Community: bloggers@brooklynmuseum

We are very proud of the fact that Walt Whitman not only lived and worked in Brooklyn but that he had a direct connection to this institution in its early days as a library. This past Saturday we had a fabulous opportunity to celebrate Whitman and our past with representatives from the Whitman Project and Woodside Press.

The Whitman Project included Associate Artistic Director Greg Trupiano; Associate Artistic Director Lon Black; Nicole Mitchell; and Hakim Williams. Both Greg and Lon read  eloquently from Whitman’s writings about witnessing the early days of the Brooklyn Apprentice’s Library and the Brooklyn Institute. Their readings from “Brooklyniana,” Leaves of Grass, and Specimen Days beautifully captured Whitman’s fond memories of the sites and sounds of Brooklyn. They also read excerpts from books that were in the Library at the time Whitman was acting librarian in 1835, including titles such as The History of Printing in America by Isaiah Thomas, published in 1810, and An historical … view of the United States of America by William Winterbotham. Mezzo-soprano Nicole Mitchell graced us with her beautiful renditions of “Oh! Susannah” and “Ode,” set to the music of the “Star Spangled Banner.” Hakim Williams passionately recited Whitman’s words from his texts, including “Old Brooklyn Days” and “Brooklyniana” including a wonderful description of Francis Guy’s A Snow Scene in Brooklyn in the Olden Times which describes in detail the painting in the Brooklyn Museum collection. Mr. Hakim’s reading of “Early Typesetting Experience” by Whitman set the stage for the next part of the program which focused on a poem entitled “Pictures.”

Andrew Birsh and Davin Kuntze from Woodside Press, a traditional letterpress printing shop in The Brooklyn Navy Yard, premiered their new book featuring a poem by Walt Whitman. They created a small edition of Pictures: A Poem by Walt Whitman, which is available directly from the Press. When time allows and the inspiration is there, they publish and print fine-press editions that illuminate their capabilities with classic typography, letterpress presswork, and bookbinding by hand. The beautiful letterpress chapbook is set in Linotype Baskerville, hand-sewn and printed on Magnani Avorio paper and was designed and printed for Woodside Press by Davin Kuntze.  The book has a very magical quality—we were all convinced that Walt Whitman had been overseeing the production of the book, which matches the colors and ink that were used in the original 1927 edition. Mr. Kuntze had not seen the edition that is in the Brooklyn Museum Library collection and we were all amazed on Saturday when we got our book out to compare to the new Woodside Press edition. There is an uncanny likeness to the original!

We all agreed that Walt Whitman is still with us in spirit as he had been in the days when he lived in Brooklyn oh so long ago. A comforting thought in today’s world.  Here’s the program PDF if you’d like to see it.

Seeing the response to historic photographs that we have posted on Flickr Commons begs a look back on why we have these images and who created them. Being an art museum library and archives our mission is to collect and make accessible research collections that serve to document the objects held in the Brooklyn Museum’s encyclopedic collection. We also preserve the research documents created or collected by the Museum staff who have acquired objects since the founding of the Museum as a library back in 1823. What that means is that we have a rich historical legacy of text and images that allow us to look back in time and recall the period in which the objects were created–where, when, how and why.

Susan A. Hutchinson, Founding Museum Librarian, with William Henry Goodyear, Founding Curator of Fine Arts in the Library Reading Room circa 1910.

Since the images collected by William Henry Goodyear (1846-1923) are generating interest today we thought it would interesting to look back at Goodyear and several of his colleagues who built the Museum’s collections over the years. So let’s declare 2009 the year of looking back and learning from history. Hopefully this exercise will educate us all as we move forward and learn about each other and our cultural heritage. Who knows maybe we will end the year in a more peaceful way than we started.

Let me start with a quote from artist John La Farge to William Henry Goodyear: “You have opened the window that has been closed for centuries, and have let in the light”.

I believe that La Farge was referring to Goodyear’s intense interest in photography as a tool to document the world he saw. A Yale graduate and student at the Universities of Berlin and Heidelberg, Goodyear devoted himself to teaching and lecturing about the history of art and architecture. After graduating from Yale in 1867, he traveled to Germany, Italy, Palestine and Syria to pursue his interest in architecture. It was in Pisa in 1870 that he began to focus on architectural details and later published in an article entitled “A Lost Art” in Scribner’s Magazine, the first of many essays he wrote about architectural refinements. Goodyear started his museum career in 1882 as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and in 1899 came to the Brooklyn Museum as the first curatorial appointment made by the newly founded museum. At Brooklyn, Goodyear led a series of research and collecting expeditions with a mission to build an art collection. He oversaw the growth of the American, European and ancient art collections including the casts of Ancient and Renaissance sculpture as well as designing and installing exhibitions of newly acquired art.

Hall of Sculpture with Casts, circa 1904.

In addition to his curatorial mandate, Goodyear dedicated time to developing his architectural theory that historic buildings were planned with irregularities which he referred to as refinements. This study focused on architectural monuments found around the world from the Cathedral of Pisa to the temples of Egypt with stops in Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece and Turkey. Like his colleague Stewart Culin, founding curator of Ethnology from 1903 to 1929, Goodyear seems to have been interested in everything and this is evidenced in his photographs of people and places around the world from a street vendor in Istanbul to the vivid depictions of the world fairs of Chicago and Paris. Goodyear recognized the importance of these fairs as an educational tool to introduce cultures from different parts of the world. He, like Culin, also saw objects at the fairs and recommended their acquisition for Brooklyn. These photographs by Alfred Percival Maudslay were exhibited at the Chicago Columbian Exposition and collected for Brooklyn after Goodyear and Culin saw them at the fair. Indeed, Goodyear worked obsessively using photography as a tool to educate and a method to document his findings in the field in addition to his writings.

Maudslay photographs on view in the Chicago Columbian Exposition, circa 1893.

It seems that throughout his long life he developed theories that explored new themes in the history of art starting with his “Grammar of the Lotus” documenting continuing use of the lotus form in decorative art since its use in Ancient Egypt. He also wrote several popular histories of art and was one of the first to use actual photographs, as opposed to engravings, to illustrate these texts. He took and collected photographs and used them in the form of lantern slides to illustrate his many lectures–over 130 for the Brooklyn Museum alone–ranging from the art of ancient civilizations to the art of the nineteenth century. In addition to being known as an architectural historian, Goodyear was a scholar of anthropology, archaeology and ethnology with a focus on America, Egypt, Greece and Rome. All of this is evidenced in the photographs (lantern slides, negatives and prints) and his research (published and unpublished) found in the Museum Libraries and Archives.

His photographs offer detailed images of historic structures before the devastation of world wars and rampant twentieth century architectural “redevelopment.” His documentation of many buildings has served as guideposts to reconstruction of several monuments that have been destroyed or renovated over the years. But his influence went beyond architecture since it was his vision that laid the groundwork for two major art museum collections–the Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was responsible for recommending the acquisition of several important objects including the antiquities collection and library assembled by Charles Edwin Wilbour, America’s first Egyptologist. Goodyear also established the first children’s museum in America – the Brooklyn Children’s Museum. Today we all benefit from Goodyear’s scholarship and foresight as we see the world before us through his photographs and writings.

More to come about these early visionaries in Brooklyn, but today we are honoring Professor Goodyear by releasing more images from his archives of street scenes and mosques in Turkey in response to comments on Flickr Commons.

This week there is a contemporary artists’ book conference being held in collaboration with Printed Matter’s NY Art Book Fair. The conference is being co-organized by representatives from the Brooklyn Museum, MoMA and the New York Public Library as well as several other institutions who are involved with artists’ books. The conference features a panel session, entitled Artists’ Books from the Brooklyn Perspective, which includes Brooklyn-based artists and publishers Emily Larned of Red Charming, Dan Nadel of PictureBox, and Matvei Yankelevich of Ugly Duckling Presse.

In conjunction with this event, we have just installed several artists’ books from our collection in two display cases in and outside the Library on the second floor, so come visit the Brooklyn Museum and see these interesting books! One strength of our collection is books by Brooklyn-based artists and publishers. I’ve done some blogging on the subject in the past and this time around Lilli Schestag, our great Pratt intern, has compiled lists of Brooklyn-based book artists, galleries and presses for your reference. If you are a Brooklyn based book artist, gallery or press, let us know if you want your name added to any of these lists for future publication. Just send us an e-mail.

We would love to hear your thoughts and comments!

We have just joined The Commons on Flickr to share a selection of images with the Flickr community and to begin our partnership, it seemed appropriate that we start at the beginning! William Henry Goodyear was the Museum’s first Curator of Fine Arts. As an architectural historian (he is known for his book entitled The Grammar of the Lotus), he documented his travels. Goodyear collected lantern slides to illustrate his slide lectures which he presented here at the Museum and during his travels around the world. What you see in The Commons today are selections of images documenting Egypt as it appeared around Goodyear’s time as well as what he saw when he visited the Paris Exposition in 1900.

Left: Lantern Slide Collection: Views, Objects: Egypt. Abu Simbel [selected images]. View 05: Egypt. Abu Simbel., n.d., This slide colored by Joseph Hawkes Brooklyn Museum Archives (S10|08 Abu Simbel, image 9491).

Right: Paris Exposition: Champ de Mars and Palace of Metallurgy, Paris, France, 1900. Exposition of 1900. General view of the Chateau de Mars taken from the Chateau d’Eau. [The Champs de Mars towards the Metallurgie Palace]. Brooklyn Museum Archives, Goodyear Archival Collection (S03_06_01_015 image 1945).

While the Brooklyn Museum staff is the primary user of our Libraries and Archives, we are open to the public and are always looking to reach out to a wide and varied audience. One of the challenges is ensuring everyone knows which resources we have available and listening to the needs of our visitors, so we know what to provide and how best to present these materials. One of the more interesting results of “growing” an encyclopedic collection is that we have research collections that serve as an intellectual link to the objects and perhaps act as storytellers revealing the cultural context of the objects. Think about the possible stories behind these photographs and then tag the images with the story you see. Take a look at these photographs and tell us how you would like to use them. What other materials would you like to see?

We believe that by sharing these images we will support a better understanding of the cultures that have created the great art that is held by this Museum. We hope you will agree.

On April 5th we had our second talk in a series of discussions to commemorate the 185th anniversary of the founding of the Library. The well attended talk – entitled What is a book? – was given by Andy Birsh and Davin Kuntze, from Woodside Press, who spoke about the elements of the book format. Their presentation focused on typography, papers, and bindings in use before and since the days of Gutenberg. Mr. Birsh is the proprietor of Woodside Press in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, one of the largest fine letterpress printing studios in New York. Mr. Kuntze is a trained bookbinder, printer, and graphic designer who lives in Crown Heights.

As always, it was a great pleasure to listen and think about the history of books and to see some books that are great examples of papermaking, printing and binding. Books on view included books on papermaking and specimen books with paper samples and facsimiles of codices such as the Codex Mendoza, the Mexican manuscript. The following is part of the catalog entry for this remarkable book published in London in 1938:

“The Mendoza codex is a Mexican pictographic manuscript prepared on the authority of Don Antonio de Mendoza, the first viceroy of New Spain … A Spanish priest, familiar with the Nauatl … was employed by the viceroy to set down in Spanish the explanations of the glyphs as interpreted by the Mexicans themselves.” The facsimile includes the original pictographs in colors and the Spanish explanations.”

This codex facsimile is one of many in this collection that document the culture of Mexico.

Several truly rare books were out for the public to see such as Hori Apollinis selecta hieroglyphica (Rome, 1599). This emblem book (seen below) documents Horapollo’s attempt to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs and offers many woodcut images some of which are supposedly by Dürer. The book was recently on view in the Egypt Through Other Eyes exhibition organized by the Museum Library staff.

Other rarities on view included The First Book of Architecture by Andrea Palladio (London, 1721) and Specimens of plain and ornamental printing types, borders, ornaments, rules, &c. made at the type and electrotype foundry of James Conner & Sons (New York, 1859) A good example of an accordion binding was The Great Exhibition “wot is to be” : or probable results of the industry of all nations in the year ‘51. Showing what is to be exhibited, who is to exhibit it; in short,how its [!] all going to be done (London, 1850). This book is a continuous, illustrated strip, folded accordion style.

We also had a few artists’ books out that are exquisite examples of printing such as the Peter Kruty edition of The Diary of a Madman by Nikolai Gogol (Summer Gardens Editions, 1998) with art by Mikhail Magaril. Peter Kruty’s letterpress studio is in Brooklyn and he worked with a team to produce this great example of letterpress and fine binding. The book was included in the Artists Book exhibition here back in 2000. Another artist’s book that was included in the Artists Book exhibition here and on view for our talk is The Corona Palimpsest (1996) made by Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese.

I could go on and on about all of the great books we had out on view … if you want a full list of what we all looked at send an email and we will be happy to send the list to you.

Keonna Hendrick, Education Intern for Library Outreach, enjoys looking at one of the many rare books we had
out for the public to see.

National Library Week having just ended, it seems opportune to bring up a topic that was discussed during the talk which centered on the future of the book and the challenges presented by the Internet. There seems to be a notion in the air that “all of this will be digitized” if it hasn’t been already and that we will not need libraries. Perhaps it is so much easier to click at your computer instead of getting up and opening a book. But what a pleasure that is! Touching the paper, seeing images that in many instances are engravings or are hand colored, feeling the binding. I realize I am speaking from the perspective of a research librarian surrounded by books that have a true intrinsic value. As in most art libraries, we have many books filled with tons of images – engravings, photographs, textile and paper samples etc - that have an incredible tactile quality to them. I don’t look forward to the day when I have to climb into bed with a computer instead of a book. I know I am not the only one who feels that we need to speak up for the book as a physical entity and would really like to begin a discussion here about this issue. As far as I can see here in Brooklyn there are two camps of thinking: the book lover who speaks for the beauty of the physical book and the Internet lover who wants everything online and available in a very immediate way. Which camp are you in? Can the wishes of the two camps converge so that we can have everything – the book and the digital version?