the greatest collections in the world of paintings by Manet, Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin, the Gallery's later 19th-century French paintings will return to public view in a freshly conceived installation design.

"The Gallery's French impressionist and post-impressionist holdings, comprising nearly 400 paintings, are among the most prized in the collection, and rightly so," said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. "While the appearance of these revered rooms has changed very little—preserving the conditions of light, the room proportions, and wall colors that make the Gallery one of the great places to view art in the world—the paintings themselves will be shown in a newly innovative arrangement."

The new installation is organized into thematic, monographic, and art historical groupings. The "new" Paris of the Second Empire and the Third Republic are highlighted through cityscapes by Manet, Renoir, and Pissaro. Showcasing sun-dappled landscapes and scenes of suburban leisure, a gallery of "high impressionism" masterpieces of the 1870s is prominently located off the East Sculpture Hall, including such beloved works as Monet's The Artist's Garden at Vétheuil (1880) and Renoir's Girl with a Hoop (1885). A gallery is devoted to the sophisticated color experiments of late Monet, while Cézanne's genius in landscape, still-life, and figure painting is explored in another. Paintings exemplifying the bold innovations of Van Gogh and Gauguin are displayed along with Degas' later, experimental works in one gallery, followed by a room of canvases by artists such as Delacroix, Renoir, and Matisse celebrating exoticism and the sensual use of color and paint handling. The final gallery is dedicated to the Parisian avant-garde circa 1900: Toulouse-Lautrec, Modigliani, Rousseau, and early Picasso.

The recently acquired Black Rocks at Trouville (1865/1866) by Gustave Courbet will be on view for the first time in the French galleries. Additionally, 13 works have been newly restored. Most of these will be on view in the West Building galleries, including Renoir's sparkling Parisian view of the Pont Neuf (1872), his ever-popular Girl with a Watering Can (1876), Monet's classic Bridge at Argenteuil (1874), and an 1867 portrait of Monet's newborn son Jean in his cradle.

During the two-year period of repair, restoration, and renovation, works normally on view in these galleries were either in storage, on loan, or featured in a special installation—From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection—in the West Building Ground Floor galleries. Some 50 of the greatest works from this collection were included in major exhibitions shown in Houston, Tokyo, and Kyoto.

"A Collection of Collections"
Opened in 1941, the National Gallery of Art is significantly younger than its nationwide competitors—The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art —in this area of collecting. As the nation's art museum, the National Gallery's collection was formed through generous donations from private citizens and has continued to grow to the present day thanks to contributions by numerous collectors and patrons.

The impressionist and post-impressionist collection begins with the 1942 Widener bequest, and reaches a high point with an extraordinary gift from Chester Dale in 1962, which tripled the size of the Gallery's modern French paintings. These works include major masterpieces, such as Cézanne's The Peppermint Bottle (1893/1895), Gauguin's Self-Portrait (1889), Van Gogh's La Mousmé (1888), Degas's Four Dancers (c. 1899), and two of Monet's celebrated views of Rouen Cathedral (1894). Two of their most spectacular acquisitions, made within nine months of each other, were Manet's early masterpiece, The Old Musician (1862), and Picassos' early masterpiece, Family of Saltimbanques (1905). In particular, the Dales gravitated toward figural works, accruing examples by many of the modern masters of portraiture, as well as marvelous female nudes, such as Renoir's Bather Arranging Her Hair (1893) and Odalisque (1870) and Modilgiani's Nude on a Blue Cushion (1917). In accordance with the deed of gift, these great works may never be loaned.

Paul Mellon—son of the Gallery's founding benefactor Andrew Mellon—also avidly collected 19th-century French paintings, influenced by his second wife, Rachel "Bunny" Mellon. Inspired by Dale's example, Mellon expanded upon the the foundation of French modernism that Dale built for the Gallery. While the Dale collection includes Monet's later landscapes, Mellon collected Monet in all genres and across his career, as well as work by important impressionist painters the Dale did not collect, such as Bazille and Caillebotte. Mellon was a great admirer of Cézanne and gave the Gallery seven paintings spanning the artist's career, including the 1991 gift of Boy in a Red Waistcoat (1888­-1890), one of the Gallery's great masterpieces. Mellon was also a devotee of Degas, and his gift of major paintings and sculptures by the master makes the Gallery's Degas collection one of the best in the world.

Paul Mellon's sister Ailsa Mellon Bruce augmented the Mellon family's dedication to the Gallery through her extensive 1969 bequest of great old master and impressionist paintings, by Renoir in particular. Other important donors to this part of the Gallery's collection include the Havemeyer family, W. Averell Harriman, his second wife Marie Norton Whitney Harriman and his third wife Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman, John Hay and Betsy Cushing Whitney, and Eugene and Agnes Ernst Meyer.

Small French Paintings
The Small French Paintings galleries in the East Building, designed to accommodate the extraordinary gift of French paintings from Ailsa Mellon Bruce, are among the most beloved at the Gallery. The works in these rooms have also been part of reconsidering the 19th-century French collection in the West Building. One gallery will feature an installation of prints together with several paintings by Pierre Bonnard, illuminating the way this artist works across the two media. Other groupings include a selection of circa 1800 landscape sketches, impressionist interiors, realist landscapes, a suite of works by Eugène Boudin, and intimate paintings by the artistic brotherhood known as the Nabis.

General Information
The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden are at all times free to the public. They are located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, and are open Monday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The Gallery is closed on December 25 and January 1. For information call (202) 737-4215 or the Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDD) at (202) 842-6176, or visit the Gallery's Web site at www.nga.gov. Follow the Gallery on Facebook at www.facebook.com/NationalGalleryofArt and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ngadc. 

Visitors will be asked to present all carried items for inspection upon entering. Checkrooms are free of charge and located at each entrance. Luggage and other oversized bags must be presented at the 4th Street entrances to the East or West Building to permit x-ray screening and must be deposited in the checkrooms at those entrances. For the safety of visitors and the works of art, nothing may be carried into the Gallery on a visitor's back. Any bag or other items that cannot be carried reasonably and safely in some other manner must be left in the checkrooms. Items larger than 17 by 26 inches cannot be accepted by the Gallery or its checkrooms.

DALLAS, TX - The year 2011 proved to be a great one for Heritage Auctions (HA.com), as the company posted a gross total of more than $806 million, a number that represents the company’s best performance ever.

“The bottom line is that service and value will always sell, and Heritage specializes in the very best of both,” said Greg Rohan, President of Heritage Auctions. “Collectors respond to that. They know us and they know we understand them. The result has been a decade of tremendous growth.”

U.S. Coins continue to be the backbone of the company with the category registering an impressive $196 million auction total, including Weekly US Coin Internet-only auctions, which realized $22 million - a new record for the subset and an 80% increase over 2010 - and Gallery US Coin auctions, which accounted for $5,340,889, another record total for the subset and a 70% increase over 2010.

Heritage’s World Coins category continued to prove itself a juggernaut, with a record total of $39.45 million - an increase of 60% over its 2010 record performance - while the Vintage Comics and Comic Art bore direct witness to the evolution of the category into a true investment quality asset, posting north of $26 million, a 13% improvement over 2010, which had already set the record for any auction house.

“World Coins and Comics are emblematic of Heritage’s continued growth,” said Rohan, “among the several categories that continue to perform well for us. Collectors and investors alike, from some non-traditional corners, are all taking a close look at these categories.”

Heritage Jewelry Auctions continued to see an explosion in sales, ringing up a record $17.4+ million in all (more than double the category’s 2010 record total), Heritage Vintage Sports Collectibles vaulted itself fully double its 2010 total to finish the year at more than $16 million, making it the #1 sports auction house in the U.S.

Fine Wine made its debut at Heritage in 2011 and quickly proved to be a profitable force to be reckoned with as it brought in nearly $11.4 million in total prices realized. Heritage’s continued dominance in Illustration Art was re-asserted by an $11.1 million total, the category’s second best year.

Heritage made the decision in 2010 to spin off its musical instrument auctions from its Music & Entertainment auctions to create a brand new category, which proved to be a smart decision, as collectors lined up for a variety of stringed and other instruments to give the category a $10.5 million debut. The decision also proved a good one for Heritage Music & Entertainment auctions, which, even without Guitars in its total, realized $8.6 million all told, the best year the category’s seen and more than double what it saw in 2010.

One of the year’s most significant changes at Heritage was the acquiring of the assets of Greg Martin Auctions of San Francisco, creating a separate Arms & Armor category for Heritage for the first time. With $9+ million realized in just three auctions, Arms & Armor proved itself a category to watch.

Decorative Arts & Silver also posted its best year ever, with $7.43 million sold at auction, the category’s best year yet by almost double, while Heritage Movie Posters auctions posted an in impressive $6.2+ million total, including $1.8 million in Weekly Internet auctions, a new record for the Web-only offerings and a 15% increase over 2010’s record total. The amount pushed the category lifetime total for Heritage Movie Posters past the $50 million mark since it started in November 2001.

Books have been ranked as number 8 in our 2011 list of the world's most popular collecting categories.

Wikicollecting.org has released its annual list of the most popular collecting related hobbies.

The data is based on the collecting interests of 150,000 collectors in 160 countries around the world.

The 20 most popular collecting areas of 2011 are listed as:

1. Postage stamps
2. Antiques
3. Autographs
4. Memorabilia
                    a. Sports memorabilia
                    b. Music memorabilia
                    c. Space memorabilia
                    d. Film memorabilia
                    e. Royal memorabilia                  
5. Coins
6. Trading cards
7. Art
8. Books
9. Classic cars
10. Comic books
11. Medals
12. Watches
13. Breweriana
14. Furniture
15. Silver
16. Records
17. Photography
18. Figurines
19. Cigarette cards
20. Toy soldiers

The full list comprises 75 collecting categories and is available to view at www.wikicollecting.org

-- About Wikicollecting --
Wikicollecting.org is an open-source encyclopaedia covering all areas of antiques and collectibles.

The site features pages contributed by collectors, experts, and professional dealers, as well as collecting clubs and societies. It currently has readers and contributors in more than 160 countries around the world.

Wikicollecting.org welcomes anyone with an interest in collecting, with the common goal of building a free reference tool for future generations of collectors.
 
The site also offers a free listing service to collecting related dealers and businesses, which allows them to maintain and update their own pages, free of charge.

For further information, please contact:
Info@wikicollecting.org

ORANGE, Calif. - Southern California auctioneer and estate specialist Don Presley is in expansion mode. The floor and storage space at his Orange County gallery will soon increase by 18,000 square feet with the incorporation of recently vacated retail space next door.

“Our previous neighbor needed more room and moved to a larger venue. This worked out great for both of us. My company was also in need of additional space for photography, cataloging and storage, so we annexed the 18,000 square feet available right next door to us. It worked out perfectly,” Presley said.

The Presley facility, located in the city of Orange at 1319 W. Katella Ave., is currently being painted and remodeled. All refurbishments should be completed very shortly.

“This expansion is going to streamline our operation, enable us to accept a larger volume of merchandise and allow my team to work on a timetable that’s two months ahead of each sale,” said Presley. “We’ll also have plenty of room for our new series of monthly Discovery sales, which we will launch on January 21st. These sales will provide an auction outlet for new and used estate furniture, office furnishings and other items that aren’t suitable for our antiques and fine art auctions,” Presley said.

Typically, there will be 500 to 1,000 lots in each of Presley’s Saturday Discovery sales. A live preview will precede each of the sales, and absentee and phone bids will be accepted. “We won’t have Internet live bidding for these sales only because of the nature of the merchandise. Some of the items, like appliances, would be difficult to ship.”

Many box lots will be included in Presley’s new monthly sales. “That’s where you make your discoveries, digging through boxes to see what someone else overlooked. We think bidders and bargain hunters will find these sales interesting and exciting,” Presley said.

For additional information, call Don Presley at 714-633-2437 or e-mail info@donpresleyauction.com. Visit the company online at www.donpresleyauction.com.

PASADENA, CA; January 4, 2012 - PBS today unveiled a new competition series from the producers of ANTIQUES ROADSHOW: MARKET WARS (w.t.), a 20-episode series, airing summer/fall 2012, that gives audiences a lesson in the bare-knuckles business of scoring a bargain. In each one-hour episode, professional antiques dealers put their reputations on the line — as they’re pitted against the clock, a budget and each other — and embark on nationwide treasure hunts, scouring flea markets and antiques shops for vintage valuables. The goal: to score the biggest profit in each show’s final auction segment.
 
“ANTIQUES ROADSHOW has been the leader in the popular antiques and collectibles genre for a long time,” said Marsha Bemko, ANTIQUES ROADSHOW executive producer. “MARKET WARS turns its lens on the antiques experts themselves and the real, rough-and-tumble competition they face in the marketplace.”

In each episode, four antiques professionals compete head-to-head, foraging for items and taking them to auction. MARKET WARS follows the experts on their pursuits, highlighting the marvels that different areas of the country can offer the intrepid antiques hunter. The expert who makes the highest total profit at auction in each episode is named the winner, earning bragging rights for toppling his peers. With affectionate humor, MARKET WARS follows the combatants, gleaning the best tactics from the battlefield and arming viewers to pursue their own successful treasure hunts.

“PBS continues to implement our primetime strategy to bring viewers new shows paired with other like-minded content,” said John F. Wilson, senior vice president & chief TV programming executive. “We’ve had great success pairing natural history and science programming on Wednesday nights. We’re confident that pairing MARKET WARS and ANTIQUES ROADSHOW will even more firmly anchor Monday nights as a popular viewing destination for exploration and history.”

About WGBH

WGBH Boston is the largest producer of PBS content for TV and the Web, including Antiques Roadshow (PBS’s most-watched program), Masterpiece, Nova, Frontline, American Experience, Arthur, Curious George (the No. 1 show on TV for preschoolers), Martha Speaks and other signature programs “produced in Boston, shared with the world” and enjoyed on platforms from televisions to tablets to mobile devices. WGBH also is a major source of programs for public radio (including The World), a leader in educational multimedia (including PBS LearningMedia, a free online service providing the nation’s educators with curriculum-based digital content to meet 21st-century learners’ needs), and a pioneer in technologies and services that make media accessible to the 36 million Americans who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind or visually impaired. WGBH has been recognized with hundreds of honors: Emmys, Peabodys, duPont-Columbia Awards…even two Oscars. Find more information at www.wgbh.org.

About PBS

PBS, with its nearly 360 member stations, offers all Americans the opportunity to explore new ideas and new worlds through television and online content. Each month, PBS reaches 124 million people through television and 20 million people online, inviting them to experience the worlds of science, history, nature and public affairs; to hear diverse viewpoints; and to take front row seats to world-class drama and performances. PBS’ broad array of programs has been consistently honored by the industry’s most coveted award competitions. Teachers of children from pre-K through 12th grade turn to PBS for digital content and services that help bring classroom lessons to life. PBS’ premier children’s TV programming and its website, pbskids.org, are parents’ and teachers’ most trusted partners in inspiring and nurturing curiosity and love of learning in children. More information about PBS is available at www.pbs.org, one of the leading dot-org websites on the Internet, or by following PBS on Twitter, Facebook or through our apps for mobile devices.

Specific program information and updates for press are available at pbs.org/pressroom or by following PBS Pressroom on Twitter.
Contacts: 
Judy Matthews, WGBH Boston
617-300-5343
judy_matthews@wgbh.org
Carrie Johnson, PBS
703-739-5129
cjohnson@pbs.org





LOS ANGELES—The Getty Research Institute (GRI) announced today two complementary acquisitions concerning the artist and photographer Man Ray (b. Emmanuel Radnitzky, American, 1890-1976). 



“These archival materials, photographs, and published works are important additions to the collections at the Getty Research Institute,” said Thomas Gaehtgens, director of the Getty Research Institute. “Taken together with the substantial holdings of the artist’s work in the Getty Museum’s Department of Photographs, they make the Getty the premier North American repository for collections on Man Ray.”



Adding to the GRI’s already significant Man Ray holdings, these two acquisitions, from different private sources, unearth unique and rarely studied material on the artist. One comprises an archive of manuscripts, correspondence, publications, photographs, ephemera, and art works concerning the artist and his wife, Juliet Man Ray, which were assembled by their longtime friends Michael and Elsa Combe-Martin. The agendas from 27 years of the artist’s career, covering 1923-40, 1951-58, and 1971, are the highlight of this collection. The illustrated agendas or calendar books that were kept by the expatriate artist during the 1920s and 1930s in Paris, when he was associated with the Dada and Surrealist groups, document his near-daily encounters and appointments with friends and colleagues such as Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, André Breton, and Lee Miller. Including professional appointments, tasks, details of shoots, and circumstances of printing, they offer a fascinating view of Man Ray’s prolific activities as a photographer as well as intriguing glimpses of his personal life.



“Nearly every day Man Ray met with interesting people, made observations about the world around him and created art,” said Marcia Reed, chief curator at the Getty Research Institute. “The personal diaries, ephemera, and photographs in these collections span four decades of his artistic life, creating an unrivaled opportunity to learn more about Man Ray and his circle.

”

The agendas are joined by 51 vintage and modern photographic prints by Man Ray, dating from the 1920s to the 1970s, of prominent people including T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Elsa Schiaparelli, Virginia Woolf, Paul Eluard, and Marcel Duchamp on his death bed, as well as photographs of Man Ray alone or with Juliet, and with artists such as Max Ernst and Pablo Picasso. The collection also includes objects made by Man Ray, such as a wooden cigar box with a drawing of a bird, given to the Combe-Martins on New Year’s 1969; a miniature portrait of a lady with a moustache added by Man Ray; and a brass seal of embossed lips. Disembodied lips appear as a motif in Man Ray’s paintings, and the agendas also include drawings of lips.



The second acquisition is a special-edition portfolio of photographs, La Traversée du Grand Verre, by the Italian photographer Gianfranco Baruchello (b. Rome, 1924). Created by Baruchello in 1995, the faux-bois and embossed leather portfolio designed by Jean-Luc Mercié holds eight black and white photographs of Man Ray’s close friend, artist Marcel Duchamp, inspecting his monumental work, The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1966. This portfolio is accompanied by a unique illustrated Pepys Westminster diary that Man Ray purchased in London in 1953 and used until 1959.



The diary includes handwritten comments in which the artist speculates on various aspects of the art world, with highly pertinent and revealing remarks about his great friend Duchamp. Baruchello’s portfolio holds an additional photograph of Duchamp dedicated to the collector Daniel Filipacchi.



Man Ray used the diary to jot down notes and thoughts, including many aphoristic texts that showcase his wit and his musings on life and art. For example, Man Ray wrote, “there are two reasons for disliking a work—first because it is not understood, second because it is understood.” He also once mused, “I shall always oppose the cauliflower with the artichoke. The cauliflower is like a brain. The artichoke is a green rose—with a heart.

”

These acquisitions join a significant number of Man Ray’s letters, manuscripts, and other materials already in the GRI’s collection as well as more than 300 photographs, including rayographs and solarized prints, from the 1910s through the 1960s by Man Ray in the Getty Museum’s collection—one of the most significant collections of Man Ray’s photography outside France and a core element of the Getty’s first photography acquisitions.




About Man Ray


Man Ray was an American photographer, painter and filmmaker who lived and worked in France for much of his life. He was born Emmanuel Radnitsky in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1890 and grew up in New Jersey, becoming a commercial artist in New York in the 1910s. He began to sign his name Man Ray in 1912, although his family did not change its surname to Ray until the 1920s. He initially taught himself photography in order to reproduce his own works of art, which included paintings and mixed media. In 1921 he moved to Paris and set up a photography studio to support himself. There he began to make photograms, which he called "Rayographs." In the 1920s, he also began making moving pictures. Man Ray's four completed films—Return to Reason, Emak Bakia, Starfish, and Mystery of the Chateau of Dice—were all highly creative, non-narrative explorations of the possibilities of the medium.



After the onset of World War II, Man Ray returned to the United States and lived in Los Angeles from 1940 until 1951. He was disappointed that he was recognized only for his photography in America and not for the filmmaking, painting, sculpture, and other media in which he worked. In 1951 Man Ray returned to Paris, where he concentrated primarily on painting until his death in 1976.

Amy Hood
Getty Communications
(310) 440-6427
ahood@getty.edu

Asheville, NC--December 14, 2011. Biblio.com, one of the world's leading marketplaces for new, used and rare books, announced today that it has launched a new tool to help booksellers and customers negotiate prices on select fine and collectible books.

The new program is called Make-an-Offer. With hundreds of booksellers already participating in the launch of this new tool, customers can browse several thousand books listed on Biblio.com and engage in a direct negotiation without the pressure or crowd of an online auction.

“Biblio was inspired to create this new tool by the way the negotiations occur between customers and booksellers in brick and mortar shops and antiquarian book shows," says Stephen Bakes, Director of Biblio's Bookseller Relations. "The ability for a bookseller to offer special pricing on a book for that particular customer is often the difference between a potential customer silently walking away from a book and a bookseller earning the trust of a new customer."

The process is designed with customer usability in mind. Customers click on the "Make An Offer" button where applicable, and can name their price and a time-frame in which the bookseller can then accept, reject or counter the offer. Both the customer and the bookseller are notified by email throughout the transaction. Biblio.com can offer support and assistance when necessary, but, Bakes notes, this is rarely an issue. The bookseller and customer can quickly come to an agreement or walk away.

"Biblio's Make-an-Offer brings internet book sales one step closer to face-to-face transactions," says Stephen Bakes, Director of Biblio's Bookseller Relations.

Biblio.com

Biblio.com is one of the world's leading sources for used, new and rare books. Established in 2003, Biblio.com has grown to become one of the largest global book marketplaces, with over 60 million books for sale from 6000 bookstores and booksellers in countries around the world. Biblio.com is wholly owned and operated by Biblio, Inc., a privately held company with a commitment to a triple bottom line. For more information, please visit http://www.biblio.com.
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Syracuse University Library is pleased to announce the acquisition of the personal papers of the flamboyant and trend-setting architect Morris Lapidus. Lapidus, who died in 2001, is perhaps best known for hotels like the Fontainebleau, Americana, and Eden Roc in Miami Beach, buildings which embodied the growth of leisure in American life during the 1950s and 1960s. The Fontainebleau has served as a backdrop for variety of iconic scenes in American film, including the James Bond thriller "Goldfinger" (1964). Most of Lapidus’ buildings exhibited a mélange of historical styles—French provincial, Italian, and Baroque—and anticipated the post-modernism of later architects.

Lapidus was born in Odessa, Russia in 1902, but his family immigrated to the United States soon thereafter. As a wide-eyed youth, he marveled at the splendor of Coney Island and he would later impart a similar spirit of excess to his work as an architect. That spirit would place him at odds with his function-minded modernist peers. However, contrary to the editor’s choice of title for his 1996 autobiography, Too Much is Never Enough, Lapidus was interested less in hedonism than he was in a “quest for emotion and motion in architecture.”

Frustrated by his sometimes antagonistic relationship with the architectural establishment, Lapidus destroyed many of his firm’s records when he retired in 1984. However, he retained a core collection of especially valuable papers that he entrusted with his last collaborator and confidant, architect Deborah Desilets.  The archive includes a large collection of photographs dating to the 1920s, conceptual drawings, manuscript drafts of his written works, and correspondence with his long-time friend, mystery writer Ellery Queen.

Desilets approached Syracuse, which has held a small Lapidus collection since 1967, and a gift of the material was finalized in December. Speaking of her decision to place the archive with Syracuse, Desilets says, "The archive is an extremely important missing link in the discourse on Lapidus’ influence on twentieth century architecture. I am thrilled to place it in such a distinguished research institution, where it will be available for use by generations of students and scholars."

In Syracuse’s Special Collections Research Center, the Lapidus archive will reside in one of the most important mid-century modern collections in the country. Among the other architects represented are Marcel Breuer, William Lescaze, and Richard Neutra, as well as designers like Russel Wright and Walter Dorwin Teague.

The university is also home to a top-ranked School of Architecture. Faculty member Jon Yoder offered this assessment of the Lapidus archive’s value for teaching and research: “The recent proliferation of architect-designed boutique hotels, coupled with the pervasive disciplinary focus on architectural effects, suggests that Lapidus was indeed one of the most influential architects of the twentieth century.  This acquisition of his personal archive comes as welcome news to designers and scholars who are finally beginning to reassess the lavish contributions of this much-maligned architect across a surprisingly broad spectrum of design disciplines.”

For more information, please contact Sean Quimby, Senior Director of Special Collections at 315.443.9759 or smquimby@syr.edu.

NEW YORK, NY--Nine institutions in New York City and Westchester have been awarded grant funding to support a range of digitization projects designed to expand access to important collections of historical and rare materials. Recipients of the 2011 Digital METRO New York (DMNY) grants, totaling over $78,000, were announced today by the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO).
 
Libraries, archives, and other research organizations selected to receive METRO digitization grants this year include the American Jewish Historical Society, the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Center for Jewish History, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Frick Art Reference Library, Brooklyn Museum, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and the New York Botanical Garden. Awardees were chosen based on a rigorous application and review process designed to identify initiatives that would have the strongest impact on research and access to vital materials from important collections in the New York area.
 
“This year’s digitization grant recipients truly represent the diversity of METRO’s membership, and I am confident that their collaborative projects will enhance the growing collection of online resources in our area,” said Jason Kucsma, METRO’s Executive Director.
 
DMNY funding is available to eligible members of METRO through a competitive application and project review process. The projects selected for the 2011/2012 grant cycle reflect the breadth and depth of special collections in the metropolitan New York region. Following are the libraries and projects selected for 2011 METRO collaborative digitization grants:
 
    •    Early New York Synagogue Archives; the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, American Jewish Historical Society, Center for Jewish History
    •    Art Resources from the Mid-20th Century: Digitized Highlights from the Libraries of Hilla Rebay and Juliana Force; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art
    •    Documenting the Gilded Age: New York City Exhibitions at the Turn of the 20th Century (Phase 2); Frick Art Reference Library, Brooklyn Museum
    •    Views of Bronx Park: Collaborative Project to Digitize the Postcards of the Bronx Zoo and the New York Botanical Garden; Wildlife Conservation Society, New York Botanical Garden
 
“With METRO’s support, the Guggenheim and Whitney Museums will be able to make unique historical resources held by both of our institutions widely available for the first time,” said Francine Snyder, Project Manager for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art.
 
“Providing online access to these historically significant materials will allow scholars, theologians, sociologists, urban demographers, genealogists and historians to study synagogue life and the life of the Jewish community in New York City before and during a key time period of great Jewish immigration to the United States and in modern American history,” said Naomi Steinberger, Project Manager for the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary’s collaboration with the American Jewish Historical Society and the Center for Jewish History.
 
Since 2005, METRO’s DMNY program has distributed over $530,000 to help fund 37 projects at more than 49 METRO member institutions. Managed by METRO, Digital Metro New York supports the implementation of digitization projects among METRO member libraries and archives. METRO lends vital additional support for digitization projects through specialized education and training programs and opportunities for “digitally ready” libraries to share expertise and best-practice digitization strategies.
 
METRO’s digitization program is supported by funds from the New York State Regional Bibliographic Database Program. For more information about METRO’s involvement in digitization projects, visit http://bit.ly/dkbS1k.
 
About METRO
 
The Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) is a non-profit organization working to develop and maintain essential library services throughout New York City and Westchester County. METRO's service is developed and delivered with broad input and support from an experienced staff of library professionals, the organization's member libraries, an active board of trustees, government representatives and other experts in research and library operations.
 
As the largest reference and research resources (3Rs) library council in New York State, METRO members reflect a wide range of special, academic, archival and public library organizations. In addition to training programs and support services, METRO also works to bring members of the New York City and Westchester County library communities together to promote ongoing exchanges of information and ideas.

PARIS Nov 23 - When Medieval and Renaissance art dealer Sandra Hindman of Galerie Les Enluminures in Paris purchased the “Hours of King Francis I” at the widely publicized July 7, 2010 sale of illuminated manuscripts and printed books forming part of the Arcana Collection (Part I) at Christie’s in London she was convinced that the manuscript was much more important than the auction catalogue or previous articles acknowledged.  Her instincts were right and now the Paris and Chicago-based gallery has sold the manuscript for an undisclosed price to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

At the Christie’s auction, the Hours of King Francis I, previously on deposit at the British Library, fetched £337,250 (about $540,000), against a low estimate of £ 300,000.
 
Hindman says, “King Francis I, the patron of the royal manuscript, was the quintessential Renaissance monarch, the founder of the Louvre, and the patron of Leonardo da Vinci.   My colleague Ariane Bergeron-Foote (archiviste-paléographe) and I knew that by virtue of its art and patronage this lavishly illustrated Book of Hours ranked high among the great treasures of illumination.”

“Auction houses do their best to understand each piece of art they sell but no one had really applied the weeks and months of research needed to expand on the corpus of knowledge about this particular Book of Hours. We decided we would do that and we launched a full-scale investigation.”

In Latin, the Hours of Francis I (Book of Rome) is an illuminated manuscript on parchment that includes 18 large miniatures and one historical initial by the Master of Francois de Rohan (Paris, active c1525-1546).

“Early on we confirmed that this was the only extant Book of Hours with a contemporary illumination actually made for King Francis I - an element not stressed in the auction catalogue,” Hindman says.

Hindman and Bergeron-Foote next set out to explain more fully why the King’s portrait faces such a rare text, the prayers to an unusual saint, Saint Marcoulf.  Veneration before Saint Marcoulf enabled the King to cure a rare skin disease among his subjects.  Hindman and Bergeron-Foote found that the prayers were probably written specifically for the King and appear only for the second time in this manuscript.  They further uncovered records of the King exercising these miraculous powers in his public appearances just around the time that the manuscript was illuminated.

“Most extraordinary, however,” Hindman says, “Is that as we combed the published literature and the archives, we discovered a key document that records that the “escripvain du roy” (or “king’s scribe) Jean Mallard was paid for writing a Book of Hours for Francis I at the end of 1538, when he delivered it to the king to be illuminated.  Following a disagreement with King Francis I, Mallard left France shortly thereafter to join the employ of King Henry VIII of England.  Scrupulous comparison between Mallard’s signed Psalter of Henry VIII, dated 1540, and the Hours of Francis I reveals close similarities in script, decoration, and even layout. The Hours of Francis I thus turns out to be a sort of sister manuscript of the celebrated royal Psalter of Henry VIII, penned by the same hand.”

Hindman adds that, “For the twenty years I have been in business I have always sought to apply the best expertise I can to unearth new information about the prized artworks I acquire.  I’m trained as an art historian and worked all my life as a professor, after all, and that’s what we do:  thoroughgoing research.  Now I apply the same principles to my business.  My willingness to invest my staff’s time, and to retain outside experts when  needed, truly adds to the relationships I have built with major museums, libraries, universities and private clients.  We rarely sell a work of art before ‘getting to the bottom of the story’ as it were.”

Photographs from the Francis I Book of Hours are currently available using the technology of “Turning the Pages” on the website of Les Enluminures:  http://www.medievalbooksofhours.com.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (The King Center) and Syracuse University announce The King Center Audio and Visual Digitization Project, a collaboration that will ensure that the slain civil rights leader’s legacy will be preserved for generations to come. Working with the Atlanta-based King Center, SU will preserve and digitize some 3,500 hours of audio and video footage of King.

“I am pleased to announce that The King Center has joined with Syracuse University for The King Center Audio and Visual Digitization Project,” says Martin Luther King III, president and CEO of the center. “This endeavor will enable people to see and hear my father deliver his message as he did more than 50 years ago, and preserve it for generations to come. With the generous support and encouragement of my dear friends Sam and Carol Nappi, and the technical expertise of the University, we are continuing to fulfill the mission of The King Center as the official living memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and ensuring that his work toward freedom, justice and equality is as relevant today as ever.”

The King Center archive is the largest repository of primary source material on King and America’s civil rights movement in the world. Its collections include footage that few, including some members of the King family, have ever seen or heard. The center houses a number of unique holdings, like raw footage from various productions over the years. A 16 mm film of King speaking in Syracuse in July 1961 was also discovered. The speech explores many of the themes that would emerge in his landmark 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech. The film at The King Center appears to be the only extant copy. There are also a large number of unlabeled reels and canisters that may contain undiscovered footage.

To execute the project with the technical expertise of the Syracuse University Library, SU trustee Sam Nappi and his wife, Carol, have given their financial support to realize this venture.  “This project is very special to me and Carol. It is a humbling experience to help preserve the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and empower The King Center to extend its mission to a new generation. It is also gratifying to join with my friend, Martin Luther King III, and Syracuse University to exclusively digitize and preserve historic audio and film of Dr. and Mrs. King,” says Sam Nappi, who is also a King Center trustee.

Challenges always present themselves in the preservation of historical media of the kind housed at The King Center, established by King's widow, Coretta Scott King, in 1968. At almost 50 years old, even under the best care, excessive exposure to light, humidity and inconsistent temperature levels can be factors that contribute to the degradation of original media materials. The SU campus is home to the Belfer Audio Archive, now the fourth largest sound archive in the United States. The specially designed, climate-controlled facility makes SU a leader in the preservation of historical recorded sound.

The partnership was set in motion during an April meeting when Martin Luther King III and U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young visited the SU campus. It was then that Suzanne Thorin, dean of libraries and University librarian, and Sean Quimby, senior director of the Special Collections Research Center, introduced the guests to some of the library’s most valued possessions, including letters written by
Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington and Malcolm X. They also played an audio file of veteran journalist Mike Wallace interviewing King. The conversation shifted very quickly to the world of media preservation.

The Nappis’ gift will be used to construct and staff a moving-image preservation laboratory in SU Library. Quimby will lead the three-year project and supervise a team that includes a media archivist, digitization technicians and student interns. According to Quimby, “We intend to build upon our existing expertise in preserving and digitizing historical sound recordings.” The library’s Belfer Audio
Archive is among the nation’s pre-eminent sound archives and pioneered the preservation and digitization of Edison wax cylinders. The library team will catalog, repair and digitize a wide array of media, including reel-to-reel audiotape, 16 and 35 mm film, and a variety of obsolete video formats, for listening and viewing at The King Center.

"There is a proud tradition of inclusiveness and social justice at Syracuse University," says Thorin. "Our partnership with The King Center honors that tradition. I am excited that our library has been selected for such an important task."

The Special Collections Research Center of Syracuse University Library collects primary source material in a variety of media, including manuscript, print, illustration, photography, recorded sound and moving image, which support and enhance research and scholarship. Collections range in date from cuneiform tablets dating to 2000 BC to the “born-digital.”

The King Center envisions a world where the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr., are embraced by men and women of all colors and creeds, and regardless of culture or political philosophy. It is devoted to ensuring that his work toward freedom, justice and equality continues in the 21st century. Realizing that dream will require a new generation of change makers devoted to principles of nonviolence and personal empowerment, as well leaders from across sectors who believe, as King did, that poverty, injustice and war must be rendered
obsolete.

Sean M. Quimby
Senior Director of Special Collections
Special Collections Research Center │ Belfer Audio Archive
Syracuse University Library
t. 315.443.9759 │w. scrc@syr.edu

Philadelphia, PA October 26, 2011. Erica Armstrong Dunbar, an associate professor of history at the University of Delaware, has been named the first Director of the Library Company's Program in African American History. Professor Dunbar specializes in African American life and culture from 1619 to1865. She received a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1994 and a doctoral degree from Columbia University in 2000. Professor Dunbar's book A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City (Yale University Press) is based in part on research she conducted in the Library Company's collections as a fellow. Says Library Company Director John Van Horne, "We are genuinely excited to have a distinguished scholar with strong ties to this institution providing leadership for this important Program."

The Program in African American History, established in 2007 with a grant from The Albert M. Greenfield Foundation, brings together scholars and interested members of the public to explore every aspect of the experience of people of African descent in the Americas from the beginnings of European colonization through 1900. Professor Dunbar will provide direction for the fellowships, conferences, exhibitions, publications, public programming, teacher training, and acquisitions through which the Library Company advances scholarship in African American History and shares this knowledge with the broader public. A new website for the Program that has detailed information about these initiatives is at http://www.librarycompany.org/paah/.

The Program's Director is supported by an Advisory Council whose distinguished members include the Rev. David M. Brown, Murray Dubin, Robert F. Engs, Oliver St. Clair Franklin, Annette Gordon-Reed, Autumn Adkins Graves, Tanya Hall, Emma Lapsansky-Werner, Louis Massiah, Randall M. Miller, Barbara Savage, Arthur Sudler, Diane D. Turner, Linn Washington, and William Earl Williams.

Afro-Americana Collection at the Library Company The Library Company houses one of the nation's most important collections of African American literature and history before 1900. Comprising more than 13,500 titles and 1,200 images from the mid-16th to the late-19th centuries, the Afro-Americana holdings include books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, broadsides, and graphics documenting slavery and abolitionism in the New World; the printed works of Black individuals and organizations; descriptions of African American life throughout the Americas; and the exploration and colonization of Africa.

For more than forty years, the Afro-Americana collections of the Library Company have helped nurture and sustain rich scholarship that has added dramatically to our knowledge and understanding of that experience. In the late 1960s as scholars and researchers, inspired by the civil rights movement, began to foreground the significant roles played by African Americans in the country's founding and development, they discovered a trea-sure trove of material in the stacks of the Library Company. Beginning as an organic response to the reading interests of the Library Company's earliest patrons-such as members of the Abolitionist Society who wanted to keep up with current anti-slavery discourse the Afro-Americana collections have become an institutional priority for acquisition, conservation, exhibition, and research support.

Curator of African American History Phil Lapsansky, who has served in that capacity since 1971, has made significant contributions to the development of the larger discipline over that time, as well as helping to shape the Library Company's acquisitions, exhibitions, and programming. Mr. Lapsansky will retire in 2012.

Library Company Partnership with the University of Georgia Press
In a significant enhancement to the Program in African American History, the Library Company has formed a partnership with the University of Georgia Press to support Race in the Atlantic World, 1700-1900, a series of books focused on racial aspects of transatlantic history. The first book under the new partnership will be Eva Sheppard Wolf's Almost Free: A Story about Family and Race in Antebellum Virginia, to be published in spring 2012. Professor Dunbar, who will serve on the editorial advisory board for the series, believes that "this partnership provides a critical platform for disseminating the research that will be conducted at the Library Company by our Fellows, and we are very pleased to be associated with such a distinguished press and well-established series."

The Race in the Atlantic World, 1700-1900 series was created by the University of Georgia Press in 2006 and is edited by Richard Newman, Patrick Rael, and Manisha Sinha. Nine books already have been published in the series, including work by established authors such as Philip Morgan, Marcus Wood, Afua Cooper, and Vincent Carretta. The series also has featured first books by an international cohort of emerging scholars including Gale Kenny, Jeannette Jones, and Mischa Honeck.

About the Library Company of Philadelphia
The Library Company of Philadelphia is an independent research library concentrating on American history and culture from the 17th through 19th centuries. Free and open to the public, the Library Company houses an extensive non-circulating collection of rare books, manuscripts, broadsides, ephemera and works of art. The mission of the Library Company is to preserve, interpret, make available, and augment the valuable materials within our care. We serve a diverse constituency throughout Philadelphia and the nation, offering comprehensive reader services, an internationally renowned fellowship program, an online public access catalog, and regular exhibitions and public programs. Located at 1314 Locust Street, Philadelphia, it is open to the public free of charge from 9:00 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Monday through Friday. The Library Company can be found online at www.librarycompany.org.

AUSTIN, Texas — The personal archive of publisher, author and artist Fleur Cowles has been donated to the Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin.

In 1950, Cowles published Flair magazine, a work known for its provocative design, enlightened articles and sophisticated advertising layouts. Published from February 1950 to January 1951, the magazine’s one-year run left an indelible mark on publishing history.

Cowles (1908-2009) and her husband, Tom Meyer, had a longstanding relationship with the Ransom Center, which led to the creation of the Fleur Cowles Endowment in 1992. The endowment supports a graduate internship program, the biennial Fleur Cowles Flair Symposium, research fellowships and a replica of Cowles’s study from her Albany residence in London.

The archive contains Cowles’s correspondence, manuscripts, galleys, research material, albums, books, press clippings and photographs.

With Flair, Cowles prescribed a rich mix of works from writers, artists, critics and other notables, including Tennessee Williams, W.H. Auden, Simone de Beauvoir, Salvador Dalí, Jean Cocteau, Rufino Tamayo and Gypsy Rose Lee. The heart of Flair was its success in pulling together the new, the controversial, the innovative and the creative.

“Fleur was very interested in the Ransom Center and our aim to bring together literary and artistic achievements of the 20th century,” said Thomas F. Staley, director of the Center. “Fleur’s archive documents many of her efforts to merge literature and art through her wide-ranging relationships and creative endeavors.”

In addition to her work in publishing, Cowles was an author and artist. She wrote more than 15 books, including collections of autobiographical anecdotes such as “Friends & Memories” and “All Too True,” and an authorized biography of Dalí.

Cowles’s paintings, filled with animals and flowers, first received international recognition at the São Paulo Biennale in 1965. She exhibited her artwork more than 40 times in galleries and museums around the world. The Ransom Center already held some of Cowles’s artwork, which is on display in the Center’s Fleur Cowles Room.

The materials will be accessible once processed and cataloged. High-resolution press images are available.
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REYKJAVIK, ICELAND - (19.10.2011) - Last week, the City of Reykjavik was introduced as UNESCO City of Literature at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2011 where Iceland was the Guest of Honour. The program took place in the Icelandic pavilion, where Icelandic readers were featured on large video screens accompanied by images of Icelandic nature.

Jon Gnarr, The Mayor of Reykjavik, spoke about his own belief in the importance of literature, explaining that it is the mirror in which we can see our souls. After his speech, writer Petur Gunnarsson talked about his newly published book Mein Reykjavik, where he guides the reader through his literary Reykjavik, giving examples from poems and other texts by Icelandic authors.

In addition, both Gnarr and Gunnarsson joined Einar Orn Benediktsson, Chair of Reykjavik City Committee of Culture and Tourism, in reciting German translations of famous Icelandic poems, to which they received great feedback from the audience.  

Furthermore, Gnarr and Peter Ripken of ICORN (International Cities of Refuge Network) signed an agreement making Reykjavik a City of Refuge for persecuted writers; the first writer is expected to arrive in Reykjavik in November.

Helge Lunde, the Director of ICORN, said, “This is a great achievement and a major breakthrough for our organisation. The acclaimed writer and President of Icelandic PEN Sjon took the initiative, and the municipality actively embraced the idea of becoming an ICORN city of refuge. We believe that Reykjavik will play an important role in the future development of ICORN.”

More information about Reykjavik UNESCO City of Literature can be found at www.cityofliterature.is.

Washington, DC—Following a two-year renovation, the galleries devoted to impressionism and post-impressionism in the West Building of the National Gallery of Art will reopen to the public on January 29, 2012. Among the greatest collections in the world of paintings by Manet, Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin, the Gallery's later 19th-century French paintings will return to public view in a freshly conceived installation design.

"The Gallery's French impressionist and post-impressionist holdings, comprising nearly 400 paintings, are among the most prized in the Gallery, and rightly so," said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. "A world-class collection of this caliber results from the generosity of many donors, from the 1942 Widener bequest that brought the Gallery its first impressionist paintings to other treasured works of art, received primarily through gifts large and small."

The installation is organized into thematic, monographic, and art historical themes, including the "new" Paris of the Second Empire and the Third Republic; "high impressionism" of the 1870s marked by sun-dappled landscapes and scenes of suburban leisure; the fantastic, sophisticated color experiments of late Monet; Cézanne's genius in landscape, still-life, and figure painting; the bold innovations of Van Gogh and Gauguin; and the Parisian avant-garde circa 1900: Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Modigliani, and Rousseau. Text panels in many of the galleries will suggest the ideas behind these groupings, and new audio-tour stops will further help orient the visitor.

Opened in 1941, the National Gallery of Art is significantly younger than its competitors in this collecting area (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Musée d'Orsay, Paris). The Gallery boasts major masterpieces from the Chester Dale Collection, which in accordance with the deed of gift in 1962 may never be loaned. These include Manet's Old Musician, Cézanne's The Peppermint Bottle, Gauguin's Self-Portrait, Van Gogh's La Mousmé, Degas's Four Dancers, two of Monet's celebrated views of Rouen Cathedral, and Picasso's Family of Saltimbanques. They join other great works of French art, given to the Gallery by the Mellon family and other donors, including Manet's The Railway and Plum Brandy, Renoir's Dancer, Cézanne's Boy in a Red Waistcoat and Harlequin, and Van Gogh's Self-Portrait and Roses.

Thirteen works have been newly restored, including Renoir's sparkling Parisian view of the Pont Neuf, his ever-popular Girl with a Watering Can, Monet's classic Bridge at Argenteuil, and a portrait of Monet's newborn son Jean in his cradle.
 
During the two-year period of repair, restoration, and renovation, works normally on view in these galleries were either in storage, on loan, or featured in a special installation—From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection—in the West Building Ground Floor galleries. Some fifty of the greatest works from this collection were included in major exhibitions shown in Houston, Tokyo, and Kyoto.

General Information
The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden are at all times free to the public. They are located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, and are open Monday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The Gallery is closed on December 25 and January 1. For information call (202) 737-4215 or the Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDD) at (202) 842-6176, or visit the Gallery's Web site at www.nga.gov. Follow the Gallery on Facebook at www.facebook.com/NationalGalleryofArt and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ngadc.

The Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America is delighted to announce the winners of the National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest!

First Prize: Mitch Fraas, Duke University, Anglo-American Legal Printing 1702 to the Present

Second Prize: Maggie Murray, Johns Hopkins, Literature of the Little Review: In Which Margaret Anderson Enters an Antiquarian Bookstore

Third Prize: Sarah McCormick, University of California-Riverside, Desert Dreams: The History of California’s Coachella Valley

Essay Prize: Emily Brodman, Stanford University, Sourcing the Sanctuary Movement

After a two year hiatus, the contest was reinstated last year under the joint leadership of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America, the Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies, the Center for the Book, and the Rare Books and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, with major support from the Jay I. Kislak Foundation.

Students who entered the contest were top prize winners of book collecting contests at their respective institutions.  Judges were once again impressed by the scope and genres represented among the collections.  Jean Kislak, a trustee of the Jay I. Kislak Foundation and lifelong collector, served as a member of the competition judging panel. “It was very exciting to see such a diverse array of book collections. These young collectors have shown such skill and creativity in assembling their outstanding collections.”

Mr. Fraas’ collection began when he was studying the legal history of the British Empire and became particularly interested in briefs from the King’s Privy Council.  After he serendipitously obtained a 1791 Privy Council brief from Bombay, he began actively pursuing Anglo-American appellate briefs and ephemeral legal printing.

Ms. Murray’s collection revolves around Margaret Anderson and the literature of The Little Review, but also includes works by “pioneering female literary figures” such as Aphra Behn and Gertrude Stein.  A highlight of her collection is a first edition copy of The Little Review Anthology signed by Anderson in 1953.

Ms. McCormick collects books, documents, and related items that focus on the history of the Coachella Valley and, more specifically, Indio, CA, where she was raised.  An area of concentration within Ms. McCormick’s collection is the date industry in the deserts of the Coachella Valley.

Ms. Brodman, essay prize winner, submitted a collection on the Sanctuary Movement.  In regard to assembling her collection, Ms. Brodman wrote:

I learned as much from the process of collecting as I did from the sources themselves, and now read archives and collections (their materials, their order and structure, and the materials or stories the lack) as closely and critically as I read the discrete sources that comprise them.

Prizes will be awarded to both the winning students and the libraries of the institutions from which they hail.  The awards ceremony will take place on October 21, 2011 at 5:30pm at the Library of Congress, West Dining Room, Madison Building, 6th floor and will include a lecture by Michael Dirda, a noted bibliophile and journalist. The lecture is free and open to the public; no tickets are required.

The Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies is an association of collecting organizations whose mission is to communicate, share, and support bibliocentric activities, experience, and ideas among member clubs for mutual benefit and pleasure.

In 1815, the Library of Congress acquired the personal library of Thomas Jefferson. Later collectors such as Lessing J. Rosenwald, John Boyd Thacher and Otto H. Vollbehr, among many others, conveyed their book collections to the Library, where they continue to be conserved by the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. More recently, the Library received the gift of the Jay I. Kislak Collection of rare books, manuscripts and other early American materials. Selections from the Kislak Collection are on view in the “Exploring the Early Americas” exhibition in the Thomas Jefferson Building, as well as online.

The Center for the Book was established by Congress in 1977 “to use the resources and prestige of the Library of Congress to promote books, reading, literacy and libraries.” With its many educational programs that reach readers of all ages, through its support of the National Book Festival and through its dynamic state centers in the 50 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Center for the Book has developed a nationwide network of organizational partners dedicated to promoting the wonders and benefits of reading. The center also oversees the Read.gov website.

The Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America (ABAA) is a trade association of over 450 demonstrated professionals who specialize in fine and rare books, maps, documents, autographs, illuminated manuscripts, ephemera, and prints that span the economic spectrum.  Our members are united in a passion for books and related material, and are bound by a Code of Ethics.  We sponsor three antiquarian book fairs each year.

For further information, please contact Susan Benne at sbenne@abaa.org or 212.944.8291, or visit our contest website at contest.abaa.org.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s first and until now unpublished novel, The Narrative of John Smith, is to be released by the British Library on 26 September 2011. The novel, written between 1883 and 1884, gives a fascinating insight into this early period of the author’s creative development, only a few years before his creation of Sherlock Holmes would earn him an enduring place in the history of English literature. The British Library has also produced an unabridged audiobook read by Robert Lindsay and is holding a display of the manuscript and other early works in the Library’s Sir John Ritblat Treasures Gallery.

The manuscript of The Narrative of John Smith was lost in the post on the way to the publishers and then rewritten by Conan Doyle from memory. Although he continued to revise the text and drew on various passages from it in subsequent writings, Conan Doyle never re-submitted the novel for publication, later claiming in jest: "my shock at its disappearance would be as nothing to my horror if it were suddenly to appear again - in print." Therefore, the text has been known only to a handful of scholars up to this point, but will now be published for the first time and serve as a rare insight into the author’s creative development and apprenticeship as a writer.
 
By the time Conan Doyle came to write the novel, he had had some success with publishing short stories in literary magazines. Increasingly frustrated, however, by the practice of many nineteenth century journals of publishing contributions anonymously, he decided that the only way to establish a literary reputation was, as he wrote to his mother, “get your name on the back of a volume”. The Narrative of John Smith represents Conan Doyle's first attempt to make the transition from short story writer to novelist and, as such, bridges the gap between his earlier work and the first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, published just a few years later. Semi-autobiographical in nature, the story focuses on John Smith’s period of confinement in his room during an attack of gout, and the work is essentially a series of reflections and conversations with his doctor, friends and other visitors concerning a range of contemporary debates on literature, science, religion, war and politics, which occupies the young Conan Doyle. Several ideas and incidents in the novel anticipate the Sherlock Holmes stories; for example Smith’s garrulous landlady, Mrs Rundle, is a precursor of Martha Hudson, Sherlock Holmes’s housekeeper at Baker Street.

The display in the Treasures Gallery showcases one of the four notebooks that comprise the manuscript of The Narrative of John Smith. Other items on display include letters to his mother describing his financial struggles and losing the novel in the post, and his ‘scientific and monthly magazine’ created in his final year at school at the age of 16.

Rachel Foss, Lead Curator of Modern Literary Manuscripts and co-editor of The Narrative of John Smith, comments: “Even almost a hundred years after Conan Doyle's death and with all of the fascination that surrounds his life and work, this publication and exhibition show that there are still new things to discover about this iconic literary figure. It's a testament to the richness of the Conan Doyle’s life and the archive he left behind him, of which this manuscript is a part, that we can still unearth such little known gems. We are indebted to the generous support and enthusiasm of the Conan Doyle Estate and I'm delighted that, through the British Library's publication and exhibition, we have been able to make this intriguing early work available to a wider audience.”

Jon Lellenberg, representative of the Conan Doyle Estate Ltd and co-editor of The Narrative of John Smith, says: “Dr. Conan Doyle, the struggling physician and writer, was fortunate his first attempt at a novel was unpublished in the 1880s. Today's readers are fortunate that he kept the manuscript, and provided us with a unique window into the mind, thinking, and often emphatic opinions of a young man who in just another year or so would create literature's best known character, Sherlock Holmes.”

Stephen Fry comments: “The breadth, depth and scope of Conan Doyle's knowledge and curiosity is often overlooked. He was the first popular writer to tell the wider reading public about narcotics, the Ku Klux Klan, the mafia, the Mormons, American crime gangs, corrupt union bosses and much else besides. His boundless energy, enthusiasm and wide-ranging mind, not to mention the pitch-perfect, muscular and memorable prose is all on display here in a work whose publication is very, very welcome indeed.”

Items drawn from the British Library’s extensive Conan Doyle collection, acquired in 2004, are on display in the Library’s Sir John Ritblat Treasures Gallery from 9 September 2011 until 5 January 2012.

As part of the activities surrounding the publication of The Narrative of John Smith, the British Library will also present a public event with best selling author, Anthony Horowitz, who has been commissioned to write a new Sherlock Holmes novel by the Conan Doyle Estate Ltd. The House of Silk will be published in November. At this event Horowitz will talk about the book, the characters of Holmes and Watson, and Conan Doyle’s achievement, with Roger Johnson, editor of the Sherlock Holmes Journal. The event will take place Sunday 27 November, 14.30-16.00, in The British Library Conference Centre, £7.50 (£5 concessions).
 
British Library Publishing
Book £9.95 (ISBN 978-0-7123-5841-5) / CD £20 inc. VAT
British Library Publishing’s publication of The Narrative of John Smith and audio CD, recorded with Robert Lindsay, will be 26 September 2011. Both will be available from www.bl.uk/shop (T +44 (0)20 7412 7735 / email bl-bookshop@bl.uk.

Arthur Conan Doyle: The Unknown Novel is open from 9 September 2011 until 5 January 2012 in the Sir John Ritblat Gallery at the British Library. Admission is free.

Exhibition opening hours
Monday, Wednesday-Friday 10.00 - 18.00, Tuesday 10.00 - 20.00, Saturday 10.00 - 17.00, Sunday and Bank Holidays 11.00 - 17.00. For further information about the British Library and its exhibitions please see: www.bl.uk/whatson
With thanks to Conan Doyle Estate Ltd.
 
For more information contact:
 
Evie Jeffreys
British Library
t:+ 44 (0) 20 7412 7105
m:+44 (0) 79 0803 4175
e:evie.jeffreys@bl.uk
 

 

ITHACA, N.Y. (Sept. 13, 2011) - Cornell University Library's rich Human Sexuality Collection just got even richer, with the addition of more than 10,000 gay-themed photographs dating back to the 1860s.

The Harry H. Weintraub Collection of Gay-Related Photography and Historical Documentation includes 150 years of photographs, books, magazines, pornography, ephemera and more. The photographs range from formal 19th-century portraits to Hollywood stars' studio portraits and from 1950s physique photos to candid snapshots.

Weintraub, a New York City labor lawyer who has been amassing the collection for three decades, visited the Library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections to make the donation in early August.

"I began this collection in earnest because of the AIDS crisis," he said. "Men were dying all around me, and their things were being thrown away because their families were embarrassed. So I was intent on trying to preserve not only their histories but that of those who came before."

As Weintraub amassed more and more photographs, he and his collection became well known, and families would sometimes contact him to donate their gay relatives' materials. Many of the photographs are deeply personal. He also added steadily to the collection through purchases from dealers all over the country.

"This is an amazing gift to Cornell, with a tremendous historical value, and it enhances our sexuality, visual, and photographic collections in exciting ways," said Katherine Reagan, Ernest L. Stern curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts.

The collection even contains a few Cornell-specific items, including a 1940s photo of a young man posed in the arms of the A.D. White statue on the Arts Quad, and it will assist the teaching and research of many scholars.

"The new collection being donated by Harry Weintraub is a trove of rich and provocative images and related materials. It will provide an invaluable resource to many scholars, especially those of queer life and performance in the 20th century," said Nicholas Salvato, assistant professor of theater, film and dance at Cornell. "I'm looking forward to bringing my students to see a number of intriguing photographs when I teach 'Introduction to LGBT Studies' in the spring."

Brenda Marston, curator of Cornell's Human Sexuality Collection, said she is "delighted to have such a big boost to the collection's visual documentation" and looks forward to welcoming the researchers to use it. Noting the role of personal collectors in preserving our cultural heritage, she added, "Mr. Weintraub has made a significant contribution by looking high and low for pictures that show traces of gay history."

Weintraub noted that the collection "deals with the history of a substantial U.S. population" and belongs in Cornell's Human Sexuality Collection.

"I knew the collection would have a good home here, that it would be well taken care of," Weintraub said. "We're a country of diversity, and the documentary record of the different parts of that diversity deserves to be collected and understood."

About Cornell University Library
To learn more, visit the Human Sexuality Collection's website<http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/HSC/> or the Library online at library.cornell.edu<http://library.cornell.edu/>.

LOS ANGELES—The J. Paul Getty Museum today announced the acquisition of the Abbey Bible, an Italian illuminated manuscript that exemplifies the highest achievements of the Gothic era. The Bible is named for a previous owner, who was a celebrated collector of Italian manuscripts.



Produced for the use of a Dominican monastery, the Abbey Bible is one of the earliest and finest in a distinguished group of north Italian Bibles from the second half of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, most of which have come to be associated with Bologna, one of the major centers for the production of Gothic illuminated Bibles. Its illumination is a superb example of the Byzantine style of the eastern Mediterranean that played such a dominant role in Italian painting and manuscript illumination in the second half of the thirteenth century.

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It is extremely rare for a complete Italian volume of this splendid quality to come onto the market. The Abbey Bible is set apart by its unusually lavish illumination that spills into the margins, often activating the entire page with whimsical figures, Biblical narratives, and images of Dominicans and Franciscans in prayer," said Thomas Kren, acting associate director for collections at the J. Paul Getty Museum.



The marginal vignettes of the Abbey Bible are remarkable for their liveliness and delicacy. Sensitively depicted facial expressions, rare among thirteenth-century Bibles, reveal the artist to be a skilled storyteller, and the pages brim with incident and event.



"There is a restrained elegance and emotional tension within the enclosed initials that works together with the physical exuberance in the margins," adds Elizabeth Morrison, acting senior curator of manuscripts. "There's a vitality in these finely painted tiny figures that gloriously flow across the page but are also exceptionally refined."



Filled with drolleries, grotesques and dynamic pen flourishes, the Bible was nevertheless intended for serious use and study, as evidenced by the many edits, corrections, and amendments to the text, which suggest a university origin for the manuscript. The book appears to be made for a Dominican monastery and devout Dominicans and Franciscans appear prominently in its imagery.



The Bible adds to the growing strength of the Getty Museum's Italian manuscript holdings, which include important illuminated works by Niccolò da Bologna, Taddeo Crivelli, and Giovanni di Paolo. It also complements the Museum's Italian paintings collection, specifically Madonna and Child by the Master of Saint Cecilia, ca. 1290-95 and splendid works by fourteenth-century masters including Bernardo Daddi, Simone Martini, and Pacino di Bonaguida.



The Bible will go on view on December 13, 2011, at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, as part of the exhibition Gothic Grandeur: Manuscript Illumination, 1200-1350.




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MEDIA CONTACT:


Alexandria Sivak

Getty Communications

(310) 440-6473

asivak@getty.edu

About the Getty:
The J. Paul Getty Trust is an international cultural and philanthropic institution devoted to the visual arts that features the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Getty Research Institute. The J. Paul Getty Trust and Getty programs serve a varied audience from two locations: the Getty Center in Los Angeles and the Getty Villa in Malibu. 



Sign up for e-Getty at www.getty.edu/subscribe/ to receive free monthly highlights of events at the Getty Center and the Getty Villa via e-mail, or visit our event calendar for a complete calendar of public programs.

The J. Paul Getty Museum collects in seven distinct areas, including Greek and Roman antiquities, European paintings, drawings, manuscripts, sculpture, and decorative arts, and European and American photographs. The Museum's mission is to make the collection meaningful and attractive to a broad audience by presenting and interpreting the works of art through educational programs, special exhibitions, publications, conservation, and research.

Visiting the Getty Center: The Getty Center is open Tuesday through Friday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. It is closed Monday and major holidays. Admission to the Getty Center is always free. Parking is $15 per car, but free after 5pm on Saturdays and for evening events throughout the week. No reservation is required for parking or general admission. Reservations are required for event seating and groups of 15 or more. Please call 310-440-7300 (English or Spanish) for reservations and information. The TTY line for callers who are deaf or hearing impaired is 310-440-7305. The Getty Center is at 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles, California.

(Boston, Massachusetts, August 16, 2011) Thanks to a generous gift from Trustee Emeritus Caleb Loring, Jr., the Boston Athenæum will conserve, catalogue, photograph, digitize, and release on the Internet important selections from its world-renowned Confederate Imprints Collection.

The collection, with more than 12,000 items, is one of the largest and most important of its kind in existence. It includes books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, stamps, paper currency, government bonds, and maps printed in the Confederate States of American (CSA) during the American Civil War.

 “The Confederate Imprints Collection is a great example of the kind of primary source collection the Athenæum was able to create when others did not,” commented Paula D. Matthews, Stanford Calderwood Director and Librarian.

“Thanks to the remarkable foresight of our Librarian and members a century and a half ago, these rare and perishable printed items have survived to the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Civil War. They have long been a key resource for scholars. Now, new technology and this wonderful gift will make a significant portion of the collection available as never before.”

“The Confederate Imprints Project is a great example of how the internet makes new kinds of access to special or hidden resources available to everyone, world-wide,” said James Reid-Cunningham, Associate Director for Preservation and Digitization. “It is also a leading first project for our ‘seamless method’ of collection preservation and access, which begins with the physical object and unites conservation, cataloguing, digitization, and distribution in a single, continuous process.”

The Athenæum began to assemble its Confederate Imprints Collection immediately following the end of hostilities in 1865.

Francis Parkman, the famous historian and an Athenæum Trustee, traveled the war-ravaged southern states with Athenaeum funds to purchase Confederate printed material before it was lost to history. Athenaeum Librarian William F. Poole continued the search by actively advertising in the region and buying heavily. His goal was to acquire “everything printed in the South during the war that goes to illustrate the state and action of the Southern mind”

The original collection was enlarged in 1944, with the purchase of 1500 additional Confederate imprints from Judge Raymond S. Wilkins. In 1969, the Honorable George W. Ball, former U.S. Undersecretary of State and Ambassador to the United Nations, and his son, Douglas Ball, gave the Athenæum an extraordinary collection of Confederate currency, including about 6,200 examples of paper money and 500 CSA bonds and treasury certificates to the Athenaeum.
 
The Ball gift contained many rarities and fine examples of the various types of engraved and lithographed designs used for bills issued by the individual states and the government.  Like much of the rest of the collection, it has never been completely catalogued and is consequently largely unavailable, even to scholars.
The Loring gift will allow the Athenæum to hire a full-time rare materials cataloguer to work with the Confederate materials for a year, in addition to the Athenæum staff working on the project. The gift will also cover conservation and digitization of significant selections of the collection.

As an independent library, not a government agency or part of a university or college, the Boston Athenæum developed its collections to suit the needs and interests of its own members, often acquiring items, like the Confederate material, long before their significance became clear to others. Thus many of its holdings are especially rare or unique examples of their kind.

The Athenæum recently set up a new webpage, “Digital Collections at the Boston Athenæum,” http://cdm.bostonathenaeum.org/cdm, as a public access point for its digital collections via the internet. In 2012, digitized portions of the Confederate Imprints Collection will join them.

***
Founded in 1807, the Boston Athenæum is Boston’s first cultural institution. It combines an art museum, with a public exhibition gallery and collections of paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, photographs, and decorative arts; a leading research and membership library; and a civic forum including lectures, readings, panel discussions, and other events. An innovator and catalyst for more than two centuries, the Athenæum was one of the three founders of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the inspiration for the Boston Public Library, the first municipally supported library in North America.

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Librarian of Congress James H. Billington today announced the appointment of Philip Levine as the Library’s 18th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2011-2012.

Levine will take up his duties in the fall, opening the Library’s annual literary season with a reading of his work at the Coolidge Auditorium on Monday, Oct. 17.

"Philip Levine is one of America’s great narrative poets," Billington said. "His plainspoken lyricism has, for half a century, championed the art of telling ‘The Simple Truth’—about working in a Detroit auto factory, as he has, and about the hard work we do to make sense of our lives."

Philip Levine succeeds W.S. Merwin as Poet Laureate and joins a long line of distinguished poets who have served in the position, including Kay Ryan, Charles Simic, Donald Hall, Ted Kooser, Louise Glück, Billy Collins, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass, Rita Dove and Richard Wilbur.

Levine is the author of 20 collections of poems, including most recently "News of the World" (2009), which The New York Times Sunday Book Review describes as "characteristically wise." Levine won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for "The Simple Truth," the National Book Award in 1991 for "What Work Is" and in 1980 for "Ashes: Poems New and Old," the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1979 for both "Ashes: Poems New and Old" and "7 Years From Somewhere," and the 1975 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for "Names of the Lost."

Born in Detroit, Mich., on Jan. 10, 1928, Levine received degrees from Wayne State University and the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and in 1957 was awarded the Jones Fellowship in Poetry at Stanford. As a student, he worked a number of industrial jobs at Detroit’s auto-manufacturing plants, including Detroit Transmission—a branch of Cadillac—and the Chevrolet Gear and Axle factory.

Levine has said about writing poems in his mid-20s during his factory days: "I believed even then that if I could transform my experience into poetry, I would give it the value and dignity it did not begin to possess on its own. I thought, too, that if I could write about it I could come to understand it; I believed that if I could understand my life—or at least the part my work played in it—I could embrace it with some degree of joy, an element conspicuously missing from my life."

Levine taught for many years at California State University, Fresno, where he is professor emeritus in the English Department. He has also taught at New York University as Distinguished Writer-in-Residence, as well as at Columbia, Princeton, Brown and Tufts universities, the University of California at Berkeley and elsewhere.

Levine’s nonfiction books include "The Bread of Time: Toward an Autobiography" (1994); "Don't Ask" (1981); and "So Ask: Essays, Conversations, and Interviews" (2002). He also has edited "The Essential Keats" (1987) and translated collections of Spanish poet Gloria Fuertes and Mexican poet Jaime Sabines.

Additional awards include the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize, the Frank O’Hara Prize, two Guggenheim Foundation fellowships and three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (for which he served as chair of the Literature Panel). In 1997 Levine was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and he served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2000-2006.

For more information on Levine, including downloadable photos and video, visit www.loc.gov/pressroom/. (New visitors to the site will need to establish an account to receive the user name and password.

Background of the Laureateship

The Poet Laureate is selected for a one-year term by the Librarian of Congress. The choice is based on poetic merit alone and has included a wide variety of poetic styles.

The Library keeps to a minimum the specific duties required of the Poet Laureate, who opens the literary season in October and closes it in May. Laureates, in recent years, have initiated poetry projects that broaden the audiences for poetry.

Kay Ryan launched "Poetry for the Mind’s Joy" in 2009-2010, a project that focused on the poetry being written by community-college students. The project included visits to various community colleges and a poetry contest on the campuses. For more information, visit www.loc.gov/poetry/mindsjoy/.

Earlier, Rita Dove brought a program of poetry and jazz to the Library’s literary series, along with a reading by young Crow Indian poets and a two-day conference titled "Oil on the Waters: The Black Diaspora," featuring panel discussions, readings and music. Robert Hass sponsored a major conference on nature writing called "Watershed," which continues today as a national poetry competition for elementary- and high-school students, titled "River of Words." Robert Pinsky initiated his Favorite Poem Project, which energized a nation of poetry readers to share their favorite poems in readings across the country and in audio and video recordings. Billy Collins instituted the website Poetry180, www.loc.gov/poetry/180/, which brought a poem a day into every high-school classroom in all parts of the country via the central announcement system.

More recently, Ted Kooser created a free weekly newspaper column, at www.americanlifeinpoetry.org, that features a brief poem by a contemporary American poet and an introduction to the poem by Kooser. Donald Hall participated in the first-ever joint poetry readings of the U.S. Poet Laureate and British Poet Laureate Andrew Motion in a program called "Poetry Across the Atlantic," also sponsored by the Poetry Foundation. Charles Simic provided tips on writing at www.loc.gov/poetry/ and taught a master class for accomplished poets at the Library of Congress.

The Library of Congress’ Poetry and Literature Center is the home of the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, a position that has existed since 1936, when Archer M. Huntington endowed the Chair of Poetry at the Library. Since then, many of the nation’s most eminent poets have served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress and, after the passage of Public Law 99-194 (Dec. 20, 1985), as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. The Poet Laureate suggests authors to read in the literary series and plans other special events during the literary season.

Consultants in Poetry and Poets Laureate Consultants in Poetry and their terms of service are listed below.
    •    Joseph Auslander, 1937-1941
    •    Allen Tate, 1943-1944
    •    Robert Penn Warren, 1944-1945
    •    Louise Bogan, 1945-1946
    •    Karl Shapiro, 1946-1947
    •    Robert Lowell, 1947-1948
    •    Leonie Adams, 1948-1949
    •    Elizabeth Bishop, 1949-1950
    •    Conrad Aiken, 1950-1952, the first to serve two terms
    •    William Carlos Williams, appointed in 1952 but did not serve
    •    Randall Jarrell, 1956-1958
    •    Robert Frost, 1958-1959
    •    Richard Eberhart, 1959-1961
    •    Louis Untermeyer, 1961-1963
    •    Howard Nemerov, 1963-1964
    •    Reed Whittemore, 1964-1965
    •    Stephen Spender, 1965-1966
    •    James Dickey, 1966-1968
    •    William Jay Smith, 1968-1970
    •    William Stafford, 1970-1971
    •    Josephine Jacobsen, 1971-1973
    •    Daniel Hoffman, 1973-1974
    •    Stanley Kunitz, 1974-1976
    •    Robert Hayden, 1976-1978
    •    William Meredith, 1978-1980
    •    Maxine Kumin, 1981-1982
    •    Anthony Hecht, 1982-1984
    •    Robert Fitzgerald, 1984-1985
    •    Reed Whittemore, 1984-1985, Interim Consultant in Poetry
    •    Gwendolyn Brooks, 1985-1986
    •    Robert Penn Warren, 1986-1987, first to be Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry
    •    Richard Wilbur, 1987-1988
    •    Howard Nemerov, 1988-1990
    •    Mark Strand, 1990-1991
    •    Joseph Brodsky, 1991-1992
    •    Mona Van Duyn, 1992-1993
    •    Rita Dove, 1993-1995
    •    Robert Hass, 1995-1997
    •    Robert Pinsky, 1997-2000
    •    Stanley Kunitz, 2000-2001
    •    Billy Collins, 2001-2003
    •    Louise Glück, 2003-2004
    •    Ted Kooser, 2004-2006
    •    Donald Hall, 2006-2007
    •    Charles Simic, 2007-2008
    •    Kay Ryan, 2008-2010
    •    W.S. Merwin 2010-2011

Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution. It seeks to spark imagination and creativity and to further human understanding and wisdom by providing access to knowledge through its magnificent collections, programs and exhibitions. Many of the Library’s rich resources can be accessed through its website at www.loc.gov and via interactive exhibitions on a personalized website at myLOC.gov.

More information on the Poet Laureate and the Poetry and Literature Center can be found at www.loc.gov/poetry/.
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The Fine Art Auction Group, holding company for the Dreweatts and BCVA auction businesses, has acquired the London-based Bloomsbury Auctions business from Bloomsbury Auctions Ltd, consolidating the co-marketing alliance that has been in place between the two firms since October 2009. The acquisition of the Bloomsbury business is being effected through a newly-formed subsidiary which assumes all the current trade of the Bloomsbury Auctions business. Bloomsbury Auctions will continue to operate in tandem with Dreweatts and, working together, both will further expand their now integrated portfolio of services to the UK and European fine art and collectors markets. Bloomsbury Auctions Italia is not being acquired in the transaction and will continue to trade as Bloomsbury Auctions in Italy under a franchise arrangement.

The Fine Art Auction Group expects combined 2011 sales to approach £30,000,000 as a result of the acquisition, representing a 50% increase from 2010. Both businesses have a broad spectrum of specialist and general sales and are focussed on increasing their share of the ‘Single Owner Collections’ market. E-commerce is high on the development agenda for the enlarged business, with ATG Media’s www.thesaleroom.com being the primary online-bidding platform that both businesses already use, in addition to www.invaluable.com, www.artfact.com and www.liveauctioneers.com.

“The merging of Bloomsbury’s London activities into the Dreweatts network of salerooms reinforces our position as the fourth largest auction group in the United Kingdom. We will continue to develop our already diverse calendar of sales both regionally as well as in the key London market. Dreweatts’ 250 year old heritage marries well with Bloomsbury’s pre-eminent position in the market for rare books and works on paper and the two businesses will continue to capitalise on the numerous synergies underlying their respective operations” commented Stephan Ludwig, Dreweatts’ Executive Chairman. There are not anticipated to be any significant changes in the management structure of the two businesses and all current Bloomsbury staff are being transferred under the acquisition.

“We have been exploring options for the future growth of the Bloomsbury business for some time and, in Dreweatts, have found a very complementary fit. Working together increasingly closely over the past year has demonstrated to us the undoubted advantages that a generalist auctioneer with Dreweatts’ excellent reputation can offer the narrower market for our expertise in works on paper. It has been particularly pleasing to witness the growing number of mixed consignments that we have successfully competed for during the run-up to this transaction” stated Rupert Powell, Bloomsbury Auctions Ltd’s managing director, who will become a Deputy Chairman of the enlarged business and joins the Dreweatts management board.

“I have been working increasingly closely with our colleagues at Bloomsbury over the past 18 months, and have been very impressed by the quality of introductions of new business for Dreweatts that this alliance has already produced. Rupert Powell and I have known each other for many years as presenters on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow and I warmly welcome him and his team into our fold” observed Clive Stewart-Lockhart, Dreweatts’ Deputy Chairman.

“In selling the Bloomsbury business to The Fine Art Auction Group we have realised a long-held objective of transferring the business to a growing company that can best leverage the international developments that Bloomsbury Auctions has achieved over the 10 years in Stocklight’s ownership. We look forward to seeing Dreweatts and Bloomsbury Auctions working together to further enhance the client service capabilities that have set Bloomsbury apart as the world’s leading auctioneer of works on paper” enthused Tommaso Zanzotto, Chairman of both Bloomsbury Auctions Ltd and Stocklight Ltd.

Dreweatts has enjoyed a 10% increase in turnover for the first six months of 2011 to over £9,000,000. Bloomsbury Auctions has continued to diversify its business alongside its rare books and manuscripts core competency, realising sales in excess of £1,000,000 in its June 30 auction of 20th Century Prints that included a world auction record of £219,600 for Warhol’s “Madonna and Self-Portrait with Skeleton's Arm, after Munch”.

Long Island University’s Palmer School of Library and Information Science is pleased to announce the appointment of J. Fernando Peña as Director of its highly regarded program in Rare Books and Special Collections.  Mr. Peña succeeds Dr. Deirdre C. Stam who directed the program for nine years and recently announced her retirement effective August 31, 2011.

Mr. Peña comes to the Palmer School from The Grolier Club in New York, the country’s oldest and largest society for bibliophiles and graphic arts enthusiasts where he has served as Librarian since 2001.  While at the Grolier Club, Mr. Peña oversaw the library’s technical services operations, as well as assisting in collection development and exhibitions.  He also led the library’s conservation efforts and supervised the selection, design and installation of its first online public access catalog.

Prior to joining the Grolier Club, Mr. Peña worked in archives and special collections at Rutgers University and Harvard University.  He received his B.A. in Linguistics (with Distinction) from Stanford University; M.A. in Biblical Studies (with Honors) from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA.;  M.A. in Hebrew Bible and Semitic Philology from Harvard University; and M.L.S. in Library and Information Science from Rutgers University.

Mr. Peña is currently Treasurer and a Board member of the Center for Book Arts, New York, N.Y.;   a Member‐at‐Large and Executive Committee member of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS), Association of College and Research Libraries, American Library Association;  and Secretary of the American Printing History Association (APHA). In recent years he served as chair of the RBMS Diversity Committee and the RBMS Pre‐Conference Scholarship Committee, and he has been active in the  RBMS Membership & Professional Development Committee, and Budget & Finance Committee.

The Palmer School is based on the C.W. Post campus of Long Island University in Brookville, N.Y. and also offers programs in Manhattan, Westchester and Brentwood, N.Y.  The School has a full-time faculty of eleven and offers a Master's in Library and Information Science, as well as a Ph.D. in Information Science.  The Rare Book and Special Collections concentration, the largest such program in the nation, is centered at the School’s Manhattan site.  The School has approximately 385 Master's students and 50 doctoral students.

Long Island University is in its ninth decade of providing access to the American dream through excellence in higher education.  It is one of the largest and most comprehensive private universities in the country, offering 590 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degree programs.

The British Library has announced an ambitious fundraising campaign to acquire the St Cuthbert Gospel for the nation. Created in the 7th century and intimately associated with one of Britain’s foremost saints, the Gospel is the earliest surviving intact European book and one of the world’s most significant books.
 
A manuscript copy of the Gospel of St John, the St Cuthbert Gospel was produced in the North of England in the late 7th century and was buried alongside St Cuthbert on Lindisfarne, apparently in 698, and later found in the saint’s coffin at Durham Cathedral in 1104. It has a beautifully-worked original red leather binding in excellent condition, and is the only surviving high-status manuscript from this crucial period in British history to retain its original appearance, both inside and out.



The largest single grant for a heritage acquisition in the British Library’s history, the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) award of £4.5m is a huge boost to the campaign to acquire the Gospel. The Art Fund has also generously pledged £250,000 and a similar sum was donated by The Garfield Weston Foundation in recognition of the importance of the book to Britain. The Library is now in discussion with a range of other major donors with a view to securing the full amount by the deadline of 31 March 2012.



Announcing the campaign to acquire the St Cuthbert Gospel, the Chief Executive of the British Library, Dame Lynne Brindley, said: “The St Cuthbert Gospel is an almost miraculous survival from the Anglo-Saxon period, a beautifully preserved window into a rich, sophisticated culture that flourished some four centuries before the Norman Conquest. I am delighted to announce publicly this fundraising campaign - the largest the Library has ever embarked upon for a heritage item - and wish to express the Library’s profound gratitude to the funders who have already offered their generous support. In particular, the National Heritage Memorial Fund grant, amounting to half of the purchase price, helps us get our fundraising campaign off to the best possible start.”



Dame Jenny Abramsky, Chair of the NHMF, said: "The Cuthbert Gospel is an extraordinary piece of our heritage. The National Heritage Memorial Fund was set up to save our most precious heritage at risk and that's why we agreed it was vital that we should do our utmost to safeguard this absolutely unique survival. It’s a mark of the importance we placed on it that since our annual budget was spent at the time of this grant request, our Board decided, unusually, to dip into the NHMF’s endowment to make this grant possible. We're delighted that our grant will bring the British Library's aspiration to secure it for the nation a substantial step closer."



Stephen Deuchar, Director of the Art Fund, said: “This astonishing, beautifully preserved Gospel sheds bright light on the history and culture of the Church in the 7th century. We are pleased to offer £250,000 towards the purchase and we thank all our supporters for making this possible. We wish the British Library every success in raising the full sum, so this great treasure can be kept for the public to enjoy in the future.”



The St Cuthbert Gospel, formerly known as the Stonyhurst Gospel, has been on long-term loan to the British Library since 1979 and regularly on-view in the Library’s Sir John Ritblat Treasures Gallery. The Library was approached last year by Christie’s, acting on behalf of the Society of Jesus (British Province), and was given first option to acquire the Gospel for the UK public - a unique opportunity to make the Gospel a permanent part of the national collection.



Representing a major addition to the Library’s world-class collections relating to the early history and culture of Britain the Library plans to make a significant investment in the long-term preservation of the Gospel and will transform the possibilities for improved access to the item through digitisation and display.



Having sought opinions from a range of independent experts as well as the Library’s own curatorial specialists, a price of £9 million was agreed. The fundraising campaign announced today began in early 2011 with the aim of raising the whole amount from philanthropic sources.



In parallel with the fundraising campaign, the Library has also developed an innovative 50/50 display partnership with institutions in the North East of England, in recognition of the cultural, religious and historical resonance that St Cuthbert has for the region. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed by Durham Cathedral, Durham University and the British Library paves the way for future opportunities to display the Gospel 50% of the time on the Durham UNESCO World Heritage Site, once the acquisition has been completed. The MOU establishes a framework for the increasingly strong and constructive engagement between the Library, Durham University and Durham Cathedral, which among other projects, will also see the visit of the Lindisfarne Gospels to Durham in 2013.



The Very Reverend Michael Sadgrove, Dean of Durham, said: “This wonderful book links us directly to Saxon Christianity of the north of England, and to the north’s best-loved saint, Cuthbert himself. Durham Cathedral owes its very existence to him, and we prize not only his memory, but also the treasures associated with him here at the Cathedral such as his pectoral cross and portable altar. So I wholeheartedly support the campaign to save this book for the nation, for it is a vital part of our cultural and spiritual heritage. Like the Lindisfarne Gospel Book, the Cuthbert Gospel speaks powerfully about Northumbria’s golden age, whose spiritual vision, intellectual energy and artistic achievement continue to inspire us today. We are in the British Library’s debt for having taken this initiative. We must make sure it succeeds.”



Chris Higgins, Vice-Chancellor of Durham University, said: “Durham University is proud to partner with the British Library in the conservation, display and interpretation of the oldest and one of the most important of all western manuscripts. The University and Cathedral, together, house one of the most important collections of early books and manuscripts, visited by researchers and scholars from around the world, and closer working between the University and the British Library will enhance scholarship and the wider appreciation of the role of Durham and the North East in the development of England’s remarkable written heritage.”



A spokesman for the British Province of the Society of Jesus, said: “The St Cuthbert manuscript, which records the founding of Christianity as told in St John’s Gospel, speaks across thirteen centuries of British history. The Society of Jesus is delighted that this rare text is likely to be fittingly housed, and congratulates the Library on a successful start to the fundraising campaign. The Library not only has great expertise in conservation but also has the means to ensure access direct or virtual by people from around the world, who will be able to view the Gospel in its setting among the Library’s other treasures of the Christian faith and of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic art.”
 

St Cuthbert was a 7th-century, English Christian leader, renowned for his ascetic practices and the miracles attributed to him during his lifetime and posthumously. Born in Northumbria around 635, he entered the monastery of Melrose in 651, and later became guest-master at the newly founded monastery at Ripon. Cuthbert subsequently became prior of Melrose, then prior of Lindisfarne, and went on to live as a hermit on the island of Inner Farne, off the coast of Northumberland. He was consecrated as bishop of Lindisfarne in 685 but died at his Inner Farne hermitage on 20 March 687. He was elevated to sainthood in 698 when his body was reinterred in a new wooden coffin. This coffin was subsequently removed from Lindisfarne by the community of St Cuthbert and was carried with them as they travelled around the North East in the wake of Viking raids in the 9th and 10th centuries. At the end of the 10th century, the community took Cuthbert's coffin with them to Durham and settled there. In 1104, Cuthbert's coffin was opened and the gospel was discovered inside with the saint's body, which was reburied at the East end of the new Norman cathedral. He was one of England's most popular and widely venerated saints both in the Anglo-Saxon period and after the Norman Conquest, and his shrine was a major medieval pilgrimage centre.
 
For more information contact:
 
Ben Sanderson
The British Library
t:+44 (0) 1937 546 126
m:+44 (0) 7810 056848
e:ben.sanderson@bl.uk
 

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and one of the world's greatest research libraries. It provides world class information services to the academic, business, research and scientific communities and offers unparalleled access to the world's largest and most comprehensive research collection. The Library's collection has developed over 250 years and exceeds 150 million separate items representing every age of written civilisation and includes books, journals, manuscripts, maps, stamps, music, patents, photographs, newspapers and sound recordings in all written and spoken languages. Up to 10 million people visit the British Library website - www.bl.uk - every year where they can view up to 4 million digitised collection items and over 40 million pages. 


The Art Fund
The Art Fund is the UK’s leading independent art charity. It offers grants to help UK museums and galleries enrich their collections; campaigns on behalf of museums and their visitors; and promotes the enjoyment of art. It is funded from public donations and has 80,000 members. Since 1903 the charity has helped museums and galleries all over the UK secure 870,000 works of art for their collections. The Art Fund led the successful £3.3 million campaign to save the Staffordshire Hoard - the unprecedented find of Anglo Saxon treasure - for the West Midlands. Visit www.artfund.org/hoard for more information. Other recent achievements include: helping secure Titian’s Diana and Actaeon for the nation in 2009 with a grant of £1million; helping secure Anthony d’Offay’s collection, ARTIST ROOMS, for Tate and National Galleries of Scotland in February 2008 with a grant of £1million and funding its nationwide tour with an additional £500,000 over two years; leading the successful £550,000 appeal to keep Turner’s Blue Rigi watercolour in the UK; and spearheading the campaign to ensure Dumfries House in Ayrshire and its contents were secured intact for the nation in July 2007. In February 2009, The Art Fund gave the British Library a grant of £18,000 towards the acquisition of a rare metal book, Parole in Libertà, created by Italian Futurist artists Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Tullio D'Albisola. For more information contact the Press Office on 020 7225 4888 or visit www.artfund.org.

Durham Cathedral - The building of Durham Cathedral commenced in 1093 and took around 40 years to complete.  It replaced a Saxon cathedral built by the Community of St Cuthbert after it arrived in Durham in 995 following its flight from the ‘Holy Island’ of Lindisfarne 80 miles north of Durham.   The body of St Cuthbert is enshrined in the Feretory at Durham Cathedral and the Tomb of the Venerable Bede is in the Galilee Chapel.    The Cathedral existed as a Benedictine Monastery until 1539 when it became one of the Church of England’s major Cathedrals.   It continues to be a focus for pilgrimage and attracts over 600,000 visitors each year from all over the world.  The Cathedral has internationally important collections of artefacts, manuscripts and books that include St Cuthbert’s Saxon coffin and his pectoral cross, a superb example of Saxon craftsmanship. Durham Cathedral is often referred to as the best example of Romanesque architecture in Europe, or as American writer Bill Bryson put it, ‘the best Cathedral on planet earth.’
 
Since construction of the Cathedral, Durham has been alive with people and a centre for community activity.  The Cathedral is home to a vibrant worshipping community and continues to celebrate the English Choral Tradition with sung services by its highly acclaimed Choir.   As a new century unfolds Durham Cathedral aspires to enrich the many different ways in which it engages with people and organisations.  It is cherished equally by those who live, work and study in the region and by those who come to visit.  

Durham University is a world top 100 university with a global reputation and performance in research and education. The most recent UK league tables place Durham in the top handful of British universities; we are ranked 5th in the country in the influential Complete University Guide. Based in North East England, we are a collegiate university based at two locations: Durham City and Stockton-on-Tees. Durham is England’s third oldest university and has at its heart a UNESCO World Heritage Site, jointly owned with Durham Cathedral. www.durham.ac.uk.

Durham is a member of the 1994 Group of 19 leading UK research-intensive universities: www.1994group.ac.uk.

National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) - The National Heritage Memorial Fund was set up to save the most outstanding parts of our national heritage, in memory of those who have given their lives for the UK. NHMF currently receives annual grant-in-aid from the Government of £10million. It is due to receive £20million between 2011-15 allowing for an annual budget of £4m-5m. www.nhmf.org.uk.

The Cuthbert Gospel joins a diverse range of over 1,200 iconic objects and places which have been safeguarded by the NHMF to the tune of over £300million. These include: The Coenwulf Coin, The Macclesfield Psalter, The Mappa Mundi,        The Staffordshire Hoard, The Milton Keynes Pot of Gold, The Mary Rose, The Flying Scotsman, The last surviving World War II destroyer, HMS Cavalier, Antonio Canova’s The Three Graces, The personal archive of Siegfried Sassoon, WWI soldier, author and poet and Skokholm Island, Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Pembrokeshire.
 

July 8 -- DALLAS, TX - Effective July 8th the assets of Greg Martin Auctions of San Francisco, CA, one of the nation’s top auction houses of antique arms & related historic memorabilia were acquired by Heritage Auctions, the world’s largest collectibles auctioneer.

“The acquisition of our company by Heritage is a natural fit with advantages for all stakeholders,” said Greg Martin, a founder of Greg Martin Auctions. “We tap in to Heritage’s greater strength, reach and access to achieve more significant results in the future, while Heritage gains immediate expertise and exposure in the arms & armor segment through our past successes and the long legacy of our team. Moreover, thanks to our shared business values of high quality and customer service, both buyers and sellers will benefit as well.”

For Heritage, too, the acquisition fits perfectly with the company’s steady expansion over the last decade.

“Fine firearms is a market we’ve been looking to increase our reach for quite some time, just waiting for the right opportunity,” said Steve Ivy, Co-Founder of Heritage. “With that goal in mind, this situation is ideal. This association with Greg Martin allows us to expand our portfolio and product offerings in a key market segment with a leading company, further enhancing our presence in the marketplace and providing increased opportunities to collect and consign for our valued clients.”

Greg Martin Auctions was founded in 2002 by Greg Martin, John Gallo and Bernard Osher, the same management team that built at Butterfields & Butterfields (now Bonhams & Butterfields) into the world’s largest department of antique arms & armor, a position it held for decades. Greg Martin and staff will continue to office in San Francisco. Live firearms auctions will be conducted at the various Heritage offices in Dallas, New York and Beverly Hills.

Heritage Auctions, the third largest auction house in the world, is a $700+ million a year company, with more than 30 categories. By building a business based on transparency, technological advances and unparalleled customer service, the company has risen to the very top in the respective fields where it operates. Heritage currently enjoys unchallenged dominance in many of its 30 collecting categories, including rare coins, currency, comics, movie posters, sports memorabilia, illustration art and fine guitars and stringed instruments, Civil War memorabilia and Space Exploration.

Reflecting the priorities of both companies, clients can continue to expect superior consignment service, aggressive marketing for their collections, top-quality catalogs featuring detailed color photographs and descriptions and a continued emphasis on world class customer service, all with a focus on auctioning the top-quality offerings available.

Heritage Auctions' first official event under Greg Martin’s guidance will be a July 30, 2011, Internet-only Firearms auction, offering more than 700 estate arms and historic arms via an online catalog and online bidding. This will be followed by the “Firearms for Freedom” auction held in concert with the NRA (National Rifle Association), in Dallas, on Aug. 21, featuring approximately 1,000 antique and modern firearms.

On September 18, 2011, in a highly anticipated sale, the company will offer the superlative The Alfred (Al) Cali Collection of Important Colt Firearms. Amassed over 40 years, this heirloom collection showcases rare and exceptional Colt firearms of the ultimate condition and desirability. The event is expected to be one of the greatest Colt offerings ever to take place. The auction will have 29 lots valued at approximately $7 million. A second session on the same day features Fine & Collectible Sporting Guns.

Greg Martin Auctions has achieved the sale of some of the most important arms ever sold and numerous world records, including one of the highest prices ever paid at auction for a firearm - $862,500 - for the Serial No. 1 Colt Single Action Army “Peacemaker” revolver. For more information, contact Greg Martin Auctions at GregM@HA.com or online at GregMartinauctions.com.

Heritage Auctions, headed by Steve Ivy, Jim Halperin and Greg Rohan, is the world’s third largest auction house, with annual sales more than $700 million, and 600,000+ online bidder members. For more information about Heritage Auctions, and to join and gain access to a complete record of prices realized, along with full-color, enlargeable photos of each lot, please visit HA.com.

July 6, 2011--American regional writing gained increasing popularity in the years following the Great Depression and beyond. The period 1938 to 1980 was an especially fruitful one for this type of documentation of the nation’s people, history and culture, as well as America’s natural treasures - its mountains, plains, lakes, seaports, forts, trails, folkways and customs.

The Fitzgerald Collection, donated by Carol and Jean Fitzgerald, comprises books, original correspondence, documentation and copies of research materials related to the series devoted to Americana as highlighted in "Series Americana: Post Depression-Era Regional Literature, 1938-1980: A Descriptive Bibliography." This important contribution to 20th-century American publishing history is by Carol Fitzgerald and was published in 2010 by Oak Knoll Press and the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress.

In this illustrated and authoritative two-volume work, bibliographer and collector Fitzgerald presents full descriptions and publishing histories of 163 titles published during 1938-1980 in 13 popular book series, such as American Folkways, The American Lakes Series, The American Trails Series and Regions of America. She also includes historical sketches of the series’ publishers, as well as biographies of the 19 editors and the 237 writers who contributed to the various series.

Erskine Caldwell, A.B. Guthrie Jr., Henry G. Alsburg and Carl Carmer are among the 19 distinguished editors. The 237 authors of individual volumes include noted writers such as Cleveland Amory, Gertrude Atherton, Bruce Catton, Thomas D. Clark, Richard H. Dillon, Marjorie Stoneman, John Dos Passos, Erle Stanley Gardner, Josephine Herbst, Stetson Kennedy, David Lavender, Meridel Le Sueur, Oscar Lewis, Mari Sandoz, Irving Stone and Wallace Stegner.

"Carol Fitzgerald’s donation represents a remarkable contribution to the collections of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division," said Mark Dimunation, the division’s chief.

Fitzgerald is also the author of the 2001 work "The Rivers of America: A Descriptive Bibliography," published by the Center for the Book and Oak Knoll Press. To mark the Center for the Book’s 25th anniversary in 2003, Carol and Jean Fitzgerald donated their "Rivers of America" archives to the Library of Congress. The collection, comprising more than 400 first editions and related correspondence, audio and video archives, and original art, is also available to the public in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

Since its creation by Congress in 1977 to "stimulate public interest in books and reading," the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress (www.Read.gov/cfb/) has become a major national force for reading and literacy promotion. A public-private partnership, it sponsors educational programs that reach readers of all ages, nationally and internationally. The center provides leadership for 52 affiliated state centers for the book (including the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands) and nonprofit reading promotion partners and plays a key role in the Library’s annual National Book Festival. It also oversees the Library’s Read.gov website and administers the Library’s Young Readers Center.

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Press contact: Guy Lamolinara (202) 707-9217
Public contact: Center for the Book (202) 707-5221

Elsevier announced today the launch of an online catalogue of the Elsevier Heritage Collection, comprising over 2,000 rare books with more than 1,000 distinct titles published by the original Elzevier publishing house from 1580 to 1712. Based in the Netherlands and closely tied to the University of Leiden, the original company published groundbreaking work from contemporary scholars including Descartes, Huygens and Galileo. Elsevier, the modern publisher was named after the original firm when it was founded in 1880 as a tribute to the publishing achievements of the Elzeviers.
 
The online short title scholarly catalogue was created with the expertise of curatorial consultant and digital librarian Donna Sy. Nearly 2,000 documentary photographs will accompany the online catalogue, illustrating the beauty and fine craftsmanship of many of the book bindings in the collection.

"It's been a privilege to work with the Elsevier Heritage Collection.  When we first created a catalog for local use in 2009, our hope was that we would eventually be able to bring it online, and that day has finally come. Since every book in the Collection is in many aspects unique, I hope that the online catalog will serve as a starting point for scholars to make exciting new discoveries in the Collection."
 
"As the stewards of the Elsevier Heritage Collection, it is our obligation-and pleasure - to ensure that the Collection can be fully appreciated and readily accessible for scholars to research. The Collection represents a tangible connection to a great publishing past and reminds us of the partnerships forged by publishers with the great minds of the Renaissance," said David Ruth, Senior Vice President of Global Communications.
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Tom Reast
Public Relations and Digital Communications
+44  (0) 20 3176 4721
+44  (0) 777 5907292
 

The Michigan State University Libraries, together with the Jewish Studies Program in MSU's College of Arts and Letters, are pleased to announce a major gift to the University: the Irwin T. and Shirley Holtzman Collection of Israeli Literature.

Notable for both its breadth and depth, the collection covers Israeli literature from the earliest days of statehood in 1948 up to the present. Many of the volumes of fiction, poetry, and drama are inscribed by the author. Literary journals and literary criticism were also collected.

The published works are accompanied by a wealth of primary resources. These include manuscripts of poetry and drama; posters advertising literary events; political cartoons and other original artwork; and Irwin Holtzman's extensive correspondence with many important Israeli literary figures, including Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, Amalia Kahana-Carmon, and Yoram Kaniuk.
 
The Holtzman Collection represents many years of passionate work by Irwin Holtzman, a Detroit-area builder and business owner. Holtzman began collecting books seriously in 1950. Architecture was his first focus, and fiction followed soon after. At one point, he actively collected as many as 350 different authors.

Holtzman's collection of Israeli literature was inspired by a 1973 visit to Israel, and signaled a special focus on contemporary work, as he told Nicholas Basbanes in an interview for Basbanes' book, A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books. He was a dedicated supporter of Israeli authors, providing financial assistance for translations and literary efforts. When Holtzman died in 2010, he was mourned by fellow book collectors around the world.

Holtzman was as generous in bestowing his books as he was dedicated to gathering them. His various collections are now housed at institutions as diverse as the British Library, the University of Illinois, and the Hoover Institution. "The MSU Libraries are extremely pleased to receive this wonderful gift of Israeli literature," said Peter Berg, head of Special Collections, "and we look forward to making it available to the MSU community."

"The Holtzman Collection will be a tremendous asset to teaching and research at Michigan State," said Marc Bernstein, professor of Hebrew. "Many of the literary works were printed in small quantities, and are no longer available. And, the correspondence and manuscript materials are absolutely unique and will be an important resource for scholars."

Kenneth Waltzer, director of MSU's Jewish Studies Program, agrees. "The Holtzman Collection is a major contribution to the advanced study of Israeli culture at MSU. With the continuing interest and support of the Holtzman family, we hope to organize scholarly conferences on Israeli literature, at the same time highlighting the Holtzman Collection."

###
For more information, please contact Seth Martin, Director of Development, MSU Libraries, Computing & Technology. Phone: 517-884-6446. Email: marti981@mail.lib.msu.edu.

New York, New York--The Morgan Library & Museum, which holds one of the world's premier collections of drawings dating from the era of Michelangelo and Raphael to the modern period, announced today the creation of a new institute to support research in the drawings field and to nurture new generations of scholars and curators. Eugene V. Thaw, a Life Trustee of the Morgan and noted drawings collector, has donated $5 million to launch the initiative, which will begin operation in November and will be housed at the Morgan.

The new institute, to be called the Drawing Institute at The Morgan Library & Museum, will sponsor annual fellowships and host seminars, symposia, and lectures. Plans also call for it to mount small, focused exhibitions and to support a scholarly publications program. In addition, the institute will undertake joint initiatives with the IMAF (International Music and Art Foundation) Centre for Drawings at The Courtauld Gallery, centering on old master drawings, and with the Menil Drawing Institute and Study Center in Houston, with its emphasis on modern and contemporary drawings. Linda Wolk-Simon, who was recently appointed to head the Morgan's drawings department, will oversee the venture.



The Institute's approach will be innovative and broad, and will be devoted to the study of the history, collecting, function, interpretation, and theory of drawing with the goal of stimulating new lines of investigation and discourse. The fellowship program will include four fellows each year and will be open not only to scholars of art history but also to conservators and individuals from other disciplines among the humanities. Fellows will be required to spend part of the year at the Morgan carrying out research and lecturing on subjects related to their areas of investigation as well as participating in seminars and symposia. The seminars, open to professors, curators, artists, conservators, graduate students, and others in the field, will be organized in cooperation with other New York museums and university-based art history programs, and will emphasize the study of original works of art. Future Institute plans also call for awarding an annual prize for a groundbreaking publication or exhibition in the drawings field.



"The Morgan is deeply grateful to Gene Thaw for his extraordinary generosity in supporting this visionary project," said Morgan director William M. Griswold. "His gifts over the years have greatly enriched our collections and transformed the institution. With this latest pledge, Gene has given us the exciting opportunity to develop a dedicated research platform for the study of drawing, allowing the Morgan to capitalize on its acclaimed holdings in this field by taking an important leadership role in current and future scholarship."



The cooperative programming with the IMAF Centre for Drawings at The Courtauld Gallery and the Menil Drawing Institute and Study Center will focus on the strength of the institutions' respective holdings, and will include co-sponsored fellowships and shared research projects as well as possible joint exhibitions. For example, work with the Menil will expressly focus on connections between the practice of drawing in the nineteenth century and earlier and that of the modern period. It is anticipated that the joint Morgan-Menil Fellow and Morgan-Courtauld Fellow will be in residence at the Drawing Institute in alternate years. 



An Institute advisory board of individuals noted for their interest in drawing and scholarly contributions to the field has been formed. It includes philanthropist and collector Karen B. Cohen, also a Morgan Trustee; Elizabeth Cropper, dean of the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts of the National Gallery of Art, Washington; collector and museum patron Agnes Gund, Philippe de Montebello, former director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and now a professor at the Institute of Fine Arts; David Rosand, professor of Art History at Columbia University; Patricia Rubin, director of the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University; former Andrew W. Mellon Foundation executive Angelica Rudenstine; Perrin Stein, curator of Drawings and Prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Robert Storr, dean of the Yale University School of Art. Mr. Thaw will serve as an honorary member of the advisory board.



EUGENE THAW AND THE MORGAN

Eugene Thaw's formal association with The Morgan Library & Museum began in 1968, when he was elected to the Association of Fellows. Since 1988, he has been a member of the Board of Trustees. Over the years, he has given some 400 drawings to the Morgan. These include a recent gift of fourteen sheets by such artists as Rembrandt and Picasso and of a group of twenty letters written and illustrated by Vincent van Gogh. In 1991, Mr. Thaw made possible the dedication of the Morgan's Clare Eddy Thaw Gallery, in honor of his wife, and with a generous gift in 1999 he transformed the Morgan's conservation lab into the world-class Thaw Conservation Center. In 2009, the Morgan presented the fifth in a series of exhibitions based on Mr. Thaw's collection, and Mr. Thaw announced the gift of his collection of oil sketches on paper jointly to the Morgan and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.



He has written numerous articles on aspects of art and art criticism that have appeared in The New York Review of Books, The Times of London, The New Criterion, The New Republic, and The New York Times Book Review, among other publications. 



"Drawing as an expressive medium has always been thought of as bringing us closer to the artist's mind and the meaning of his work," Thaw remarked. "Since the Renaissance, it has been a subject of continual discussion among philosophers, artists, and art historians. I am grateful to be part of this effort to revive the conversation about the essence of drawing at a great institution like The Morgan Library & Museum and to help contribute to keeping the field vital in the years ahead." 



The Morgan Library & Museum

The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding in 1906, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. In October 2010, the Morgan completed the first-ever restoration of its original McKim building, Pierpont Morgan's private library, and the core of the institution. In tandem with the 2006 expansion project by architect Renzo Piano, the Morgan now provides visitors unprecedented access to its world-renowned collections of drawings, literary and historical manuscripts, musical scores, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, printed books, and ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets. 



General Information

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405

212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org


Hours
Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.


Admission

$15 for adults; $10 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children, 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

PRESS CONTACT
The Morgan Library & Museum
Patrick Milliman
212.590.0310
pmilliman@themorgan.org
#

New York, NY, May 24, 2011—The Morgan Library & Museum announced today that it has made two significant additions to its holdings of rare books and literary and historical manuscripts: a group of books illustrated by modern master Henri Matisse and a collection of material associated with Britain's prestigious Man Booker Prize for Fiction.



MATISSE ILLUSTRATED BOOKS

A gift from Frances and Michael Baylson, the more than 400 items includes every significant work described in the catalogue raisonné of Matisse's work, including deluxe artist's books, publications to which Matisse contributed prints and original cover art, a small selection of artist-annotated proofs, reference books, and the promised gift of his masterpiece Jazz (1947).
 
Books illustrated by Henri Matisse have long been near the top of the Morgan's wish list. Of all the major artists of the twentieth century, Matisse had the most discerning and sustained interest in the principles and practice of book design. From 1914 until his death in 1954, he was engaged in more than thirty important illustration projects, many of which involved his direct participation in page layout, typography, lettering, ornament, and cover design. These books testify to the versatility and technical skill of the artist, whose work appeared as drypoints, etchings, lithographs, linocuts, and pochoirs.



"The Morgan is deeply grateful to Frances and Michael Baylson for this extraordinary gift of books illustrated by Henri Matisse," said William M. Griswold, Director of the Morgan. "Because our holdings are rooted in both art and literature, this collection is particularly apt. Most people know Matisse for his celebrated paintings and drawings, but he was also drawn to book design. The works in this collection attest to the great vitality and creativity he brought to the field."


The Baylson Collection contains all the canonical illustrated books, not just his first celebrated work, the Poésies of Stéphane Mallarmé (1932), but also his monumental Pasiphaé (1944), and Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal (1946), one of five recorded copies of an edition abandoned because of technical problems. Most of these publications appeared in limited editions, which were made even more exclusive by printing a few copies on fine paper. Those special copies are also well represented in the collection. 



The Baylsons' gift greatly enhances the Morgan's holdings of artists' books and complements related resources in the archives of the Pierre Matisse Gallery and the Gordon N. Ray Collection of French Illustration.



An exhibition and publication on the collection are currently scheduled for 2015.




MAN BOOKER PRIZE COLLECTION

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is considered to be the most prestigious literary award in the English-speaking world. The collection comprises first editions, proofs, manuscripts, letters, promotional material, and other ephemera related to the prize, which recognizes the best novel written in English by a citizen of England, Ireland, or the British Commonwealth.


Since 1969, the Man Booker Prize has celebrated the achievements of writers from England, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, India, South Africa, Nigeria, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada, and New Zealand. Past winners include V. S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, A. S. Byatt, Iris Murdoch, Kingsley Amis, and Michael Ondaatje. Four of the winners have also received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Rushdie's breakthrough novel, Midnight's Children, won the prize in 1981 and was later named the Booker of Bookers in 1993 [the prize is often referred to as the "Booker"] and the Best of the Booker in 2008. Australian novelist Peter Carey and South African author J. M. Coetzee are the only two writers to have won the prize twice. It carries with it a cash award of £50,000 and a subsequent worldwide marketing campaign, which invariably propels the winners and finalists onto international bestseller lists.



"The Morgan is delighted to add this important material to its collection of books and literary and historical manuscripts," Director William M. Griswold said. "The Man Booker Prize has been awarded to some of the greatest writers of fiction. The collection provides literary historians with an enormous amount of primary documentation and, as we develop exhibitions around it, visitors to the Morgan with an inside look at one of the most prestigious literary awards." 



The collection acquired by the Morgan has been termed a "museum of madness" by U.K. writer Iain Sinclair for its near-obsessive qualities, documenting multiple editions and proofs, variant dust jackets, and foreign translations of virtually every winning, shortlisted, and longlisted title. Many of the books are inscribed or annotated by the writers, critics, and the judges themselves. The collection also includes memoranda and correspondence by prominent authors and judges concerning their experience judging, winning, and sometimes losing the prize. Posters, a reference collection, marketing material, media coverage, and ephemera related to each year's selection of titles further enrich the collection. Totaling more than 2,300 books and hundreds of letters and additional items, it was assembled over nearly thirty years by British literary agent and publisher Peter Straus, whose career has been intimately involved with some of the prize's most renowned participants. The Morgan purchased the collection from Mr. Straus.



The acquisition significantly expands the Morgan's twentieth-century holdings. Together with the Carter Burden Collection of American Literature, the Man Booker Prize Collection provides researchers incomparable insight into the creation, consumption, and marketing of the contemporary novel in English in all its global manifestations. Documentation of the forty-two-year history of the prize also reveals changes in the world of publishing, new styles of book design and paperback formats, the cultural impact of literary prizes, and the development of post-colonial literature. 



General Information

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405

212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org


Hours

Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.


Admission
$15 for adults; $10 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children, 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

PRESS CONTACTS
The Morgan Library & Museum
Patrick Milliman
212.590.0310
p.milliman@themorgan.org
Sandra Ho
212.590.0311
sho@themorgan.org

Independent book marketplace Biblio.com announced today that it has partnered with Literary Tourist to help support and promote independent brick-and-mortar bookstores.

Literary Tourist was launched last week by owner Nigel Beale, who acquired Book Hunter Press in late 2009 and re-created it as a literary destination website and bookstore directory for book lovers. The new site features a refined database of over 8,000 used bookstores including reviews and information about each store. It also contains expanded listings for literary landmarks, rare book libraries, book fairs, writing festivals and other book-related events.

“Our goal with Literary Tourist is to help book lovers find the kind of bookstores, literary locales and pastimes that will add some oomph and excitement to their travels,” says Beale. “We hope to make this site one of the best 'literary destinations' on the Web, and in so doing, in a small way, to help pump new blood and energy into literary culture throughout North America, and, if we’re successful, around the globe.”

Biblio augmented Literary Tourist's existing bookstore database, with its own extensive database of booksellers and bookstores.

The original database first went on-line in 2000. For almost a decade it was updated manually. Beale notes that bookselling and bookstores are changing so quickly that “it is a challenge to keep up with all the closings and start-ups.” Both companies have partnered to create an easy solution to this challenge. Literary Tourist uses BiblioDirect, powered by Biblio, for booksellers to maintain and update their directory listings. BiblioDirect also serves as a portal for booksellers to maintain their accounts on Biblio.com, Biblio.co.uk, IOBAbooks.com, ABAA.org.

"Our partnership with LiteraryTourist.com is a great fit with Biblio's mission of helping promote independent booksellers," says Biblio's vice president Allen Singleton. "Nigel's site does a great job of evoking the unique character of the bookshops he showcases. His enthusiasm for great bookstores and the virtues of the printed word make it really exciting to be a part of this project."

Through their partnership both companies seek to increase traffic in physical bookstores, keeping these vital cultural institutions and landmarks open while preserving the business of independent bookselling.

About Biblio, Inc: 
Biblio's flagship product, Biblio.com, is one of the largest used book marketplaces on the Internet, offering 60 million high quality used books from independent book stores around the world. It also powers similar niche-market sites such as Biblio.co.uk, IOBABooks.com (Independent Online Booksellers' Association) and abaa.org (Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America).

About Literary Tourist: 
Literary Tourist's database represents one of the world's most comprehensive and continuously updated directories of used bookstores and literary destinations. It offers dealer and destination listings, event information, full access memberships and printed regional Book Lovers Guides.

# # #

New York, NY, May 19, 2011—The Morgan Library & Museum—which houses one of the world's foremost collections of art, literature, and music—announced that Lawrence R. Ricciardi has been named President of its Board of Trustees.
 
A retired senior executive at IBM Corporation, Mr. Ricciardi has been a trustee of the Morgan since 2003. He succeeds S. Parker Gilbert as President, a post Mr. Gilbert held for twenty-three years. Mr. Ricciardi assumed his duties in April and will oversee his first board meeting May 19.



"I am pleased to welcome Larry Ricciardi as the new President of The Morgan Library & Museum," Mr. Gilbert said. "Larry has a broad knowledge of the institution and a deep commitment to fulfilling its mission. I am confident that he will lead the Morgan with dedication and distinction."



In the last five years, the Morgan has completed two acclaimed building projects: its 2006 expansion by architect Renzo Piano and the 2010 interior restoration of its original 1906 library. The institution has recently mounted a number of highly successful exhibitions, including shows on eighteenth-century French drawings, the Hours of Catherine of Cleves, writers Jane Austen and Mark Twain, as well as contemporary artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Saul Steinberg, and Irving Penn. 



During this time, Mr. Ricciardi has served on the Morgan's executive, development, and finance committees. He is also a member of the Director's Roundtable, a group of the Morgan's leading patrons.



"It is a special privilege to be named President of The Morgan Library & Museum," Mr. Ricciardi said. "The Morgan holds an unrivaled collection of books, drawings, music manuscripts, and literary and historical artifacts, and its buildings are notable architectural landmarks. It is truly a unique institution and one of New York's cultural crown jewels. I look forward to serving its board and superb curatorial and administrative staff."



"The Morgan is honored to have Larry as its new President" said William M. Griswold, the Morgan's Director. "Since he joined the board, he has been a dedicated and involved trustee, engaged in many Morgan projects and initiatives. We look forward to his guidance and leadership in the years ahead. We also extend our deep and heartfelt thanks to Parker Gilbert for his more than two decades of unmatched service to the institution."



In addition to his duties with the Morgan, Mr. Ricciardi is a trustee of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Humanities Center. He is a member of New York's Grolier Club, and formerly served as a member of the Committee on Research Libraries of the New York Public Library and as a trustee of the Greenwich Library in Connecticut.



Prior to his work with IBM, Mr. Ricciardi was president of RJR Nabisco Holdings Corporation. He also served for many years as vice-president and general counsel at American Express and was previously counsel for two U.S. government agencies, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the State Department's Agency for International Development.



A 1962 Fordham graduate with a J.D. from Columbia Law School, Mr. Ricciardi also participated in Stanford University's Executive Program at the Graduate School of Business and was a Fulbright Teaching Fellow in Law at La Sapienza University in Rome.



He is a director of Citigroup and Citibank N.A. He is also senior advisor to IBM Corporation, Lazard Frères & Co., and the law firm of Jones Day. He was formerly the lead independent director of The Reader's Digest Association, and a director of Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Royal Dutch Petroleum, and RJR Nabisco Corporation.



The Morgan Library & Museum

The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding in 1906, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. In October 2010, the Morgan completed the first-ever restoration of its original McKim building, Pierpont Morgan's private library, and the core of the institution. In tandem with the 2006 expansion project by architect Renzo Piano, the Morgan now provides visitors unprecedented access to its world-renowned collections of drawings, literary and historical manuscripts, musical scores, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, printed books, and ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets. 



General Information

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405

212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org


Hours

Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.

Admission
$15 for adults; $10 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children, 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

PRESS CONTACTS
The Morgan Library & Museum
Patrick Milliman
212.590.0310
pmilliman@themorgan.org
Sandra Ho
212.590.0311
sho@themorgan.org

New York, NY, May 4, 2011— The Morgan Library & Museum announced today that the 2010 restoration of its original library, popularly known as the McKim building, has been honored with an award for Excellence in Historic Preservation from the Preservation League of New York State. The building was constructed in 1906 as the private library and study of the museum's founder, Pierpont Morgan, and is considered a masterpiece of celebrated architect Charles McKim.



The Preservation League's statewide awards program honors notable achievements in retaining, promoting and reusing New York State's irreplaceable architectural heritage. The Morgan's award will be presented at the Preservation League's Annual Meeting and Awards Ceremony in New York City on Thursday, May 12, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the historic New York Yacht Club.



"It is an honor and a privilege to receive this award from the Preservation League," said William M. Griswold, Director of the Morgan, who guided the project from its inception. "The McKim building is, in many ways, the heart and soul of the Morgan. The goal was to incorporate new lighting and exhibition elements within this historic building in as sensitive a manner as possible. The restoration facilitated the exhibition of more than 300 items from the Morgan's permanent collection of rare books and art—a tenfold increase over what was previously displayed.

"

The Italianate marble villa, designed in the spirit of the High Renaissance, is considered one of New York's great architectural treasures, and its rooms are regarded as some of the most beautiful in America.



In addition to new lighting to better illuminate the building's extraordinary murals and decor, the project also included the opening of the North Room to visitors for the first time, installation of new exhibition cases to house rotating displays of masterpieces from the Morgan's collections, restoration of period furniture and fixtures, and cleaning of the walls and applied ornamentation.



In announcing the award, Jay DiLorenzo, President of the Preservation League, said, "As one of the Awards Jurors noted, 'this project is impressive because it is subtle.' Others remarked that this was a great project of highest quality, with new systems to make the historic spaces in this significant museum and library complex more accessible. We are pleased to have the opportunity to honor the magnificent work undertaken at this National Historic Landmark, New York City Landmark and Interior Landmark."



As leader of the project, Mr. Griswold was assisted by Jennifer Tonkovich, curator of Drawings and Prints at the Morgan, who coordinated the reinstallation of collection objects; Stephen Saitas, of Stephen Saitas Designs, who consulted on exhibition design; and Richard Renfro, of Renfro Design Group, Inc., who provided lighting design expertise. The architect of record was Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners, LLP.



The project was made possible through the generous support of Gail and Parker Gilbert, Louise and Lewis Lehrman, Katharine and William Rayner, Jeannette and Jonathan Rosen, Beatrice Stern, Suzanne and Jeffrey Walker, and an anonymous donor.



The Morgan also gratefully acknowledges a grant from the Booth Ferris Foundation, which supported earlier structural work on the McKim Building.



The Preservation League's Excellence in Historic Preservation awards program is funded by a generous grant from the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Foundation of Miami, Florida.



By leading a statewide preservation movement, sharing information and expertise and raising a unified voice, the Preservation League of New York State promotes historic preservation as a tool to revitalize our neighborhoods and communities, honor our heritage and enrich our lives.



The Morgan Library & Museum

The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding in 1906, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. In October 2010, the Morgan completed the first-ever restoration of its original McKim building, Pierpont Morgan's private library, and the core of the institution. In tandem with the 2006 expansion project by architect Renzo Piano, the Morgan now provides visitors with unprecedented access to its world-renowned collections of drawings, literary and historical manuscripts, musical scores, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, printed books, and ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets. 



General Information


The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405

212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org


Hours
Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.

Admission
$15 for adults; $10 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children, 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

PRESS CONTACTS
The Morgan Library & Museum
Patrick Milliman
212.590.0310
pmilliman@themorgan.org
Sandra Ho
212.590.0311
sho@themorgan.org

Israeli papercut artist Archie Granot will present to the Library of Congress "The Ram Granot Bar Mitzvah Book." Granot created this book for his son Ram (Avraham) on the occasion of his bar mitzvah in November 1987. The gift will be housed in the collections of the Hebraic Section of the Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division.

Unique in scope and execution, "The Ram Granot Bar Mitzvah Book" is bound in leather and comprises seven sheets of hand-made Fabriano paper (made in Italy in the oldest continuously operating paper mill in Europe). The first page of the book is a colored, multi-layered papercut with the name "Avraham" at its center. The upper text reads: "This—the Vision of Obadiah—is the Haftarah that Ram, son of Rivka and Aaron Yosef Granot, recited on the Holy Sabbath on the 14th of the month of Kislev in the year 5748." The lower text reads: "You are the Lord G-d who chose Abram and changed his name to Abraham" (Nehemiah 9:7). The remaining pages contain the Haftarah, (the supplementary portion from the prophets) that Ram recited in the synagogue. This text has been en­hanced by a decorative border in­corporating excerpts from a piyyut, a lyrical composi­tion for the Shabbat eve, which was composed during the second half of the 16th century by the Italian philoso­pher and kabbalist, Rabbi Mordechai ben Judah Dato.

Granot’s creative papercuts both revive and expand an art form believed to have originated in ancient China in the second century at the time that paper was invented. Much of his work is inspired by the Holy City of Jerusalem. His imagery and texts are usually biblical, Talmudic or rabbinical. His use of Hebrew inscriptions—hand-cut in precise calligraphic letters—is an integral part of his papercuts.

Granot’s papercut works include ketubot (Jewish marriage contracts), blessings for the home, Jewish ceremonial art objects and books—including a privately commissioned papercut haggadah (Passover text), which took him nearly 10 years to complete.

Born in London in 1946, Archie Granot moved to Israel in 1967. He earned a bachelor of art degree in political science and Russian studies from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a master of philosophy degree in Russian studies from the University of Glasgow, Scotland. His works have been exhibited extensively including showings at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, The Israel Museum in Jerusalem and presently at the Jewish Museum in New York. He is the owner of the Archie Granot Studio and Gallery in Jerusalem. More information about the artist and his work can be found at www.archiegranot.com.

Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution. The Library seeks to spark imagination and creativity and to further human understanding and wisdom by providing access to knowledge through its magnificent collections, programs and exhibitions. Many of the Library’s rich resources can be accessed through its website at www.loc.gov and via interactive exhibitions on a personalized website at myLOC.gov.

The African and Middle Eastern Division furthers this mission as the Library’s center for the study of some 78 countries and regions from Southern Africa to the Maghreb and from the Middle East to Central Asia. The division’s Hebraic Section is one of the world’s foremost centers for the study of Hebrew and Yiddish materials. For more information on the division and its holdings, visit www.loc.gov/rr/amed/.

Kansas City, MO. April 14, 2011-A rare copy of the Barcelona Haggadah edition, which was printed in 1992 in London through a special project with the British Museum and is the only copy in a four-state region, has been acquired by the Spencer Art Reference Library of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. The funding to acquire the work was given by longtime Museum supporters Sybil and Norman Kahn in memory of Thomas W. Levitt, a former two-term chairman of the Nelson-Atkins Society of Fellows.
 
“The gift of the Haggadah to the Nelson-Atkins library is very appropriate, because Passover was Tom’s favorite family holiday,” said Molly Levitt, widow of Tom Levitt, who died as a result of a rare neurological disease in 2009. “Our family is honored that Tom will be remembered at the Museum with this special gift through the generosity of the Kahns.”

The original Barcelona Haggadah manuscript dates from 14th century in Spain, and is named for one of the illustrations showing the coats of arms of Barcelona. The heavily decorated, original manuscript was acquired by the British Museum in 1844. The facsimile edition acquired by the Nelson-Atkins is rare; there are no other copies in Missouri, Kansas, Iowa or Nebraska. The closest location to see another copy is in the University of Chicago Libraries.
 
“The gift of the Barcelona Haggadah facsimile is an important addition to the Museum because it is a prime example of an illuminated Hebrew Medieval manuscript documenting an important cultural, artistic and historical tradition,” said Marilyn Carbonell, head of the Museum’s Library Services. “This facsimile fills a gap in the library’s research collection and strengthens our capacity to serve the entire regional community. We are most grateful to the donors, Sybil and Norman Kahn, for this gift in memory of Tom Levitt.”
 
The Haggadah, traditionally used at home for the Jewish celebration of the Passover holiday, is one of the most frequently illustrated texts of Jewish literature and tells the story of Exodus. The story of the “four sons” and the ceremonies of the Passover Seder are shown in the illustrations. The Haggadah is a narration or telling of the story and is used during the special Seder meal.

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
The Nelson-Atkins in Kansas City is recognized nationally and internationally as one of America’s finest art museums. The Nelson-Atkins serves the community by providing access and insight into its renowned collection of more than 33,500 art objects and is best known for its Asian art, European and American paintings, photography, modern sculpture, and new American Indian and Egyptian galleries. Housing a major art research library and the Ford Learning Center, the Museum is a key educational resource for the region. The institution-wide transformation of the Nelson-Atkins has included the 165,000-square-foot Bloch Building expansion and renovation of the original 1933 Nelson-Atkins Building.
 
The Nelson-Atkins is located at 45th and Oak Streets, Kansas City, MO. Hours are Wednesday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thursday/Friday, 10 a.m.-9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sunday, Noon-5 p.m. Admission to the Museum is free to everyone. For Museum information, phone 816.751.1ART (1278) or visit nelson-atkins.org.

For media interested in receiving further information, please contact:

Kathleen Leighton,
Communications and Media Relations Officer
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
816.751.1321
kleighton@nelson-atkins.org 

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y., April 5, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Seth Kaller, Inc. and University Archives, two leading dealers in American historic documents, are pleased to announce The Unique Abraham Lincoln. This collection of iconic Lincoln documents is being shown for the first time and offered for sale at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair, April 7-10, 2011. The collection includes:

    •    A unique leaf from Lincoln's homemade Sum Book—the frontier boy's earliest surviving manuscript. Here, Lincoln teaches himself the rules of compound interest;
    •    Two unique pages from Lincoln's final draft of his last State of the Union message, written less than five months before his assassination;
    •    The Lincoln Family copy of his inaugural addresses, messages to Congress, Emancipation Proclamation, and other key Lincoln documents.

These historic documents, along with several additional Lincoln items, are being offered for $1,650,000.

Seth Kaller has handled the manuscript of Lincoln's House Divided speech, signed copies of the Emancipation Proclamation, and many other exceptional documents. "Lincoln's writing has long been the most sought after of any president," Kaller states, "and iconic Lincoln items are especially coveted." Despite the financial crisis, new auction records were set for Lincoln documents in each of the last three years. Kaller says that his current collection "is the most important Lincoln group I have ever had the privilege of offering at one time."

The Unique Abraham Lincoln will be on display at the Seth Kaller, Inc. booth (E-8) at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair. The fair starts with a preview party on Thursday, April 7 from 6 to 9 p.m. and then runs from Friday, April 8 through Sunday, April 10. For ticket prices and more details visit http://www.sanfordsmith.com/.

Details on the collection:

Lincoln's Earliest Surviving Manuscript

Written by Lincoln as a teenager, his Sum Book is a powerful testament to the roots of the future president's greatness: tenacious drive, unremitting enterprise, and a limitless thirst for knowledge. Lincoln's handwritten "Compound Interest" calculations cover both sides of the tattered leaf offered here.

"We don't usually think about Lincoln's financial side," Kaller points out. "But these compound interest exercises taught him a fundamental principal of investment. This was critical to Lincoln's later success in confronting the economic complexities of the Civil War."

Life in frontier Indiana was primitive and public education virtually nonexistent when young Abe created the Sum Book to teach himself math and finance in 1824-1826. His stepmother, Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln, later recalled that when paper was unavailable, Lincoln would write his calculations on a board. When that became too black, "he would shave it off with a drawing knife and go on again." Lincoln eventually put together his Sum Book from paper obtained by cousin Dennis Hanks. It was preserved by Sarah and discovered after the war by William Herndon, his biographer and former law partner. The Library of Congress considers its leaf a rare and significant "American Treasure."

Of the eleven known Lincoln Sum Book leaves (paper with writing on both sides), nine are now in museum and library collections. A tenth, in private hands, is not expected to ever return to the market. Our leaf, which hasn't been offered since 1953, is likely to be the last opportunity for a collector to acquire any document from Lincoln's youth.
 
Lincoln's Last State of the Union Address

These two pages capture the heart of Lincoln's December 6, 1864 Annual Message to Congress—that the Union will win the war and America will emerge a stronger nation. Lincoln was assassinated less than five months later, just short of seeing his vision realized.
Only a portion of Lincoln's autograph manuscript is believed to have been saved by the printer. Just one other complete page (at Brown University) and five fragmented pages (most in institutions) are known to survive. The two pages offered here descended in the family of William Dole, Lincoln's commissioner of Indian Affairs, before being separated in the 1940s - 1950s. They are now reunited after more than half a century.

"The text of Lincoln's message is readily available," Kaller notes, "but these original manuscripts do more than just convey the text. In Lincoln's cutting and pasting a paragraph he had written earlier, we see him taking an idea and using it where it would have the greatest effect. This captures Lincoln holding these pages, in the act of creation."

Lincoln's Presidential Addresses and Proclamations—Passed Down in His Family

This unique book contains the preliminary and final Emancipation Proclamations, and Lincoln's inaugural addresses and annual messages to Congress, including his 1864 State of the Union address, as well as other key presidential documents.

These messages were gathered together and specially bound after Lincoln's second inauguration. Did the president give them directly to his son? It's certainly plausible. The book is signed by Robert Todd Lincoln, who identifies the contents as "All Messages & Inaug. Addresses 'Letters & Proclamations.'" It was handed down through the Lincoln family, until the 1980s, to the last direct descendant, Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith.

Several of the printings contained in this book are rare first editions; bound together they are unique. Only one similar book has been identified: a copy owned by Lincoln secretary John Hay, now in the John Hay Library at Brown University. But the Lincoln family copy contains four titles the Hay copy lacks: the 1863 and 1864 annual messages, the "Arrangements" for the second inauguration, and the second inaugural address ("With malice toward none; with charity for all…"), one of the most valuable and sought-after Lincoln imprints.

See additional information about Seth Kaller and John Reznikoff of University Archives.

SOURCE Seth Kaller, Inc.

April 4, 2011--The Virginia Museum of Fine Art’s Collectors’ Circle named Richmond-raised Frank Raysor “Collector of the Year” at a gala last weekend.

During the evening’s celebration, VMFA Director Alex Nyerges announced Raysor’s plans to bequeath more than $3 million to the museum.

Raysor already has promised VMFA a gift of 10,000 prints that he has amassed throughout the past 35 years. In recognition of this unprecedented gift, the museum’s previous library is being named the “Frank Raysor Center for the Study of Works on Paper.” The center will house more than 15,000 works on paper and will provide the space and resources needed for the study of the history of western print-making, among other subjects. The study center will open after a complete renovation and refurbishment of the existing space.

The gifted prints cover the history of print-making, spanning the 15th century to present day, and are by both European and American artists. The works will increase the museum’s total number of objects by one-third.

“The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ relationship with Frank Raysor dates back to his childhood visits,” Nyerges said. “ In the past we have benefitted from a number of antiquities, which he donated in the early 1990’s. His rich and fascinating collection of prints is a gift for all Virginians.”

As Collector of the Year, Raysor joins a group of distinguished donors and museum supporters. Past recipients include: Linda H. Kaufman, Jane Joel Knox, Mrs. Nelson L. St. Clair, Jr., Robert and Nancy Nooter, Paul Mellon, Jerome and Rita Gans, Arnold L. Lehman and Nelson A. Rockefeller.

As a representation of Raysor’s collection, more than 100 works are on display currently at VMFA. A Celebration of Print: 500 Years of Graphic Art from the Frank Raysor Collection will be on view until May 22, 2011.  

About the Collection
Collection highlights include 17th century European prints, particularly by the Czech-born English émigré Wenceslaus Hollar, and 19th-century etching-revival artists, such as James McNeill Whistler and Seymour Hayden.  Raysor’s holdings encompass the entire oeuvres of artists such as Charles Meryon, Félix Bracquemond, Alphonse Legros and others. Raysor continues to add to his and VMFA’s collection by recently gifting works by Hollar, Cassatt, Rembrandt and Géricault.

About the Exhibition

• TITLE:  A Celebration of Print:  500 Years of Graphic Art from the Frank Raysor Collection 

• LOCATION:  VMFA, Mellon Focus Gallery

• DATES:  Jan. 29 - May 22, 2011

• VMFA CURATOR:  Dr. Mitchell Merling, Paul Mellon Curator and Head of the Department of European Art

• NUMBER OF WORKS:  105

• ADMISSION: Free

• SLIDESHOW:  Richmond Times-Dispatch photo gallery

About Frank Raysor

Raysor grew up in Richmond, attending Thomas Jefferson High School, before going on to Duke University and Harvard Business School. He has loaned works from his collection to special exhibitions at the Albuquerque Museum, the Yale Center for British Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum. In 1982, Raysor guest-curated a small exhibition at VMFA of 18thcentury prints with classical subjects drawn from his collection in conjunction with the museum's internationally important exhibition, Vases from Magna Graecia. In addition to his collecting, Raysor has made important contributions to print scholarship, including his collaboration on the catalogue raisonné of the works of Charles Meryon.

About the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

With a collection of art that spans the globe and more than 5,000 years, plus a wide array of special exhibitions, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) is recognized as one of the top comprehensive art museums in the United States. The museum’s permanent collection encompasses more than 22,000 works of art, including the largest public collection of Fabergé outside Russia and one of the nation’s finest collections of American art. VMFA is home to acclaimed collections of English Silver and Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, British Sporting and Contemporary art, as well as renowned South Asian, Himalayan and African art. In May 2010, VMFA opened its doors to the public after a transformative expansion, the largest in its 75-year history. Programs include educational activities and studio classes for all ages, plus fun after-hours events. VMFA’s Statewide Partnership program includes traveling exhibitions, artist and teacher workshops, and lectures across the Commonwealth. General admission is always free. For additional information, telephone 804-340-1400 or visit www.vmfa.museum.


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ITHACA, N.Y. (March 29, 2011) - A fascinating bit of legal history involving Lizzie Borden, John Brown and Lincoln’s killers will soon be preserved and available online, thanks to a recent  grant awarded to Cornell University Library.

With $155,700 from the Save America’s Treasures grant program, the Library will restore and digitize a collection of mass-produced pamphlets from the late 17th century to the late 19th century. These pamphlets, which were often sold on the street soon after a trial as entertainment and cautionary tales, include accounts of famous historical figures and reflect society’s attitude toward social issues like capital punishment, marriage and abortion.

“These pamphlets provide a snapshot into a time period from a point of view that isn't available in more ‘traditional’ resources,” said Thomas Mills, head of collections at the Cornell Law Library. “The pamphlets contain a wealth of information about the daily lives of ordinary people, especially women and minorities, whose stories are not well represented in American legal history.”

Cornell Law Library purchased the Trials Pamphlet Collection in 1927, when the 321 pamphlets were bound together before knowledge about proper preservation techniques. Many of the bound volumes have deteriorated and the original pamphlets’ brittle pages are damaged, making them impossible for researchers to use. After conservation treatment, the volumes will be individually bound, cleaned and made chemically stable.

Each pamphlet will also be completely digitized and indexed online, allowing access to them both in person and online. All conservation and digitization work will be done in-house, and the project will begin in July.

“No other pamphlet collection of this type and scope is available online, and digitizing this material will be a significant contribution toward building a first-class digital library for Cornell and the rest of the world,” said Danielle Mericle, coordinator of the Library’s Digital Consulting and Production Services.

Cornell is one of the only libraries to receive funding in the current round, and this is Cornell’s third Save America’s Treasures award. These grants, organized through the National Park Service, provide funds for projects that protect American cultural heritage.

“This recognition shows we’re justified in feeling incredibly proud of our collections here at Cornell,” said Barbara Berger Eden, director of the Department of Preservation and Collection Maintenance and the principal investigator on the grant. “Without careful preservation, this part of history would have been lost forever, but now the originals will be kept safe while providing worldwide access to the content.”

About Cornell University Library 

Cornell University is an Ivy League institution and New York's land-grant university. Among the top ten academic research libraries in the country, Cornell University Library reflects the university's distinctive mix of eminent scholarship and democratic ideals. The Library offers cutting-edge programs and facilities, a full spectrum of services, extensive collections that represent the depth and breadth of the university, and a deep network of digital resources. Its impact reaches beyond campus boundaries with initiatives that extend the land grant mission to a global focus. To learn more, visit <http://library.cornell.edu>.

National Museum of American History Embarks on Conservation of Jefferson’s Bible

March 11, 2011 -- The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History is currently performing a specialized conservation treatment to ensure the long-term preservation of Thomas Jefferson’s bible, a small handmade book that provides an intimate view of Jefferson’s private religious and moral philosophy. 



At age 77 and living at Monticello in retirement following his two terms as President, Jefferson completed a project he had long planned and long discussed with others. In 1820 he assembled what he titled “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.” Using excerpts from the Four Gospels of the New Testament, Jefferson arranged the text to tell a chronological and edited story of Jesus’ life and moral philosophy.



“The volume provides an exclusive insight to the religious and moral beliefs of the writer of the Declaration of Independence, the nation’s third President, as well as his position as an important thinker in the Age of Enlightenment,” said Brent D. Glass, director of the museum. “The treatment will ensure that generations to come will be able to study and view this tangible witness to history.” 



Professionally bound in rich Morocco leather with gold tooling, this volume (86 pages; 8.25 inches by 5 inches) was not printed but rather constructed more like a “scrapbook.” Jefferson clipped various passages from printed New Testaments in English, French, Greek and Latin and glued them onto the front and back of blank pages in four columns to allow for immediate comparison. On those pages, Jefferson wanted to clarify and distill Jesus’ teachings. 



Jefferson had no intention of publishing his work, rather intending it to be private reading material and not for a larger audience. He considered his and others’ religious beliefs a private matter that should not be subjected to public scrutiny or government regulation. He knew his beliefs could be viewed as unorthodox and would offend some religious authorities, and he knew that his views could be used against him by his political opponents. The book stayed in Jefferson’s family until the Smithsonian’s librarian purchased it from Carolina Randolph, Jefferson’s great-granddaughter, in 1895. By an act of Congress in 1904, lithographic reproductions of the volume were created for distribution to members of Congress. Once these copies were distributed, no other facsimiles were made. 



After nearly 200 years, the book has become fragile and requires treatment to ensure its long-term preservation. Because of its age and the glue used to adhere the clippings to the blank paper, the pages are extremely stiff and inflexible and the tight binding has led to cracking and some tearing of the pages. The goal of the conservation is to clean and stabilize the book, mend damaged pages and return the manuscript back into Jefferson’s original binding. This will allow the museum to once again display the book safely in a new exhibition mount at an angle of 90 degrees. In addition, the team will construct a custom protective enclosure to house the bible when in storage.



One of the main goals of the conservation is to stabilize the book in such a way that will provide increased access to the American public to this historic treasure. Visitors will be able to view the newly conserved Jefferson bible, along with two of the source books he used and an original copy of the 1904 printing in the museum’s Albert H. Small Documents Gallery beginning in November.



Funding for the conservation treatment and the upcoming display was realized through a public-private partnership. Peter and Rhondda Grant, Brenton Halsey, Mr. and Mrs. Charles F. Bryan Jr., and other contributors generously provided private funds, and the Collections Care and Preservation Fund, administered by the National Collections Program, and the Smithsonian Collections Advisory Committee provided federal support.



The museum is working with Smithsonian Channel on an hour-long special that will tell the extraordinary story of the Jefferson bible and chronicle the intricate conservation work. 



Smithsonian Institution Libraries will make preservation-quality high-resolution digital images of the original document in its state-of-the art imaging center; these will be the first complete set of color photographs of the bible. A digital copy will be available to researchers and the public via the museum’s website this fall in conjunction with the exhibition opening. 



Smithsonian Books will release a full-color, reproduction facsimile and a leather-bound limited-edition, boxed reproduction in the fall, which will feature an introductory essay by museum historians Harry Rubenstein and Barbara Clark Smith, as well as an overview of the conservation treatment by the museum’s paper conservator Janice Stagnitto Ellis. 



The National Museum of American History collects, preserves and displays American heritage in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific and military history. To learn more about the museum, check http://americanhistory.si.edu. For Smithsonian information, the public may call (202) 633-1000, (202) 633-5285 (TTY).

Video
Close-ups of the bible as well as the ongoing conservation work (footage courtesy of Smithsonian Channel).

John le Carré, one of the world’s most celebrated authors, has offered his literary archive to Oxford’s Bodleian Library with the intention that it should become its permanent home.

Le Carré said, ‘I am delighted to be able to do this. Oxford was Smiley’s spiritual home, as it is mine. And while I have the greatest respect for American universities, the Bodleian is where I shall most happily rest.’

Richard Ovenden, Keeper of Special Collections and Associate Director of the Bodleian Libraries said ‘We are enormously grateful that John le Carré has made his archive available to the Bodleian. It is compelling primary evidence of a major cultural contribution to a literary genre and will offer scholars important insights into his work. We hope the collection will also be appreciated more widely, through exhibitions, seminars and conferences as well as through digitization initiatives.’

'John le Carré’s writing is not just a key to understanding the history of the Cold War; it is itself a vital and influential part of that history. To have this archive in the Bodleian is a major enrichment of Oxford’s unique collection of primary sources for the study of contemporary history,' said Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies, University of Oxford.

To mark the arrival of the archive, the Bodleian is displaying a small selection of le Carré’s working papers for members of the public to see on World Book Day, Thursday 3 March. This will include sections from the various handwritten and typed drafts of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy which show how the novel evolved in the process of composition from its early working title, ‘The Reluctant Autumn of George Smiley’, to the final published text. The display will also include private photographs of le Carré with Alec Guinness, who memorably starred in the 1979 BBC series, as well as manuscripts of two of le Carré’s own favourite novels, The Tailor of Panama and The Constant Gardener.

John le Carré is the nom de plume of David John Moore Cornwell. His writing career spans 50 years and 22 novels which have been translated into 36 languages and adapted for film, TV and radio. He is renowned for his intricate espionage and political fiction, and for the creation of one of modern literature’s most subtle and carefully crafted protagonists, George Smiley. Le Carré’s evocative accounts of the cold war era in novels such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974) and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) were drawn in part from his own experiences working for MI5 and MI6. He has also pointed to the enduring influence upon him of his time as an undergraduate at Oxford. The complex and brilliantly drawn character of Smiley owes something to the Rev. Vivian Green who was Rector of Lincoln College, where le Carré read Modern Languages and graduated with a First Class Honours degree. Previously, Green had been Chaplain at Sherborne School while le Carré was a pupil. More recent novels such as The Constant Gardener and The Mission Song have left behind the complexities of the cold war in favour of more pressing global issues of our times. In le Carré’s words, “The almost unimaginable poverty of Nairobi’s slums, depicted in The Constant Gardener, provoked the formation of a registered British charity by the producers and crew working on the film adaptation. The Constant Gardener Trust continues to provide precious educational resources in the remote Turkana area of northern Kenya, where parts of the novel were set.” Le Carré’s most recent novel, Our Kind of Traitor, published in September 2010, features a young Oxford academic who becomes embroiled in a murky Establishment intelligence plot.

Le Carré’s archive, which fills a space the size of a Cornish barn, comprises multiple versions of his works, showing the evolution of his thought, his handling of plot and development of character, and his intensive editorial approach. Approximately 85 archive boxes were delivered to the Bodleian in late summer 2010 with additional materials still to be received, including a wealth of correspondence relating to his literary career. It is expected that other personal and family papers, photographs, correspondence and documents of great importance to future literary historians and biographers will be made available to researchers in the fullness of time. The Bodleian has the facilities to preserve and ultimately make available any of the more recent ‘born digital’ material in the archive, an area of increasing importance to scholars and librarians.

The World Book Day Display, Tinker Tailor Writer Spy, will include:

1. Tinker Tailor Solider Spy manuscript section
Le Carré’s seventh novel published in 1974. Manuscript draft on pink paper. The draft is undated and untitled but is an early version of the beginning of Chapter 2 in which Smiley is introduced to the reader as ‘small, podgy …one of those gentle, reluctant worker-bees who throng London’s suburban railway system’. The bee metaphor was eventually excised from the published text, but in this draft many of Smiley’s familiar characteristics are already present and more are added as le Carré amends and elaborates his first thoughts so that a fuller picture of the spymaster begins to emerge: [left margin] ‘His legs were short, his gait anything but agile, his dress sober’. Two slightly later drafts (with the bee comparison retained) are titled ‘The Reluctant Autumn of George Smiley’, the second version with the subtitle ‘being the first story of THE QUEST FOR KARLA’. Only the latest drafts are titled ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ and begin with a description of Thursgood School, and not Smiley.

2. The Russia House manuscript section
Le Carré’s twelfth novel, published in 1989. This manuscript section of the novel, dated 2 July 1987, is written with le Carré’s favourite rollerball pen. Dated four days later, a much altered typescript demonstrates le Carré’s typical working method of drafting and redrafting his text, then stapling manuscript amendments to a main typewritten sheet or (as in the Tinker Tailor manuscripts) stapling several pages together.

For more information, see http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/news/2010-feb-24.

AUSTIN, Texas—The Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, received $137,015 from the Council on Library and Information Resources’ (CLIR) Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant for “Revealing Texas Collections of Comedias Sueltas.”

The Ransom Center holds more than 14,000 “comedias sueltas,” a generic term for plays published in small pamphlet formats in Spain from the late 17th through the 19th century. Purchased in pieces, generally in collections of bound volumes, the materials have been described as one of the major collections of Spanish dramatic literature in suelta form in North America.

While portions of the collection are minimally cataloged, the grant “Revealing Texas Collections of Comedias Sueltas” will allow for the creation of individual database records for each suelta, making the information available on the Ransom Center’s website. The grant also includes cataloging more than 600 sueltas at the Cushing Library at Texas A&M University.

“The records will be an excellent resource for scholars interested in the history of the Spanish book,” said Richard Oram, Ransom Center associate director and Hobby Foundation librarian. “Literary and bibliographical scholars will find scores of unique but previously invisible titles, performing arts historians will discover arcane titles in all manner of theatrical genres and students of music history will find what are effectively libretti of musical works. Cross-disciplinary projects using the sueltas can certainly be foreseen.”

Scholars may be surprised by the chronological scope and depth of the Texas sueltas holdings which range from the classic period of the genre in the 18th century into the early modern era. Many provide a glimpse into popular Spanish theatrical and musical entertainment genres with some of the works overlapping with the better known “zarzuela.”

Among some of the represented dramatists in the earlier sueltas is Pedro Calderón de la Barca, regarded as one of Spain’s foremost dramatists and one of the finest playwrights of world literature. The works of Lope de Vega, Matos Fragoso, Alarćon, Mirade Amerscua, Rojas Zorilla, Vélez de Guevara, Tirso de Molina, Leandro Fernández de Moratín and Ramón de la Cruz are also present in the collection.

           The project will be completed by February 2014.

           High-resolution press images are available.
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PHILADELPHIA -- The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded $490,700 to the University of Pennsylvania Libraries to create online cataloging records for 33,500 titles in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library Culture Class Collection. Administered by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives Program, "Promoting Research through Rare Book Cataloging Partnerships" is a three-year grant that will provide access to the Penn Libraries' original rare book collection.

The project will rely heavily on contributions from students studying in relevant disciplines who, together with other project cataloging staff, will create dynamic, constantly evolving bibliographic records that will not only serve as initial points of discovery for scholars but also present results of new research.

"Mellon and the CLIR program continue to enable the Libraries to make more accessible a vast trove of Penn's most unique collections," said H. Carton Rogers, Vice Provost and Director of Libraries. "Because of this grant, we are able to reveal a rare collection of significant scholarly value to the Penn community and beyond."

The Culture Class Collection contains a remarkable wealth of materials documenting European and American print culture, in its widest sense, from the early Renaissance through the end of the nineteenth century. Highlights of the collection include 470 incunabula from the earliest decades of printing, a 1528 edition of Homer's works owned by King Henry VIII and signed by his son, the future King Edward VI, hundreds of titles from the English Restoration of the 1670s and 1680s, including one annotated by English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, over 1,000 pamphlets from the French Revolution, thousands of Dutch proclamations, numerous seventeenth- and eighteenth-century broadsides and pamphlets from the German state of Braunschweig, an exceptional collection of works by and about the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz that documents his early reception, and over 500 early printed editions of Aristotle, many in vernacular translations and many with commentaries.

The collection is notable for the enormous amount of copy-specific information contained within the individual volumes. Many are in contemporary bindings, such as one with the Medici family coat of arms in gold and colors on the cover, while others hold a wealth of information about provenance and use, including evidence of censorship and of readers' responses to the texts. The project will not only increase scholarly access to and use of one of the Penn Libraries' finest collections of rare books, but will also show, through detailed descriptions and copious reference citations, how titles in the collection have been used and received by scholars.

Contact:
Regan Kladstrup
Head, Rare Book Cataloging
University of Pennsylvania Libraries
(215) 746-6398
kladstru@pobox.upenn.edu

Dr. Susan M. Allen Named Director of California Rare Book School

The California Rare Book School (CalRBS), a project of the Department of Information Studies at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies (GSE&IS) at UCLA, has announced the appointment of Susan Macall Allen to the position of Director of the California Rare Book School (CalRBS), commencing March 7, 2011.  She will succeed Dr. Beverly Lynch, CalRBS’s Founding Director.  Dr. Allen is currently Associate Director and Chief Librarian for Development and Collaborative Initiatives at the Getty Research Institute (GRI), an operating program of the J. Paul Getty Trust.

Dr. Allen was Chief Librarian of the Research Library at the Getty from 1999 to 2009.  It was during this period that she became involved in CalRBS, first as a member of the Advisory Committee and then as a faculty member.  Between 2006 and 2010 she taught “Introduction to Special Collections Librarianship,” “Donors & Libraries,” and “History of the Book, 200-1820.”  Previously she was head of the Department of Special Collections, Young Research Library, UCLA; and director of Libraries and Media Services at Kalamazoo College from 1993 to 1997.  Prior to 1993, she held several posts in the Libraries of the Claremont Colleges, including head of Special Collections.

Dr. Allen was chair of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Standing Committee of the International Federation of Library Associations.  She also served on the Council of the Bibliographical Society of America; the board of the American Printing History Association; and the Board of Visitors and Governors of St. John’s College.  Currently she serves on the boards of The Book Club of California and the Zamorano Club of Los Angeles and on the Steering Committee of the California Preservation Program.  She has spoken often and published extensively on undergraduate use of rare books and manuscripts, the future of research libraries, history of the book topics, rare book theft, and library security.  She has taught regularly at Rare Book School at the University of Virginia as well as at CalRBS.

Dr. Allen received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Wisconsin, Madison; a further master’s from St. John’s College; and her Ph.D. from UCLA.  

Dr. Lynch is Professor of Information Studies at UCLA.  Under her leadership, the California Rare Book School took shape and offered courses for the first time in August 2005.  CalRBS is a continuing education program dedicated to providing the knowledge and skills required by professionals working in all aspects of the rare book community, as well as for students interested in entering the field.  Lynch established an Advisory Committee for the school composed of recognized leaders in research libraries, rare books and manuscript collections (aka “special collections”), and in the antiquarian bookselling community.  Courses at CalRBS are taught by faculty who are both established scholars and experienced teachers.  CalRBS courses directly benefit from a wealth of special collections of rare books, manuscripts, and archival materials in the Los Angeles area.  

CalRBS operates with the support of the Ahmanson Foundation, the Council on Library & Information Resources, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Getty Foundation, The Book Club of California, the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library & Center for 17th-and-18th Century Studies, and the Zamorano Club of Los Angeles.         

The UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies (GSE&IS) includes two departments - the Department of Education and the Department of Information Studies. Together, the two departments embody the school's commitment to understand and improve educational practice and policy, information policy and information systems in a diverse society. GSE&IS’s academic programs bring together faculties and students committed to expanding the range of knowledge in education, information science and associated disciplines. Its professional programs seek to develop librarians, teachers, administrators and information professionals within the enriched context of a research university.

Shaena Engle, engle@gseis.ucla.edu                                                                      310/206-5951

DURHAM, N.C. - The Duke University Libraries have received a $1.25 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create a new senior conservator position to help care for the Libraries’ extensive research collections. During the next three years, the Libraries will raise a matching $1 million to endow the position, while $250,000 of the grant will allow the Libraries to proceed with appointing someone before the endowment is fully funded.

The new senior conservator position will help the Libraries to address a growing need to preserve and make accessible a wide variety of materials that are currently unavailable to researchers or could be damaged by use because of their fragile condition. It will also allow the Libraries’ Conservation Services Department to expand partnerships on campus and throughout the Triangle area.

The demand for skilled conservation professionals has never been higher, as historical library collections age and technology poses new questions about long-term access to information. A recent survey of Duke’s Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library (RBMSCL) indicated that nearly one-third of its holdings require conservation treatments. That translates to a significant need: the RBMSCL has collections of more than 350,000 printed volumes, 20 million manuscripts, and 200,000 photographs, in addition to numerous other formats, from ancient papyri to born-digital records. Many of these materials come with unique conservation needs that must be addressed before researchers can use them.

Duke’s experienced team of library conservation professionals serves as a local and regional resource on a range of conservation-related issues. Conservators regularly collaborate with other Duke units, such as the Nasher Museum of Art and the Center for Documentary Studies, and with partners in the Triangle Research Libraries Network (North Carolina Central University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). The addition of a senior conservator will increase the department’s level of expertise and the opportunities for outreach and conservation education to the community.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has generously supported several other Duke University Libraries initiatives. Previous Mellon grants are helping to develop a portal for integrated access to international papyrus collections; a next-generation, open-source library system that fits modern library workflows; and campus-wide institutional strategies for managing and preserving Duke’s vast and varied digital assets.

“We could not realize our most ambitious goals without the Mellon Foundation’s generous support,” said Deborah Jakubs, Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs. “Our research collections are both deep and diverse in coverage and a powerful draw to scholars working in many disciplines. By improving our ability to preserve these materials for the next generation, this grant is supporting not just Duke, but the entire scholarly community.”

Contact / For more information
    •    Aaron Welborn
    •    aaron.welborn@duke.edu
    •    919-660-5816
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NEDCC is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a grant of $500,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to help support its Preservation Services activities over the next two years.

The NEH funding will help enhance NEDCC's capacity to deliver preservation information to smaller organizations impacted by the economic downturn.

NEDCC has responded to the needs of these organizations by increasing its offerings of convenient and affordable preservation training programs and expanding its digital services to encompass training and consultation.

By helping institutions better understand and address their preservation challenges - through workshops, webinars, a reference service, disaster assistance, publications, surveys and consultations, and a comprehensive website - NEDCC is poised to help institutions preserve their vital humanities collections in these tough economic times.

NEDCC is a nonprofit organization that relies on federal grants like this one, as well as generous contributions from individuals, foundations, and other sponsors, to help sustain the variety of free and low-cost preservation services and resources that you depend on.

Massachusetts Congresswoman Niki Tsongas recently offered her congratulations:

It's fitting that such an important organization in the Fifth District can continue to ensure that 
our cultural and historic legacy is preserved. 

I want to congratulate NEDCC for receiving these competitive federal grant funds, which will assist libraries, archives, museums, and other similar institutions affected by the economic downturn to maintain and preserve their historic collections.

For more information about NEDCC, visit www.nedcc.org or call (978) 470-1010.

November 17, 2010 -- Today, the Portland Area Used Booksellers Association (PAUBA) announces the launch of its new web service www.pdxusedbooks.org, allowing visitors to search the collected online inventories of PAUBA member bookstores.  “Portlanders embrace the idea of buying locally,” said Debbie Cross, the President of PAUBA, and co-owner of Wrigley-Cross Books, “and our new search engine will allow them to search the online inventories of over three dozen local and regional bookstores.”

Today, many small independent booksellers sell online only, and those that do maintain a brick-and-mortar store report that online sales represent a significant portion of their business. For consumers who want to shop locally while still enjoying the convenience of online purchasing it can be a challenge to avoid the national and multinational booksellers whose online stores often appear at the top of search results.  The new PAUBA search engine makes shopping locally online a whole lot easier.  “Portlanders can now shop online for books and know that they are buying from a neighborhood bookstore,” said Pamela Parnell owner of Pam’s Fine Books.

“We had been discussing this problem for a while,” comments John Storhm, owner of Burned Books Publishing and designer of the www.pdxusedbooks.org web page, “and then I realized that if each store already had an online inventory, all we needed was a unified search engine.”  Storhm began by collecting statistics on which inventory listing services were used most by PAUBA member bookstores.  This turned out to be Biblio.com and Abe.com.  Storhm then designed a web page that would take a search request and crawl the Biblio and Abe sites scanning the inventories of the PAUBA member stores.

PAUBA member bookstores are independent booksellers.  Each maintains their own stock, establishes their own store policies, and sets their own pricing.  “We work together on events like the annual Rose City Used Book Fair,” says Rachelle Markley, book fair organizer and owner of Second Glance Books, “the advantage this search engine provides is that stores retain their autonomy.  Search results contain links directly to books from each store’s online inventory.  When a customer clicks the link the sale goes directly to the store and PAUBA is no longer involved.”

“PAUBA member stores value their independence,” agrees Debbie Cross, “the role PAUBA plays is by helping customers to connect to a local bookseller.”

CONTACT:  Debbie Cross (503) 667-0807 books@wrigleycrossbooks.com
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New York, NY, September 29, 2010—On October 30, The Morgan Library & Museum's landmark McKim building will reopen to the public following the completion of the most extensive restoration of its interior spaces since its construction more than one hundred years ago. The building, designed by the firm of McKim, Mead and White, was once the private study and library of financier Pierpont Morgan. The Italianate marble villa, designed in the spirit of the High Renaissance, is considered one of New York's great architectural treasures, and its interiors are regarded as some of the most beautiful in America. The $4.5 million restoration revitalizes the historic center of the Morgan, in many ways completing the institution's dynamic transformation that began in 2006 with Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano's successful expansion and renovation of the campus.

The project provides enhanced exhibition space for the institution and enables the Morgan to share with the public more treasures from its world-renowned permanent collection. The inaugural installation demonstrates the extraordinary quality and scope of Pierpont Morgan's interests as a collector and cultural steward. Nearly 300 objects dating from 3500 BC to the twentieth century will be displayed throughout the building's majestic rooms in a series of rotating exhibitions. Previously, only about thirty objects were regularly on view in the McKim.

The Morgan will celebrate the restoration project with a series of special activities, culminating with the October 30 public opening. Beginning with a media preview on October 21, the week-long festivities will include a special gala for Morgan patrons and a members' open house. The public opening will include performances by student musicians from the Mannes College The New School of Music, and the New-Trad Octet, as well as a special lecture by Morgan director William M. Griswold and docent-led tours of the McKim building throughout the day. Special screenings of the film, All the Beautiful Things in the World: An Introduction to the Morgan, also will be presented that day.

"The reopening of the McKim building is a special moment in the history of the institution," said Morgan Director William M. Griswold, who is guiding the first major capital project since he assumed his position in 2008. "The building is the heart and soul of The Morgan Library & Museum. Not only does it embody the taste and vision of the museum's founder and patron, Pierpont Morgan, but over the years its beautiful rooms have become synonymous with all that makes the Morgan special. No visit to the museum is complete without a tour of the McKim building, and now, with this ambitious project and the installation of some of the Morgan's outstanding treasures, that experience will be greatly enhanced."

Room-by-Room Summary
 
The restoration project encompasses all of the McKim's rooms and exhibition spaces. Key components include new lighting throughout the building to better illuminate its extraordinary murals and decor, the opening of the North Room to visitors for the first time, installation of new exhibition cases to house rotating displays of masterpieces from the Morgan's collections, restoration of period furniture and fixtures, and cleaning of the walls and applied ornamentation.

Library (East Room)
Pierpont Morgan's stunning library, also known as the East Room, is defined by its majestic thirty-foot walls, lined floor to ceiling with triple tiers of bookcases made of inlaid Circassian walnut and featuring volumes of European literature from the sixteenth through twentieth centuries. The library now will be equipped with a new state-of-the-art, yet subtle lighting system; a newly installed late-nineteenth-century Persian rug of the type originally in the room; and newly designed display cases that will be used to exhibit some of the Morgan's most valued objects.

The revamped lighting will allow visitors to fully appreciate the splendor of the lunettes and spandrels of the library's decorative ceiling, the work of noted muralist Henry Siddons Mowbray (1858-1928), which features cultural luminaries of the past such as Socrates, Galileo, Botticelli, and Michelangelo, as well as signs of the zodiac. The improved illumination also will significantly enhance the focal point of the room— the grand fireplace and sixteenth-century tapestry depicting the triumph of Avarice, from a series depicting the Seven Deadly Sins.

The inlaid walnut bookshelves that contain the Morgan's collection of rare books will be enhanced with nonreflective Plexiglas, allowing visitors to identify individual titles and to appreciate the beauty of the exquisite bindings more fully.

An original pendant chandelier, preserved since its removal about seventy years ago and designed by twentieth-century New York designer Edward F. Caldwell, will be restored and rehung at the library's entrance. Seating also will be installed to enable visitors to spend more time contemplating this extraordinary room.

Prior to the restoration, only a handful of objects were regularly on view in the library. Highlights of the approximately one hundred rotating works that will be on display each year in this room include examples of some of the Morgan's finest literary and historical manuscripts, medieval and Renaissance illuminated texts, music manuscripts, and printed books and bindings. Visitors will encounter a letter from fifteen-year-old Queen Elizabeth I purchased by Pierpont Morgan in 1900; the manuscript for Balzac's Eugenie Grandet (1833) with a torturous mass of revisions, corrections, and additions demonstrating the writer's complex creative process; illustrated notes by Alexander Calder regarding the installation of his "stabiles" from 1941; the Reims Gospel Book, the Morgan's finest Carolingian manuscript, written in gold at the Abbey of St. Remi (ca. 860); the manuscript of Mozart's famed "Haffner" Symphony No. 35 (1732); a newly discovered manuscript for Robert Schumann's "Des Knaben Berglied" (1849) acquired by the Morgan in 2009 and displayed for the first time; one of the earliest editions of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (1483); the first edition of Lewis Caroll's Through the Looking Glass (1872) with proofs of Tenniel's illustrations; Mary Shelley's annotated copy of her masterpiece Frankenstein (1818); and one of the Morgan's three original Gutenberg Bibles (ca. 1455), the first book printed with moveable type.

Study (West Room)
The Renaissance-inspired furnishings of the Study, or West Room, and the paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts displayed, reveal the breadth of Morgan's interests and activity as a collector, and reflect his reputation as a "modern day Medici." The room is defined by its sixteenth-century Florentine coffered wooden ceiling, red silk damask wall coverings patterned after the wall in the Roman palace of famed Renaissance banker Agostino Chigi, and fifteenth- to seventeenth-century stained glass fragments embedded into the windows.

The Study will be enriched by a more substantive display of works from the collection that surrounded Pierpont Morgan in the early 1900s, when he used the room for personal business, as well as with objects that have been acquired since. More than double the number of objects will be on view, including works never shown before, such as the 1530 Verrazano globe, one of the earliest known dated globes, and a bronze St. John the Baptist after Michelozzo. Other works include paintings by Hans Memling, Francesco Francia, Perugino, and Jacopo Tintoretto, among others.

The steel-lined vault in the southeast corner of the room, equipped with a bank vault door and combination lock, is where Pierpont Morgan housed his most valued acquisitions, particularly his collection of more than 600 medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. The vault remained in use until 2003, housing by then the more than 1,300 medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in the institution's collection. As part of the McKim restoration project, another modification to the Study makes the vault more accessible to visitors. The curtain currently shrouding the vault's entrance will be removed, new lighting fixtures will be installed, and the vault shelves will be filled with sumptuous leather boxes that housed the Morgan's manuscripts and rare books. Several small bronze objects and tomes in which many of Pierpont Morgan's collections were published also will be on display. The vault's original runner was conserved and will be installed in its original location.

Additional works of sculpture such as such as the Bust of the Christ Child by Antonio Rossellino and Saint John the Baptist by Giovanni Francesco Rustici will be exhibited on the low bookshelves lining the perimeter of the room, and the lush, velvet-covered furnishings will be reupholstered to evoke the atmosphere of the study as it was in Pierpont Morgan's day.

North Room
The North Room, the intimate office of the Morgan's first director, Belle da Costa Greene, will open to the public for the first time, and will be transformed to feature the earliest works in the Morgan's collection, including objects from the Ancient Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, as well as artifacts from the early medieval period. More than 200 objects will be on permanent view in this new exhibition space. The two-tiered room, lined with walnut bookshelves, features a ceiling of Renaissance-inspired paintings and a bronze bust of Giovanni Boccaccio on the mantle of the fireplace.

Bookshelves along the perimeter of the room will be converted to exquisitely lit cases to display these items, notably a selection of Ancient Near Eastern cylinder seals collected by Pierpont Morgan. Dating from around 3500 BC, these miniature engraved stones were in use for about 3,000 years in the region referred to as Mesopotamia. These seals were the earliest known objects to use pictorial symbols to communicate ideas. Also on view is a selection of clay tablets, including a seventeenth-century BC fragment inscribed with the Babylonian flood epic predating the story of Noah's Ark in the Old Testament.

The room will accommodate freestanding cases for Near Eastern as well as ancient Greek and Roman objects, including a pair of intricately decorated first-century Roman silver cups and a rare thirteenth-century BC stone tablet featuring cuneiform inscriptions.

The installation also will include jeweled and metalwork objects such as buckles, brooches, and other personal ornaments dating from the second to the tenth centuries, from the collection of Morgan trustee Eugene V. Thaw and his wife, Clare, as well as an eleventh-century jeweled book binding. The Migration-era objects from the Thaw collection document the medieval period in Europe.

The original chandeliers, removed two generations ago, will be refinished and reinstalled, allowing for optimal appreciation of the recently cleaned ceiling and upper-tier bookcases. In addition, two Egyptian basalt votive figures will flank the room's fireplace on new pedestals.

Rotunda
The Rotunda, originally entered through the grand doors facing 36th Street, is the dramatic center of the McKim building. Its intricate and elaborately decorated ceiling, also painted by Mowbray, refers thematically to the great treasures contained within this remarkable structure, depicting figures from classical antiquity and the great literary epochs of the past, including Homer, Dante, and Petrarch. The splendor of color and texture is supplied by variegated marble surfaces and columns, mosaic panels and columns of lapis lazuli.

The marble surfaces and mosaic panels that are signature features of the McKim Rotunda have been cleaned and restored to their original grandeur for the first time in a century. New lighting will simulate the natural light that originally came through the oculus and will enhance the richly illustrated apse, ceiling, and lunettes.

Prior to the restoration, the Rotunda was not used as an exhibition space. Now, new display cases will be installed, housing the first substantive display of the Morgan's outstanding collection of Americana, including such great works as autograph letters by Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, the Morgan's life mask of George Washington, copies of the first Bible printed in America, and the Declaration of Independence.

McKim Reopening Public Programs
Saturday, October 30, 2010
All events are included with admission to The Morgan Library & Museum. Tickets to the lecture and concert will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis on the day of the program. Advance reservations for Morgan members only: 212.685.0008 x560 or tickets@themorgan.org.


12-3 p.m.    Performance by Mannes College The New School for Music students in the Morgan's Gilbert Court, including repertoire from the Italian baroque to the American Gilded Age.
1-1:45 p.m.    Lecture by William Griswold in Gilder Lehrman Hall, including details of the McKim restoration project and an introduction to the Morgan's history and collections.
4-5:30 p.m.    Concert by New-Trad Octet in Gilder Lehrman Hall
Combining instruments and elements of a traditional New Orleans brass band with those of a modern jazz group, Jeff Newell and the New-Trad Octet explore the early sources of America's musical heritage. To celebrate the period of American history covered in the Morgan's exhibition Mark Twain: A Skeptic's Progress, the program will feature works by Stephen Foster, Scott Joplin, John Philip Sousa, and others.
All Day    Film Screening—All the Beautiful Things in the World: An Introduction to the Morgan. A feature documentary on the history of The Morgan Library & Museum, its collections, and founder Pierpont Morgan.
All Day    Guided Tours of the McKim. Docents will be on hand throughout the day to provide visitors with historical insight into the Morgan's architecture.
About the Project Team
Jennifer Tonkovich, curator of Drawings and Prints at The Morgan Library & Museum, is coordinating the reinstallation of collection objects in the McKim building.

Exhibition Design: Stephen Saitas, Stephen Saitas Designs
Stephen Saitas Designs, New York has designed more than 175 installations and exhibitions in museums, galleries, historic houses, and libraries since the firm's establishment in 1982. Recent projects include the reinstallations of the European and American collections for The Huntington, San Marino, CA; and the reinstallation of the American Wing period rooms for The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Lighting Design: Richard Renfro, Renfro Design Group, Inc.
Renfro Design Group, Inc., established in 1998, is an architectural lighting design firm. Recent projects include the Bloch Building addition to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; Craig Thomas Discovery Visitor Center at Grand Teton National Park; and The American Wing Gallery at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Architect of Record: Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners LLP
Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners, which worked with the Morgan on its 2006 expansion, has been responsible for the restoration and revitalization of many significant buildings and sites, including Grand Central Terminal, Ellis Island Immigration Museum, Rockefeller Center, the Empire State Building, Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse, and the Rubin Museum of Art.

The Morgan Library & Museum
A complex of buildings in the heart of New York City, The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. Located at Madison Avenue and 36th Street, with a world-renowned collection that ranges from Rembrandt to Picasso, Mozart to Bob Dylan, Dickens to Hemingway, and Gutenberg Bibles to Babar the elephant, The Morgan Library & Museum maintains a unique position among cultural institutions in New York, the nation, and the world.

General Information
The Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405
212.685.0008
www.themorgan.org

Hours
Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.

Admission
$12 for adults; $8 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children, 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

Current & Upcoming Exhibitions
Anne Morgan's War: Rebuilding Devastated France, 1917-1924    September 3-November 21, 2010
Mark Twain: A Skeptic's Progress    September 17, 2010-January 3, 2011
Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Drawings, 1961-1968    September 24, 2010-January 2, 2011
Degas: Drawings and Sketchbooks    September 24, 2010-January 23, 2011

#

Sept. 7, 2010----The University of Delaware Library announces the availability of a new digital collection, the William Augustus Brewer Bookplate Collection. An enlarged version of each bookplate, as well as the Rev. Brewer's handwritten notes and catalog numbers, can be viewed by clicking on “Detailed View” below the image for each bookplate.

The Brewer Bookplate is widely known and there have been many requests from scholars and collectors to have it digitized. The collection is available online.

Brewer was an avid bookplate collector. His wife, Augusta LaMotte Brewer, bequeathed his collection to the University of Delaware Library after her husband's death. The William Augustus Brewer Bookplate Collection comprises 12,680 printed bookplates dating mainly from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

The collection includes bookplates from the libraries of John Carter Brown, Lewis Carroll, Samuel L. Clemens, Calvin Coolidge, Charles Dickens, Walt Disney, Edward Gibbon, Alexander Hamilton, Harry Houdini, Samuel Pepys, Howard Pyle, Paul Revere, Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Alfred Stieglitz and William Butler Yeats, as well as many others. The designers of the bookplates include, such well-known artists as Thomas Bewick, Edward Burne-Jones, Kate Greenaway, William Hogarth, Howard Pyle, Rudolf Ruzicka and James A. M. Whistler.

Subjects illustrated in the bookplates are varied, including acrostics, birds, death's heads, medicine, music, rebuses, science and portraits of historical and literary figures.

The William Augustus Brewer Digital Bookplate Collection currently includes about 3,000 bookplates, with the remaining bookplates to be added in 2011.

The William Augustus Brewer Bookplate Collection is housed in Special Collections at the Morris Library. The finding aid for the collection is available online.

Mary Durio, head of the Center for Digital Collections of the University of Delaware Library, coordinated the digitization project working with Craig Wilson, assistant director for library collections, and Gregg Silvis, assistant director for library computing systems. Mark Grabowski, CITA IV, library data and server support, library computing systems, provided technical support for the project.

UDaily, Office of Communication and Marketing, University of Delaware.

Lincoln, Neb., August 10th, 2010 —University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries announced that it has received more than 11,000 books and exhibition catalogues donated by Stuart P. Embury, M.D., of Holdrege, a 1966 graduate of UNL and 1969 UNMC graduate. Embury amassed what is considered one of the top private book collections on American art in the United States over 40 years.

The Stuart P. Embury MD Library of American Art contains primary material and books covering all major and many minor figures in American Art, including painters, sculptors and printmakers. There are thousands of exhibition catalogues including nearly complete runs from the National Academy of Design and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Some of the titles were published in the 1800s. There are numerous catalogue raisonnes of major artists work such as Whistler, Remington, Inness and many others.

"The UNL Libraries is proud to have the Stuart P. Embury Library of American Art and we've been working with Dr. Embury to renovate the archives reading room to properly house and showcase the incredible collection," said Joan Giesecke, dean of libraries.

A celebration of the donation and renovated reading room is in the early planning stages. The cataloging of the books is almost complete. Staff will then catalog the thousands of exhibition catalogues.

Norman Geske, professor emeritus of art, said "The Stuart P. Embury Library of American Art is an important asset to the libraries and the university, especially for graduate students working on the master's of arts in art history. I am so pleased that it was donated."

Wendy Katz, associate professor of art and art history, finds the rich collection of exhibition catalogues and books published in the early 20th century helpful to her research on the painter James McNeill Whistler. "The Embury Library contains primary resource material contemporary to Whistler and demonstrates how early 220th-century authors and scholars were thinking about Whistler at that time."

Dr. Embury's collection began soon after he moved to Holdrege and with the need to decorate the new home. Purchasing prints for the walls led to a thirst for learning more about the artist, which led to the purchasing of reference materials and catalogues.

"I bought a Mary Cassatt etching and of course I needed a book on Cassatt. This pattern was repeated many times," he said.

Two dealers became his major source of books, one in New York and one in Philadelphia. They both sent Embury their choice items. Gradually over 40 years the collection grew to more than 11,000 volumes. Rare and unusual items include: "The Book of the Tile Club," the original Armory Show Catalogue from 1913, a signed copy of a book by Rembrandt Peale (c. 1823), an inscribed copy of "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies" signed by Whistler and inscribed to Degas, and many other items.

According to Embury, the library could not be duplicated today for any amount of money as many early items have disappeared from the marketplace. "Searching for and collecting the books and fine art has provided a great counterpoint to my medical practice and has greatly enriched our life," he said.

Embury said his motivation for moving the collection to the University Archives and Special Collections, is because he wants "to share it with the world."

The University Archives and Special Collections is in Love Library, Room 29, open Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m., and can be reached at (402) 472-2531.

WRITER: Joan Barnes

We, as an organization and as individual booksellers, do all we can to combat theft of books.

As the world’s leading Antiquarian Booksellers we find the theft of books abhorrent to our nature and we have always worked successfully with law enforcement organizations, librarians and other interested persons to combat theft and to reclaim stolen property and bring thieves to justice. As a community of booksellers we have for many years worked together in exchanging information on stolen books and the circumstances surrounding the theft of books and this month the launch of our new and much improved stolen book database is another step in our continued efforts to combat theft and to locate stolen books.

The database is open to all ILAB booksellers who may enter details of books stolen from themselves or their customers. Individuals, librarians and other booksellers may approach their local ILAB bookseller if they wish to enter any details of books stolen or if they wish to check if a book is listed. This data is frequently checked by numerous booksellers and in the past has lead to the recovery of stolen books as well as the conviction of thieves. For more information click on www.stolen-book.org

Paul Feain (ILAB Security Chair)

David M. Rubenstein, co-founder and managing director of The Carlyle Group, announced today his donation of $5 million ($1 million per year for the next five years) to support the Library of Congress’s National Book Festival, which this year is celebrating its 10th anniversary, “A Decade of Words and Wonder.”

The Archives and Special Collections Library of Vassar College Libraries has become an official repository of the publications of Thornwillow Press.

POUGHKEEPSIE, NY— The Archives and Special Collections Library of Vassar College Libraries has become an official repository of the publications of Thornwillow Press, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. This collection, from the Newburgh, New York-based company, will join other major collections of Hudson Valley-based publishers in the Special Collections Library, including those relating to the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY, and The Village Press, founded by the famous type-designer Frederic W. Goudy who for many years worked in Marlboro, NY.

Founded in 1985 by Luke Ives Pontifell, Thornwillow Press is a printer and publisher of handmade, limited edition books, with titles that vary widely, from President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address, to a collection of George Washington’s documents compiled by W.W. Abbott, to a volume of short stories by John Updike. Their goal is to present the author’s words in a manner that enhances the relationship between the reader and the text by adding an aesthetic dimension. Thornwillow Press endeavors to make books a powerful and enduring means of communicating ideas.

Thornwillow’s books are now in the permanent collections of The White House, The Library of Congress, the Bibliotheque Nationale, the Federal Reserve Bank, the Beinecke Library, and Houghton Library, among many others. However only in the Special Collections and Archives Library of the Vassar College Libraries will the entire oeuvre of Thornwillow Press be represented.

“In a world of increasingly disposable and ephemeral communications, I feel it is exceedingly relevant to have books,” explained Pontifell. “Books provide a tactile quality just as hearing music live provides a very different auditory sensation than listening to the same work on CD. An Ebook cannot convey the same sensory pleasures—the feel of leather or cloth covering, the scent of paper and ink—as the printed book.”

Pontifell stressed that his press uses the most modern design techniques melded with the traditional art of the hand press. It is through this merging of the contemporary with the traditional that he hopes will inspire generations of future students, just as Pontifell was himself inspired.

Ronald Patkus, head of Special Collections at Vassar, noted his hope is that “undergraduates will be moved by these volumes, and that they’ll want to touch them and open them, and will be drawn by their beautiful design.” He hopes that in the future students at Vassar will also create their own volumes on a Vandercook press at the college, finding their inspiration in typography and design from these volumes.

In addition to establishing the Thornwillow Press collection, Pontifell and Patkus have envisioned an ongoing collaboration that will engage students in the art of the handmade book joined with modern technologies. They are currently accepting applications from college-age students for semester and summer internships, with the possibility of residence, and eventually they hope to form a residential academy at the Press.

In addition, Patkus has begun to research, compile, and write a definitive bibliography of Thornwillow Press and will present an exhibition centered around Thornwillow Press this fall in the Vassar College Libraries.

About Luke Ives Pontifell and Thornwillow Press

Inspired by a course in printing and binding and the old books in his parents’ library, Luke Ives Pontifell founded Thornwillow while still in high school. At that time he printed his first book, a children’s story by a family friend (Barbara England’s Hello Sun), and bound the edition on the kitchen table.

During his summer vacations from arvard College, Pontifell continued to print and bind books. He brought the finished editions to bookstores, slowly building a small following of collectors. After graduating from Harvard with four titles on his list, he found that what had started as a labor of love had evolved into a small business.

Over the last two decades, he established operations related to the different aspects of book making in New York City, West Stockbridge (Massachusetts), Prague (Czech Republic), and Pensacola (Florida).

In 2004 he set up workshops in Newburgh (NY) in a complex of 19th-century factory buildings dedicated to perpetuating the crafts of traditional hand engraving and letterpress printing, paper making, illumination and hand lettering, leather bookbinding, and fine press publishing.

Pontifell is a trustee and secretary of the board of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, a member of The American Antiquarian Society, The Boston Athenaeum, and a fellow of The J.P. Morgan Library. He is also a trustee of The Newburgh Institute.

For additional information about Thornwillow Press, see http://www.thornwillow.com.

About Archives and Special Collections

The Catherine Pelton Durrell '25 Archives and Special Collections Library is the principal repository of the College's noteworthy collections of rare books, manuscripts, archival records of Vassar College, and other special materials.

Works in Archives and Special Collections are accessible for research and review. To make an appointment, call (845) 437-5799 or email spcoll@vassar.edu. For additional information about Archives and Special Collections, see http://specialcollections.vassar.edu/.

Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential liberal arts college founded in 1861.

Posted by College Relations Monday, May 3, 2010

We have just installed one of the largest and most beautiful city plans ever published - the Nolli of Rome , dating from 1748 - with a framed size of 7 1/2 by nearly 6 1/2 feet. It is the largest framed object we've yet to display here at Martayan Lan. But in addition to its breathtaking scale, the Nolli features the delicately atmospheric, ornamental engravings of Roman ruins by Piranesi. This Nolli alone is worth a visit to the gallery. Incidentally, Eno and Ralph, two of our very able employees here, had quite an adventure in getting the Nolli into our gallery - up six flights of stairs.

The Book Club of Washington and the University of Puget Sound announce the winners of the Collins Memorial Library Book Collecting Contest.  

From Jane Carlin, Director of Collins Memorial Library:

"The aim of this competition is to encourage undergraduate students
at University of Puget Sound to read for enjoyment and to develop personal
libraries throughout their lives, to appreciate the special qualities of
printed or illustrated works, and to read, research, and preserve the
collected works for pleasure and scholarship."

The 2010 winners and their collections are:

    1st Place:  Andrew Fink - An Interdisciplinary Survey of 20th
Century Propaganda
    2nd Place:  Dylan Poulson - Knowing Nature

The Book Club of Washington was very pleased to sponsor this contest. The
winning collection will be submitted to the National Book Collecting Contest
this spring.

Claudia Skelton
Hm: 206-547-3506
Fax: 206-547-9575
Cell: 206-818-9622
cskelton@seanet.com 

*15th ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography*

The 15th ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography has been awarded to three outstanding bibliographies. The jury considered and discussed 52 works on the history of books, book production and libraries. The new endowment of the ILAB Bibliography Prize, mostly realized from a grant by the B.H. Breslauer Foundation of New York, has enabled the jury to award *two first prizes of $10,000 *each to Lotte Hellinga and Jan Storm van Leeuwen and *a second prize of $5,000 *to Friedrich C. Heller.

1st Prize - Lotte Hellinga

/Catalogue of Books printed in the XVth Century now in the British Library, BMC Part XI, England (Hes & De Graaf 2007)/

It is no exaggeration to say that the bibliographical world has been looking forward to the publication of this volume since 1908 when Part I - Germany came out, at that time printed by order of the Trustees of the British Museum. One hundred years is a long time, but for the present generation of bibliographers, literary students, historians and bibliophiles, it has been worth the wait, because the descriptive and historical detail and bibliographical analysis that have gone into its compilation far exceed the original model. The title hardly does justice to the contents of the volume, which apart from describing in admirable detail 323 copies of 221 editions in the British Library (out of a total of 395 known editions) takes account of the entire extant production of the incunable presses in England and constitutes a veritable history of English publishing in the last quarter of the 15th century. The work not only contains much analysis and observation of great learning, but in many places and by example points the user to methodology that is absent in most other incunable studies and catalogues. It will be clear that many distinguished hands contributed to the making of this monumental "catalogue", but the principal and general editor, as well as the largest contributor, is Dr. Lotte Hellinga, whose scholarship, experience and stamina developed the project, bringing it to a highly successful conclusion after thirty years of frequently interrupted work.

2nd Prize - Friedrich C. Heller

/Die bunte Welt. Handbuch zum künstlerisch illustrierten Kinderbuch in Wien 1890-1938 (Christian Brandstätter 2008)/

The study of historical children's books has traditionally been strong in the German-speaking countries. Bibliographers and literary historians have contributed much in this field, while book collectors have played a crucial role in the appreciation and preservation of illustrated children's books, which have a notoriously poor survival rate. Professor Heller combines the passionate search of the collector and the meticulous research of the scholar. His comprehensive monograph on the flowering of illustrated children's book production in fin-de-siècle Vienna until the suffocating impact of the Anschluss is a masterpiece of bibliographical, historical and art-historical description and itself a fine piece of modern book design.

1st Prize - Jan Storm van Leeuwen

/Dutch Decorated Bookbinding in the Eighteenth Century (Hes & De Graaf 2006)/

When Dr. Storm van Leeuwen's monograph, De achttiende-eeuwse Haagse boekband in de Koninklijke Bibliotheek en het Rijksmuseum Meermanno-Westreenianum, appeared in 1976, its reception was eagerly welcomed. Here was a new work on historical bookbindings by a young, accomplished scholar. It was natural to hope for more. Now thirty years later we truly have the work of a life-time, four monumental volumes on 18th-century decorated bookbindings from all cities and towns in the Netherlands where the art was practised. Following an extensive general introduction on the organization of Dutch 18th-century publishing, book selling and binding, discussions of luxury bookbinding and reproductions of rubbings of finishing tools, rolls and armorial blocks, are arranged by province, city, binder, and date. The study of bookbinding must be inextricably linked with the analysis of markets, the identification of patrons and dedicatees, sponsors and beneficiaries of gifts, givers and recipients of school prizes, as well as contemporary and later collectors. None escapes the attention of the author. 3200 surviving bindings are catalogued or listed in varying detail. Dr. Storm van Leeuwen's comprehensive work on the 18th century in essentially two publications, three decades apart, is a huge accomplishment.


Hes & De Graaf - Oak Knoll Press

The jury is pleased to make special mention of two publishers, Hes & De Graaf and Oak Knoll Press; over decades now, they have published and distributed numerous important works of bibliography that require considerable investment without certain return.


The Jury

It is encouraging that, at a time when works of reference are increasingly posted online instead of printed on paper, not only the three prize winners, but the great majority of the submitted entries as well, have been published in book form and prove the enduring efficiency and appeal of the codex. The average standard of the entries was remarkably high and for several works it was painful to have to deprive them of the recognition that goes with a prize, and that they richly deserve. At the same time, the jury was quite unanimous in its opinions and there can be little doubt that the books to which the prizes were awarded are exceptional, perhaps even in a class of their own. Only after the winners were selected - three very different works on widely differing subjects - was it found that they share the merit of not only contributing to bibliography, but also to "the history of the book" and that of book reception. This may sound like following fashion, but rather demonstrates that rigorous bibliography inevitably leads to the practice of history.


Mitsuo Nitta (Chair)

Arnoud Gerits (Secretary)

Poul Jan Poulsen (ILAB Treasurer)

Jean-Marc Chatelain (Bibliothèque Nationale de France)

David Adams (Manchester University)

Felix de Marez Oyens (B.H. Breslauer Foundation)

More information on www.ILAB.org

Dr. Barbara Werner van Benthem

Antiquariat DER TURM ZU BABEL
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Mitglied im Verband Deutscher Antiquare e.V. und in der International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB)
 

Four Prominent Book Sellers Join Forces to Open The Bookshop in Old New Castle

On May 1 2010, Between the Covers Rare Books, Oak Knoll Books, The Kelmscott Bookshop, and the Old Bookshop of Bordentown will open The Bookshop of Old New Castle. Located on the second floor of the historic Opera House at 308 Delaware Street, the shop will sell books on all subjects from each individual store’s inventory. For the May 1st grand opening, which is open to the public, the store will open at 9 am, with the ribbon-cutting ceremony at 2 pm. Accompanied by food and beverages, the bookshop celebration will allow visitors to browse books, visit with the owners, and view the new transformation of the Opera House. The new shop will be open from 9 am-5 pm, Monday through Saturday

With the individual stores’ locations in Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey, this cooperative bookshop will provide a central location for collectors to purchase books from each store. Each bookseller is a member of the ABAA (Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America), and offers unique selections of books characteristic to its specific specialties.

The Center for the Book and the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of American and the Fellowship of American Biliophilic Societies  have jointly assumed leadership of the National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest, with major support from the Jay I. Kislak Foundation.

The Penn Libraries have received $4.25 million for the renovation of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library (RBML) and the creation of a Special Collections Center. The donor, who wishes to remain anonymous, is a member of the Libraries’ Board of Overseers. This is the largest gift to the Libraries from a living donor.

The Charlestown NH Historical Society recently used a creative approach to secure funding for the conservation treatment of an 1860 map of Sullivan County, New Hampshire. Printed on paper, coated with varnish, and attached to a decaying cloth backing, the large map was made to hang on a wall from wooden supports. The map was beginning to crumble and was in dire need of conservation treatment to preserve it for future generations.