Take a break from studying and liven up your imagination by taking a peek at some artists’ books. Here are a couple of highlights to get you started! The Book of Warnings by Daniella Deeg 2001 Women’s Studio Workshop This screen-printed artist book is stunning at first glance, tucked in a box with orange…
Take a Trip Around America… at the Harvard Fine Arts Library
A grey, Boston winter is soon upon us, we could all use a sunny postcard or two to brighten the day. Luckily, the Harvard Fine Arts Library has an enormous postcard collection ready for your viewing pleasure. This collection mainly created in the early 20th century focuses on landscapes, architecture, and historical buildings and sculptures,…
Sporting Portraits Collection
Nicknames and Stylish Hair: all a day in the life of a bare-knuckle boxer. Take a moment to explore images from the Sporting Portraits collection. This collection contains over 350 photographs, prints, broadsides, clippings, and hand-drawn illustrations from the mid-18th to the 20th centuries. These portraits captured the likeness of more than 100 American, British, and Irish…
Travels in Arabia Deserta
“It is the true Arabia … there can never be another picture of the whole, in our time, because here it is all said, and by a great master” T. E. Lawrence Setting off from Damascus in 1876, Charles Doughty travelled for 21 months across the deserts of Arabia, through regions almost entirely unknown…
Rosenberg Gallery Catalogues added
The Fine Arts library recently purchased two rare exhibition catalogues from Paul Rosenberg’s gallery in Paris. Les grandes influences au dix-neuvieme siècle, published in 1925, is one of the earliest of Rosenberg’s documented shows. Exposition d’oeuvres recentes de Henri-Matisse, is from 1936. Rosenberg was Matisse’s dealer and an early champion; this illustrated catalogue is a…
Occuprint Portfolio 2012 Acquired
The Fine Arts Library recently acquired a portfolio of 31 prints selected to represent the global Occupy movement. The works were selected from among hundreds submitted by Occupy groups worldwide and exhibited online by a group called Occuprint; the project supports their educational outreach program. The non-profit Booklyn Artists Alliance helped select the posters to…
Spanish costume book
The library recently acquired a rare 19th century imprint: Costumbres y trajes de la edad media Cristiana y del renacimiento (Barcelona : Libreria de Joaquin Verdaguer, 1852-1854). The book contains historical and descriptive essays and thirty-four hand-painted engravings of various figures in Western European medieval costume, such as this image of jousting knights. As was…
Listen, listen : a new artist’s book
The Fine Arts Library has just purchased a copy of the limited edition Listen, listen : Adadam Agofomma : honoring the legacy of Koo Nimo produced by the book artist Mary Hark as a tribute to a Ghanaian musician. Listen, listen is a visual interpretation of Nimo’s ‘palmwine music’. Hark uses native materials such as…