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.

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.

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!

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?

Brooklyn has a rich community of artists and galleries and this is especially true for artists who work in the realm of the book. By that I mean artists who choose the book form to be their canvas to express ideas or visions. Book art – or books made by artists – has a long tradition and today we are seeing a vast array of examples ranging from multiples (open editions), limited editions to unique works.

On view until March 27th, there is an exhibition of artists’ books at the 5 + 5 Gallery in DUMBO offering an intriguing array of unique works in the book form. The exhibition is entitled 8 Artists: 8 Books and includes the work of Todd Bartel, Doug Beube, Donna Maria deCreeft, Raphael Fodde, Marty Greenbaum, Caroline Hill, Bo Joseph and Robin Ross, who is also the curator of the exhibition. Each artist shows two works of art – one in a book form and one wall piece – which are dynamically juxtaposed. The works in the exhibition offer magical images that entice the viewer to look into private worlds touched by literature and travel and other forces.

We would like to start a dialogue about these works and we invite these artists to comment about their works in this exhibition and perhaps to answer the following questions in comments to this blog:

How do the works – books and wall pieces - communicate a message together?

Why was the book form selected as a vehicle as a communication tool?

A little known fact is that Walt Whitman was the acting librarian in 1835 of the Brooklyn Apprentices’ Library which was the nucleus of the Brooklyn Museum. This year is the 185th anniversary of the founding of the Brooklyn Apprentices’ Library and we are reflecting on Whitman in celebration of the anniversary. The Brooklyn Apprentices’ Library was founded in 1823 as the first free and circulating library in Brooklyn. The Library evolved into the Brooklyn Institute which eventually became the parent of the Brooklyn Museum as well as Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the Brooklyn Children’s Museum. Spanning 185 years, the Apprentices’ Library has a rich history including the fact that Revolutionary War Hero General Lafayette laid the cornerstone of the library building on his tour of America in 1825. Years later, Walt Whitman recounted witnessing the laying of the cornerstone by General Lafayette. We’ve got a bit more information on Whitman and his association with this institution on our website.

Would Whitman recognize the library today? Maybe since several of the books in the original Library live on the shelves in the Brooklyn Museum Library. Whitman reported that there were 1,200 volumes in 1835 and today there are over 300,000 volumes ranging from antiquity to contemporary art. We now offer so much more including electronic records to what is in the research collections held in the Museum Libraries and Archives as well as specialized databases, and digital images which all serve to document the Museum’s encyclopedic art collection as well as the broader area of art and cultural history. There is a strong intellectual link between the research collection and the Museum’s object collection since the research tools document the object collections. Over the past 185 years the research collection has taken on the role of a storyteller revealing how and why an object was created and where it was before it came into the Museum collection. The research collection is constantly enriched by new purchases, exchanges with other museums and donations. Recent donations include the Wardwell Collection donated by the widow of scholar Allen Wardwell, a scrapbook on Feminist artists and many books on women artists.

Whitman probably did not foresee the challenges – both positive and negative – presented by the Internet. The positive side is the power of the web and the advantage of providing textual and visual information in a timely manner. The negative is the assumption that all these materials will soon be digitized and that we will no longer need the hard copy. Many of these materials have an intrinsic quality all of their own and are very often exhibited. There is active discussion between the two camps of book lovers and online devotees. We plan to discuss this challenge during this anniversary year to emphasize our belief that the library can live on alongside its digital partner. Our first anniversary talk will be a presentation on Walt Whitman and his association with the Apprentices’ Library on February 2nd and we will have books on display that were in the Library collection when Whitman was librarian. For more information send us an email!

Come visit and help us celebrate this special anniversary!

Eleanor Whitney and I had a great time at our recent Academic Open House which was an exciting first step towards engaging professors and to hear what they would like from the Brooklyn Museum. In the Museum Libraries and Archives we have considerable resources documenting the Museum, its history and collections to provide information to Museum staff and the visiting public. We also have collected research material on the broader areas of art, archaeology, ethnology and cultural history and wish to make these resources more readily available to professors and their students. If you are a professor or student who would like to visit our Library, feel free to send an email to library@brooklynmuseum.org or search our online catalog.

Eleanor and I look forward to the next steps in this process by widening our reach to include professors from academic institutions in all the boroughs and beyond! We look forward to the next open house in March which will include a tour of our newly opened Japanese print exhibition, Utagawa: Masters of the Japanese Print 1770-1900.

This quote resonates so well with me as it points to the role artists’ books have both as messengers of information and works of art in themselves. From mass produced, or open editions to limited editions to unique bookworks – artists’ books underscore McLuhan’s ideas about the medium as the message. Artists’ books constitute a highly varied contemporary art form which can be described as artworks which exist within the structure of books. Usually these are books utilizing a sequence of pages to produce a stream of imagery - textual and/or visual. They employ a full range of forms utilizing unusual paper, typographic design and bindings.

Artists’ books are a vibrant part of the Brooklyn Museum Library Special Collections. The Museum Library started to actively collect artists’ books in the 1970’s and now there are approximately 2,000 titles with a collecting emphasis on multiples. In an effort not to duplicate what other art libraries are collecting in the New York area, we have developed a collection policy that focuses on:

• Innovative works created by Brooklyn-based artists
• Innovative works created by artists worldwide
• Works created by artists either exhibited by the Museum or who have works in the Museum’s art object collection
• Works that relate to the objects or cultures represented in the Museum’s object collection

We try to present the artists’ books collection to the public either through display in exhibitions or through on-site visits and artist’s talks. This past Saturday we featured Angela Lorenz who is an American artist living in Bologna, Italy. Ms. Lorenz talked about her very innovative work entitled Pandora’s Book (1992). She creates mixed-media limited-edition artists’ books and uses them as a tool to convey cultural observations and historical research. As whimsical and humorous as some of her books are, each one is based on fact often derived directly from experts in architecture, anthropology, art history, textiles, and economics. This thought-provoking bookwork was recently donated to the Brooklyn Museum Library by Dorothy and Jerome Preston in honor of Dorothy Cochlin McCann (1899-1997), art historian and avid sewer.

On December 1st we are going to feature the work of Booklyn – watch our website for details and visit the Library Online Catalog to see what artists’ books we have in the collection!

Portions of this text are excerpted from an essay of mine published in the Artists’ Book Yearbook 2001-2002 (Impact Press, 2001). For copies of the essay or more information about artists’ books send us an email to library@brooklynmuseum.org.

Stewart Culin, circa 1920. Brooklyn Museum Archives, Culin Archival Collection. Research and Writings [5.2.016]: Bibliographies & biographies, 1885-1923.

Stewart Culin, the Museum’s founding Curator of Ethnology, was responsible for bringing thousands of art objects into the Museum collection ranging from Native American, Asian, African and Eastern European cultures. Culin’s library and research files document his collecting in the field, his reasoning about what he collected and what he did not collect, and the people and places he encountered in his travels. His interests were very diverse, including the study of games. We recently looked at what Culin had assembled on games and found text and images that we developed into a PowerPoint presentation for the year-long thematic exhibition entitled Play at Proteus Gowanus, a Brooklyn gallery.

Play at Proteus Gowanus. Gallery Hours: Thursday and Friday 3 - 6 pm, Saturday and Sunday 12 - 6 pm, or by appointment

I went to the opening of the Play exhibition on Friday, September 14th and am delighted to report that the exhibition is well worth seeing! Lots of great books and objects that magically speak to the issue of play on both historical and contemporary fronts. This is the second time we have contributed material to Proteus Gowanus– the first time was for their exhibition on Libraries – in our efforts to increase awareness of the rich resources held here in the Libraries and Archives. With that in mind we are planning a program which will take place here within the next few months on games and the notion of play. The program will be held in the Brooklyn Museum Library where we will be looking at and discussing many items in the Libraries and Archives. We will keep you posted – there is more to be said about Mr. Culin!

Here are a few images from our contribution to the exhibition to give you a sense of the type of materials on view in the  Libraries and Archives.

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