Our Bright Young Librarians series continues today with Kate Wells, Rhode Island Collection Librarian within the Special Collections Department at the Providence Public Library.

What is your role at your institution?

I am the Rhode Island Collection Librarian within the Special Collections Department at the Providence Public Library. PPL has collected materials about the history of Rhode Island and City of Providence since it's inception in 1874. These materials have been known as the "Rhode Island Collection" since 1901 as part of the non-circulating reference collection, but were only designated as a special collection in 2012. The careful work that librarians did for over a century to accumulate these resources has resulted in a collection that now includes unique and rare items as well as very commonplace ones.

I work as a lone arranger in an urban public library. On behalf of the Rhode Island Collection, I coordinate new acquisitions, catalog published items, process archival and visual materials, coordinate digitization projects, supervise volunteers and interns, provide research services, curate exhibitions, and do a lot of outreach within our community including promoting the collection via social media and programming. While I manage the collection on my own, I could never get things done if I didn't collaborate with excellent colleagues both inside the PPL and with other cultural heritage and arts organizations here in Providence. I wear a lot of hats, but I never get bored.

How did you get started in rare books?

I was working in the corporate world and was not particularly happy with the work or with the career path open to me. Maybe I watched Say Anything too many times as a teenager, but I felt like Lloyd Dobler when he says "I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that."  I wanted a career that I felt good about when I went home at the end of the day.

It took me some time to have the courage to make a full career change, but I quit my job and went to Simmons College full-time for a dual degree with a Masters in History and MLIS with an archives concentration. I must've been totally naive and/or very stupid to make that jump without ever having worked in a library or archive!  I was lucky to have my internships at the Houghton Library at Harvard University where I got great work practice with very good archivists and got to work with amazing collections.

Since graduating, I've never had a job where I was able to just process archival collections all day! I've worked in for a municipal city clerk's office saving vital records from dark corners of basements and attics. I've spent time as a cataloging librarian, a reference librarian, and an archivist within university libraries. I've supported the research of thousands of scholars, students, genealogists and enthusiasts. I've written and managed grants, set up digital repositories and major scanning projects, taught classes and workshops. All of that experience has been invaluable to my current position where I do a bit of everything.

Favorite rare book / ephemera that you've handled?

That is an impossible question. That changes each month as it's usually related to whatever I'm working with in the moment. I started our @rhodeislandcollection Instagram account partly so that I could remember the interesting and quirky items that I pull for researchers as part of my daily work.

The PPL Special Collections has some incredibly beautiful rare books and ephemera - items that are beautiful to handle because of their craftsmanship, their exquisite materials, or their provenance.  But what I love most are the items that give me a sense of the daily life of regular people.  One item that never fails to amaze me is from our Harris Collection on the Civil War and Slavery.  A ledger from the gunboat U.S.S. LaFayette, 1859-1863, as it participated in the siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi documents the contraband slaves that they took on board from various plantations as they made their way up the Mississippi River. These lists include the full list of each individual, by name and age, that were freed on board. These mundane, administrative records document this totally amazing moment - when entire families of people were given freedom, but also taken away from the only sense of community that many of them had ever known. It's incredible to imagine that experience and to know that, in many cases, this list may be the first time that these people can be identified in documented history.

What do you personally collect?

The funny thing is that at home I'm actually not very sentimental about my own collections. I do have a small collection of early 20th century children's illustrations and block prints, but mainly I have vintage fabric, buttons and sewing notions that I have collected with the intention to use for various sewing projects. The problem is that I just can't seem to bring myself to cut into vintage fabric and so I just hoard it!

What do you like to do outside of work?

My husband and I just bought our first house so we're currently spending most of our free time on renovation or gardening projects. I also love hiking with our dog, cocktails and meals with friends, scouting for finds in estate sales and antique stores and working on various knitting and sewing projects.

What excites you about rare book librarianship?

I have never been more excited about it than in my current job at PPL. This is my first experience working in a public library and the opportunity to introduce special collections to people who may otherwise feel intimidated to work with rare materials has been incredibly rewarding. Core to our mission is to provide access to any patron who comes in our doors or visits our website. I work with an amazing group of colleagues who are all passionate about making our rare books and archival material relevant to a wide audience. No matter who you are and what your interests, if you walk in our doors we want to get you engaged.  We don't want you to just come in and look; we want you to DO something with what you find and tell us all about it.

We've collaborated with high school students, artists, zine writers and musicians, tradespeople and artisans, and community organizers to bring our materials to life in new ways. I always love working with serious scholars, but there's a different energy that comes from working with people who use rare books and archival materials to adapt to their own interests. Seeing a teenager get impassioned for social justice after working with activist materials from the 1970s; working with a professional sign painter to find historic advertising references for a new client; or collaborating with a community organizer to teach young people how to conduct oral history interviews and document their own community - these have been incredibly fun opportunities. As special collections librarians, we have the opportunity to know about these incredible resources and to share them.

Thoughts on the future of special collections / rare book librarianship?

We all get the question - are libraries even relevant anymore? And of course, we are in many, many ways. The uniqueness of special collections is what will ensure its relevance. What will draw visitors to a particular library will continue to be what makes that particular institution unique. That might be the staff's subject expertise, engaging programming or the unique collections of materials that are only available at that particular library. In that sense, I think that special collections may be the area of librarianship with the most stability.

But I think that the future of our work requires that we reach beyond our comfort zones to engage a much larger audience than we traditionally have. We can't expect people to just come to us. We need to make it easier for them to know what we have and they need to be encouraged to use it in ways relevant to their own personal interests. Whenever possible, we need to do more than just put scans up online.  We need to engage people to actively do something with them - to reinvent, adapt, and create new products. The more barriers we put up to use, the most we put our collections and own relevance at risk.

Any unusual or interesting collection at your library you'd like to draw our attention to?

We recently got the first delivery installment of a new acquisition that I am really excited about.  The Lou Costa Collection documents the Cape Verdean community in the Fox Point neighborhood of Providence in the 20th century. This community has been completely dispersed by a combination of urban development and gentrification since the 1980s. The bulk of the collection includes photographs collected by Mr. Costa from family, friends and old neighborhood residents.  This collection documents an incredibly diverse neighborhood that has had a huge influence on the region's history. Growing our Rhode Island Collection's holdings for mid to late 20th century materials and related to under-documented people and neighborhoods has been my primary collecting goal and I'm so thrilled to see this collection come here.  Not only that, but the collector has so much information to impart to us about the people and locations in each photograph. His descriptions are invaluable to identifying the people, businesses and locations in each image. He describes a lively and close knit neighborhood. My favorite part of working with him is that he identifies everyone by their local nickname as well as their birth name. We have the most gorgeous early 20th century portrait of an eight year old boy labeled "Porkchop Alves" which tickles me every time I see it.

Any upcoming exhibitions at your library?

I'm currently in the middle of curating an exhibition for Spring 2017 that will examine changes in American foodways and dining culture through the lens of setting the table. This exhibition will be part of a larger PPL theme examining the culture of food which we are working on with a number of other Rhode Island organizations.  Our hope is to spark a state-wide conversation about the role of food in our lives and communities. The challenge is thinking about how to make an engaging exhibition about food when you can't smell or taste it! My goal for the exhibition is to think about the way economies, routines, traditions, and etiquette root us to food and people who share a meal with us. We'll look at various place settings and dinnerware as entry points into larger themes of race, class, and social justice. That's the goal anyways; we'll see how it all pans out.

As some faithful readers of this blog might recall, I'm a fan and a collector of Henry David Thoreau and his circle, and one of my favorite books is Men of Concord, a 1936 Houghton-Mifflin production that paired Thoreau's journal entries with color illustrations by N. C. Wyeth.

Wyeth painted twelve oil panels (approximately 38" x 33") for the book, which was a long-delayed labor of love. An admirer of Thoreau, Wyeth initially pitched his idea to Houghton-Mifflin in 1918. But it wasn't until Thoreau bibliographer Francis H. Allen signed on to the project that it got underway. Allen selected the text, Wyeth provided the twelve color illustrations, and Wyeth's son Andrew supplied pen-and-ink sketches.

Now, for the first time in nearly eighty years, all twelve of Wyeth's panels, as well as charcoal drawings, watercolors, and sketches made for the book, are on exhibit at the Concord Museum in Concord, Massachusetts. The exhibit, N. C. Wyeth's Men of Concord, which opened on April 15 and runs through September 18, traces the evolution of the book project and examines the artist's working process.

Wyeth's panels are, even to my untrained eye, stunning. They are bright and beautiful and life-like. As Allen wrote in the book's preface, "The reader will feel that through these pictures he himself has come almost into personal contact with Thoreau and with the men of Concord."

The panels have long since been scattered to the winds, said Leslie Perrin Wilson, curator of special collections at the Concord Free Public Library. Wyeth intended them to remain together in Concord and even offered them to the library at the discounted price of $5,000 for the set. When that didn't pan out, he sold them individually. A donor bought one for the library, and the library later had the opportunity to buy two more, but other collectors swallowed up the rest. Christine Podmaniczky, curator of the N. C. Wyeth Collections and Historic Properties at the Brandywine River Museum of Art and consulting curator for this exhibit, located the far-flung nine panels for this splendid reunion.

A related exhibit, From Thoreau's Seasons to Men of Concord: N. C. Wyeth Inspired, is on view at the Concord Free Public Library, also through September 18.  

Image: Men of Concord. Credit: Rebecca Rego Barry.

Collectors of Penguin's Modern Poets series will soon have another set to add to their collections. The popular series will be revived by Penguin this summer to introduce readers (and collectors) to a new set of 21st-century poets.

The first Penguin Modern Poets series - 27 volumes strong - launched in 1962 and ran through the mid 1970s featuring a variety contemporary poets such as Laurence Durrell, Charles Bukowski, and John Ashbery. Each entry in the series contained work by three poets, mostly British and American, arranged in carefully selected groupings.

The series was revived again in the 1990s for a three year, thirteen volume run, featuring poets such as Carol Ann Duffy and Simon Armitage.

And now, in 2016, Penguin poetry editor Donald Futers will be launching the series again in July, calling the contemporary era a "golden age" of poetry. The first volume will contain poetry by Anne Carson, Sophie Collins, and Emily Berry.

Futers already has the first twelve entries in the new Modern Poets series planned out, referring to the potential for the series to be "infinite" in an interview with The Guardian.

Futers continued, "In the past, the series has been incredibly successful - when I've talked to people about the fact I'm starting a new series up, they consistently tell me how much they loved the old one."

Harvard's Houghton Library recently acquired the complete archive of Jean de Brunhoff's preparatory materials for his 1934 alphabet book, ABC de Babar. Over one hundred sketches, hand-colored proofs, and other items were gifted to the library by Laurent de Brunhoff and Laurent's wife, Phyllis Rose.

Jean de Brunhoff published the first Babar book in 1931, and by his death in 1937 wrote and illustrated seven stories about Babar, the orphan elephant who eventually becomes king of the pachyderms. In 1945, Laurent de Brunhoff, Jean's oldest son, resumed the Babar series, and has written and illustrated more than thirty additional titles.

"The ABC de Babar was the fourth book of Jean's series and differed from its predecessors in that it did not tell a story but was an alphabet book," explained Hope Mayo, the Houghton Library's curator of printing and graphic arts. "It's charming, and it suits the Houghton very well, because the collection demonstrates how a commercially successful children's book was produced in the 1930s," she continued.

How good is your French? Can you spot all 28 words that start with "T"? Original art work by Jean de Brunhoff for ABC de Babar (MS Typ 1186, Houghton Library, Harvard University).

Now through August 31, eighteen of the items donated by the couple will be on display in the Amy Lowell Room. "This selection of sketches and proofs from the preparatory stages demonstrates the sequence of creating a children's book," said Mayo. An original drawing by Laurent de Brunhoff and commissioned by the Houghton is also on display, with Babar walking up the library steps with his abcedaire in hand.

Babar Brings His ABC to Houghton Library. Original watercolor and gouache drawing by Laurent de Brunhoff (TypDr 2070.B240.16b, Houghton Library, Harvard University)

The ABC de Babar used characters and settings from de Brunhoff's earlier books to illustrate each letter of the alphabet. For example, a page for the letter "T" (pictured at top) shows Babar and his family sitting on a terrasse, drinking tea, and enjoying a view of the Tour Eiffel and tulips. On this page alone are 28 words in French that begin with the letter "T," a tour de force that further demonstrates why Babar has remained a global icon for eight decades.

                                                                                                                                                           Babar Comes to the Houghton runs from June 9 through August 31 in the Amy Lowell Room at Harvard University's Houghton Library.

Our Bright Young Librarians series continues today with Elizabeth DeBold, Curatorial Assistant at The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC.

What is your role at your institution?

My official title is Curatorial Assistant. We currently have two curators--a Curator of Early Modern Books and Prints and a Curator of Manuscripts.

Curatorial responsibilities range across all aspects of the Folger's Central Library, so I work both directly with them on their many projects as well as liaising on their behalf with other Central Library departments. In the past year I've helped in developing exhibition materials, presentations, and digital humanities initiatives, as well as supporting their duties providing general collections care, selecting new items to acquire, and working with library patrons and the public locally, nationally, and internationally. Luckily, I've always enjoyed jobs where I get to wear many different "hats" and work on multiple projects at once. During a typical week, I may be proof-reading exhibition labels, planning staff trainings on collection disaster preparedness, working on the logistics for a Wikipedia edit-a-thon, coordinating a digitization project, answering reference questions, pulling and preparing collection items for a curator-led tour, reviewing upcoming auctions, and/or consulting with our conservators about treatment possibilities. I never know what will come up when I walk in the door on a Monday!

How did you get started in rare books?

I built my own major in Medieval Studies as an undergraduate at Skidmore College, and it was through this interdisciplinary course and the support of the several wonderful medievalists who supervised me that I was first able to work with rare books and manuscripts.

If I had to pick a moment when I realized I wanted to work with special collections as a career, it would be when my main advisor sent me in her stead to the Bodleian Library to transcribe a manuscript on the life of a German female mystic that she needed for her own research. I was studying abroad in the UK at the time, but hadn't had the opportunity to call up any rare materials for my courses at that point. I have a vivid memory of sitting in Duke Humfrey's library, absolutely floored by where I was, what I was holding, and the possibilities extending from that manuscript. I have experienced other moments like this since then, working with materials from letters written during the Civil War to obscure 20th-century religious pamphlets to the first printed books, which re-affirm this path to me, but everything first crystallized for me there.

I went on to library school and had later, formal training in special collections librarianship, but without my undergraduate advisor's enthusiasm, trust, and guidance (not only in that instance but in many others), I may not have had the experiences that put me where I am today.    

Where did you earn your MLS/advanced degree? 

In addition to my B.A. in Medieval Studies from Skidmore College, I have a Master's in Library Science with a concentration in Archives and Records Management and a Certificate in Non-Profit Leadership from UNC-Chapel Hill.

Favorite rare book / ephemera that you've handled?

As others have said, it's so hard to pick just one! We have so many incredible collections and items at the Folger, and I feel extremely spoiled and gleeful every day.

If I absolutely had to choose, one of my favorite items in our collection is a small bound volume containing 25 small watercolor drawings on mica, depicting costumes and hairstyles worn by the 19th-century actress Fanny Kemble while performing mostly Shakespearean roles. The faces of the paintings are left blank, and the owner would have been able to place the transparent mica sheets over a portrait of Fanny to see how the costumes looked on her. It's incredibly unique and detailed, and I think says a lot as an object about the cult of celebrity, as well as the continuing rise of women in the theater. It also gives us another glimpse of what costuming looked like at the time.

Besides the beauty of the paintings, I love this item so much because I think it's such a strong representation of other types of collection items that we have here in addition to our printed books and manuscript collections. A lot of people don't realize that in addition to the latter, we have some fascinating objects, costumes, figurines, and other sorts of items that illustrate the growth of Shakespeare-worship over time, and the ways that people interacted with and consumed the content of his plays.   

What do you personally collect?

I have unintentionally become a collector of assorted pinback buttons--they always seemed like a good souvenir to me, so I have different ones from places I've traveled, or that have been given to me by family members, or that I've even found on the ground. My favorite is from an organ festival I attended a few years ago (the instrument, not body parts!) I also love the late children's illustrator Trina Schart Hyman, and have bought a number of her books over the years. If I had the funds, I would definitely collect her artwork more actively.  

What do you like to do outside of work?

I'm really lucky in that D.C. is such a great place for music--I currently sing with a local chorus, and when I'm able, take advantage of the excellent performances at Strathmore and the Kennedy Center. I'm also taking some time outside of work to improve my language skills. I'm focusing on Latin at the moment, but planning to brush up on my reading knowledge of German and French as well. I'd also be lying if I didn't say I like to just hang out on my couch with my cats sometimes!  

What excites you about rare book librarianship?

One of my favorite things about my job is being able to spend time in the stacks and handle items from such a wide variety of periods and people, that are important and valuable for so many different reasons and in so many different ways.  I also really enjoy being able to dip into others' research through answering reference queries--it doesn't matter what I'm working on, I'm always learning something new and interesting, every day. What more could anyone want from a job?

From a professional standpoint, I'm excited about where the field is going as much as what it is. I'm excited about what new and different materials are finally getting the recognition they deserve as "special" and worthy of attention, preservation, and care as much as the works of someone like William Shakespeare, as well as focusing on how best to collect and document different movements and populations that have heretofore been ignored by the archival record. I'm excited about working with my fellow early career librarians, who are so enthusiastic about the new and different ways in which we can provide better, deeper access to materials, and who are finding their way to careers in special collections librarianship from more diverse backgrounds. Some people (most of them non-librarians) talk about the "death" of the physical book, and besides this being completely untrue in general, it feels especially untrue for special collections--technological advancements are only making our collections and activities richer and improving our understanding of these items, their history, and what we're able to say about them and how we're able to connect with them. That's incredibly exciting.  

Finally, of course, I love the sheer thrill of working with items of historical and cultural significance. It's just cool to look over and see a script of Henry V signed by Laurence Olivier, or know that the book you're holding came off of William Jaggard's press in 1623.     

Thoughts on the future of special collections?

I hope that we continue pushing, as a profession. Pushing our collections into the public eye, encouraging access, and promoting new ways of thinking about and engaging with our materials. Since I got my start with rare books through academics who were passionate about using rare materials and spoke so highly of libraries and special collections, connecting younger users with rare items is deeply meaningful to me. Teaching primary source literacy is so important in building a foundation not just for scholarship, but for living in the world and knowing how to think and interrogate information that comes our way. Special collections librarians have as much of a duty as any librarian does to promote our collections and teach patrons different ways to engage with the materials.

As mentioned above, I also think that we're operating in a time where what is "special" and what deserves to be collected and preserved has undergone a radical redefinition. I hope we continue to talk about how we can increase the diversity of our holdings, our patrons, and the field of special collections librarians in the profession. We need to create opportunity and space for groups that have been traditionally been excluded from the archives and special collections libraries on a variety of levels, including patrons outside of the academy, people of color, and marginalized communities.  

Any unusual or interesting collection at your library you'd like to draw our attention to?

One part of our collections that I always love having the chance to interact with is what we call our "case files." Henry and Emily Folger had the hearts and souls of librarians, and kept really well-documented records of most items they collected. Henry kept much of his correspondence with dealers and auction houses, as well as his annotated catalogs and even shipping ephemera, while Emily did an enormous amount of cataloging and bibliographic work that resulted in a personalized card catalog. It's enormously helpful in shedding light on the provenance of items that they collected, as well as providing a fascinating glimpse into the daily lives and thoughts of wealthy collectors who were deeply invested in the book trade at the turn of the 20th century. I've enjoyed getting to know Henry Folger's personality a bit more through his letters and telegrams, and been grateful for knowing more about where a collection item came from and why it was originally included. If anyone comes to work at the Folger and sees a number beginning with "cs" in an item's catalog record, this means that we may have a case file available. Unfortunately it doesn't guarantee that there are any notes or materials about the specific item, but there may be something.  

Any upcoming exhibitions at your library?

We have so many exciting things to look forward to this year, especially since it's the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. Our current exhibition, America's Shakespeare, is up until July 24th. This exhibition provides a detailed look at the many ways Shakespeare has influenced and been used in American life, from the Revolutionary War to the present day, and includes a wide range of items from our collections such as costumes, video clips, and finger puppets. In the beginning of August we'll open Will & Jane, an exhibit focusing on Shakespeare and Austen as famous authors who have become cultural idols. The exhibition will compare how we talk about such figures, merchandise them, and consume their content in their afterlives.

Finally, we have several ongoing tours and exhibitions. One is called First Folio!: The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare. Since January, we've been sending out some of our copies of the First Folio to universities, historical societies, and museums in all 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico to go on display to the public. Chances are there's one near you! The response so far has been incredible, and we've been really grateful for all the programming the host sites have done around the Folio.

The other is a permanent, digital exhibition called Shakespeare Documented. This is the largest and most authoritative collection of primary source materials documenting Shakespeare's life, and was formed in partnership with almost thirty institutional partners across the world. It provides detailed images, transcriptions, and information from noted scholars, and provides incredible levels of access for the world to these documents, many of which are digitized for the first time.

We have so much going on that's accessible even if someone can't make it to D.C., so I hope your readers will all take the opportunity to visit the Folger website and explore what we have!  

Earlier this year, the Kislak Center for Special Collections at the University of Pennsylvania hosted an exhibit and a symposium related to fine and private press books. The exhibit, Across the Spectrum: Color in American Fine & Private Press Books, 1890-2015, and the symposium, The Art of the Book: Fine Printing in North America in the 21st Century, were prompted by the university's acquisition of the Jean-François Vilain and Roger S. Wieck Collection of Private Presses, Ephemera, & Related References.
                                                                                      

An accompanying catalogue, designed by Jerry Kelly and including essays by curator Lynne Farrington, book artist Russell Maret, and collector Jean-François Vilain, was published and is now available. Considering the context here, it's no wonder that the catalogue was beautifully produced--full-color illustrations on fine paper wrapped in a letterpress-printed textured paper cover. But the essays are wonderful too. Vilain discusses the three types of illumination in Arts & Crafts-style books and looks at how they compare to medieval examples. He also surveys the private press movement in America at the turn of the twentieth century, highlighting the Roycroft Printing Shop and many others that made gorgeous books full of color. Maret's essay touches upon the distinction between fine press and artists' books and examines the use of color (hand-applied or printed) in contemporary works. His conviction that books made by artists can transcend the notion of a book as merely a "textual delivery device" certainly resonates.
                                                                                                                                                               The illustrated exhibition checklist begins with English influences (Kelmscott Press, Doves Press) but moves quickly into American publishers, including Mosher Press, Grabhorn Press, Bird & Bull Press, Arion Press, and even some commercial publishers like E.P. Dutton and Putnam's that reached for higher standards of production.
                                                                                                                                                           William Morris would have agreed: this catalogue is useful and beautiful, and thus, a keeper.

Image via Penn Libraries. 

A Dutch team of scientists and academics are employing a new X-Ray technology to decipher fragments of medieval manuscripts that were used in later bookbindings. The technology, called macro X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (MA-XRF), allows these fragments to be read without removing the binding. A potential treasure trove of medieval fragments awaits researchers as the technology is deployed.

After the invention of the printing press and the rapid spread of print culture across Europe, early bookbinders frequently "recycled" medieval manuscripts to help strengthen new bookbindings. About one in five early modern bookbindings are estimated to contain fragments of medieval manuscripts. The ability to read these fragments - without destroying a binding in the process - is revolutionary.  Sections from a variety of previously considered "lost" manuscripts may be found in the bindings of later books.

The Dutch team originally invented the X-ray technology to use on paintings, and made the news in 2011 when they discovered a Rembrandt self-portrait beneath another work. 

Professor Joris Dik explained the technology in its application on early modern books, "A thin beam of X-rays is used to scan the object, charting the presence and abundance of various elements below the surface. That is how iron, copper and zinc, the main element constituents of medieval inks, could be viewed, even when covered by a layer of paper or parchment."

The only problem, at the moment, is the speed of the technology, which takes about 24 hours to scan a binding. Faster techniques, however, are being explored.

Muhammad Ali, who died on Friday, has, coincidentally, been on my mind for the past few weeks. In preparing an article on collectible passports for our upcoming summer issue, we zeroed in on one very significant passport coming up for sale this week: a replacement passport issued to the three-time heavyweight champion in Dublin, Ireland, on July 19, 1972, the day he defeated Alvin Lewis. Ali used this passport for the next eighteen months, a busy and important period of his professional boxing career.

Interest in this piece of sports history was always going to be strong, and now, it would seem, it will be intense. The passport goes to auction at Bonhams New York on Wednesday, conservatively estimated at $25,000-35,000.     

Look out for the auction's results and more on collectible passports in our summer quarterly.

Image Courtesy of Bonhams.

The Carnavalet museum, the archaeological crypt located under the parvis of Nôtre-Dame, and the Petit Palais are just three of the 14 institutions that comprise the municipal museums of Paris. Together, the consortium (also known as Paris Musées) welcomed over 3 million visitors in 2015. In that same period, 9.3 million people visited the Louvre. In a bid to generate greater interest and public awareness in the city's museums, Paris Musées recently launched a website where nearly 200,000 images from the various instutions are accessible online. As part of the kick-off, Paris Musées curators teamed up with ten well-known Instagramers--artists, photographers, fashion bloggers, and comedians--to reinterpret ten different works of art found in the municipal collections.

Instagram artists like @audrey.pirault and @rafaelmantesso selected paintings and photographs and gave them a funky, chic overhaul in tune with the social media generation. For example, an oil painting of the illustrious Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) by Georges Clairin (1843-1919) shows the comédienne draped luxuriously over a satiny divan. Instagrammer @miss_etc remade the portrait into a sumptuous selfie, showing the artist lounging on a beige sofa in pricey sneakers and flowy gown, holding her iPhone just right to capture the moment.

Georges CLAIRIN (1843-1919). Portrait de Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923). 1876. Musée des Beaux Arts de la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais. ©Petit Palais.

The Instagram exhibition is targeting a specific audience: People who do not go to museums. By inviting social-media darlings (each with hundreds of thousands of followers) to reimagine classic works of art, Paris Musées is battling the perception that museums are stuffy, irrelevant, out-of-touch cabinets of curiosity, and are in fact culturally relevant and hip.

Portrait de Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) reinterpreted by @miss_etc. Reproduced with permission from Paris Musées.

The Instagram exhibition is being held at the Gare Saint-Lazare. While a train station seems an odd choice for an art installation, the goal is to promote the city's museums to the greater, non-museum-going public, and thousands of commuters hustle through the massive station daily. Passers-by will also be invited to propose their own remakes and share them online using the #ParallèleParisMusées hashtag, the whole endeavor highlighting how technology can bridge the gap between art and audience.

Art, inaccessible? Not in Paris.

Check out the Paris Musées Instagram account at https://www.instagram.com/parismusees/

                                                                                                                                                               The Instagram art will be on view at the Gare Saint-Lazare in Paris through July 31. More information is available here.

David Mitchell, author of "Cloud Atlas," has joined Margaret Atwood in burying an unpublished work by a Norwegian forest for publication in 2114. (Not a typo.) Both authors are participants in Scottish artist Katie Paterson's "Future Library" project. Each year from 2014 to 2114, a writer has been (or will be) selected by a panel to contribute a completed piece of writing to the project. The text, which can not be read by anyone beside the author until 2114, will be held for safekeeping by the Oslo public library. Meanwhile, 1,000 trees were planted in the nearby Normarka Forest. The project's goal is to collect 100 original pieces of writing for publication in 2114 (after many of the early participants have passed away), which will be published on paper harvested from the 1,000 trees.

In 2015, Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood became the first author to participate in the project, contributing a manuscript entitled "The Scribbler Moon." This year's author, David Mitchell, submitted a piece entitled "From Me Flows What You Call Time." 

Mitchell said of the project, "Civilisation, according to one of those handy Chinese proverbs, is the basking in the shade of trees planted a hundred years ago, trees which the gardener knew would outlive him or her, but which he or she planted anyway for the pleasure of people not yet born. I accepted the Future Library's invitation to participate because I would like to plant such a tree. The project is a vote of confidence that, despite the catastrophist shadows under which we live, the future will still be a brightish place willing and able to complete an artistic endeavour begun by long-dead people a century ago. Imagine if the Future Library had been conceived in 1914, and a hundred authors from all over the world had written a hundred volumes between 1915 and today, unseen until now - what a human highway through time to be a part of. Contributing and belonging to a narrative arc longer than your own lifespan is good for your soul."

Modern fiction collectors, however, will now have to wait 98 years for their Atwood or Mitchell collections to truly be complete, a joy only to be realized by their descendants.

Katie Paterson's other artistic projects include a map of 27,000 dead stars and a slideshow illustrating the history of darkness through the ages. She has asked contributors to the Future Library project to write about "the theme of imagination and time, which they can take in so many directions."

[Image of David Mitchell from Wikipedia]