The Fine Arts Library holds a collection of over 10,000 photographs of European medieval monuments taken by Professor Arthur Kingsley Porter (1883-1933) in the 1920s. The Porter collection includes negatives as well as prints and served as the basis for several of his noted publications such as Romanesque sculpture of the pilgrimage roads (1923). Kathryn…
A Medieval Islamic Bestiary
We have a new addition to the Fine Arts Library’s collection of facsimile editions of illuminated manuscripts. The facsimile in this case reproduces the Kitāb al-Manāfi‘ al-Ḥayawān (The Book on the Usefulness of Animals), a collection of texts classifying and describing the varieties of wild and domestic animals, compiled by the medieval Arab scholar Ibn…
Embroidery as artist’s tool
The Fine Arts Library recently acquired a unique artist’s book made from fabric with decorations and text created exclusively through embroidery. Candace Hicks is a Texas-based artist who elevates a common copy book by recreating it with stitchery. Common threads (2011) is one of several sewn books Hicks has made in recent years. For more…
Exhibition Catalog as Artist’s Book
Here are photographs of the unassuming and enigmatic interior of a recently acquired 1977 James Lee Byars catalogue, issued to accompany an exhibition at the Städtisches Museum Mönchengladbach in Germany. A gold box contains a sheet of crumpled black tissue paper with “TH FI TO IN PH” printed in gold, short for ’THe FIrst TOtally…
Surrealist newsletter acquired
The Fine Arts Library recently purchased a set of four issues of 14, rue du Dragon, the short-lived newsletter of the Cahiers d’Art. The title came from the address of the larger journal’s offices, located in Saint Germain-des-Pres and just around the corner from the Café des Deux Magots, a popular hang-out in the thirties…
Art Museum Class
The Harvard Art Museums Archives recently completed a processing project, generously funded by The Getty Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). In the process of cataloging its major holdings from 1895-present, the Archives has uncovered some wonderful documents. The following represents material found during this project. Paul J. Sachs was the…
Analytical art
Who knew, in the summer of 1971, that the newest hotbed of art theory would be born, and grow up, in the villages of Chipping Norton and Leamington Spa and the industrial city of Coventry, twenty miles apart from each other and over one hundred miles northwest of London, the supposed center of British contemporary…
On The ‘Radar”
The Fine Arts Library has recently acquired a complete, boxed set of the art journal RADAR, which was published in Switzerland between 1982 and 1988. This German language publication highlights the contemporary art scene in Europe and beyond; each issue includes an original photograph. In addition to this Mapplethorpe, this set features work by…
Lewis Rubenstein Murals, 1937
The Harvard Art Museums Archives recently completed a processing project, generously funded by The Getty Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). In the process of cataloging its major holdings from 1895-present, the Archives has uncovered some wonderful documents. The following represents material found during this project. Painter, educator and muralist, Lewis…
Unique photography book acquired
The Fine Arts Library recently acquired a limited edition publication by renowned Australian photojournalist Stephen Dupont. Entitled Axe Me Biggie, a rendering of the Dari expression for “take my picture”, it includes ninety black and white Polaroid portrait photographs of Afghanis taken near the central bus station in Kabul, on one day in 2006. These…