The Fine Arts Library recently purchased a copy of one of the earliest Jean Tinguely exhibition catalogues, his show at the Museum Haus Lange in Krefeld, Germany, September – October, 1960. This small show came hard upon Tinguely’s earliest (and perhaps greatest) success, the debut of his “metamatic” or self-destructing machine Hommage to New York…
Artists’ Books from Wisconsin
The Fine Arts Library owns hundreds of artists’ books – works of art created as multiples in book form. There is no particular reason why the form should been more popular in any one part of the world than any other, so I found it interesting when we acquired a substantial number of them published…
International Bibliography of Art (IBA) Now Available
Proquest announced an agreement in June 2010 to continue The International Bibliography of Art (IBA) formerly sponsored by the Getty Research Institute. The IBA is now available with the CSA Illumina interface through the Harvard E-Research Portal. IBA is the successor to the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA), and includes the most recent…
New Journal Provides Translations of Current Scholarship
Art in Translation is a new online journal published by the Visual Arts Research Institute, Edinburgh (VARIE). Art in Translation (AIT) publishes writing from around the world on the visual arts, architecture, and design in English translation. Global in scope the journal covers all areas of the visual arts including painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, design,…
Dr. Madaus Commemorative Album
50 Jahre Madaus: Eine aufgeschlossene Firma. Köln-Merheim: Dr. Madaus & Co., [1969]. This photography book was especially created for the 50th anniversary of a German pharmaceutical firm. Founded in 1919, Madaus is still a major drug company although no longer with the homeopathic focus of its early years. A whimsical and creative tour-de-force, the work…
Shades of Nakedness: the Douglass A. Roby Fund
One of the singular, and most generous, book funds available to the Harvard College Library is the one created by Douglass A. Roby, Class of 1965. Although Mr. Roby spent a great part of his career working for the New York City Transit Authority, he was an accomplished scholar, receiving advanced degrees from Yale University…
Color lithographs of the Siege of Paris
La Tramblais, E. de. Les désastres de Paris en 1871. Paris : E. de La Tramblais, [1871?] All of the scenes depicted in Les désastres come from the final, desperate ‘May Days’ of the Commune, when many of the great landmarks of Paris were burned to the ground. The printer Badoureau established himself on the…
American Library Association conference, Atlanta, Georgia, 1899
Moore and Stephenson (no dates), Atlanta, Georgia. American Library Association Twenty-first annual conference, Atlanta, Georgia, May 8-13, 1899. In May 1899 over 200 librarians from across the United States assembled in Atlanta for the annual meeting of the American Library Association (ALA). The six day program was packed with sessions devoted to reports from officers…
Knock Out Brown
Cigarette cards are among nearly four hundred images in the collection called “Portraits of boxers and other athletes” which in itself represents a tiny portion of the more than seventy thousand pieces to be found in the Portrait Collection of the Fine Arts Library. Evert Jansen Wendell (A.B. Harvard 1882) was an avid sportsman in…