Cataloging the Jean Outland Chrysler Library’s pamphlet collection may not yield the towering, visually satisfying stack of cataloged material that results from processing monographs, but the rewards and fascinating discoveries are the same. The library accessions (takes in) many art-related pamphlets, most from gallery exhibitions or sales. Unlike monographs, these pamphlets are often limited, one-off printings quickly produced for the length of the exhibition. Most don’t have an ISSN number or assigned Library of Congress call number and lack clearly identified authors and publishers. Furthermore, many of the exhibitions highlight a wide variety of art and one pamphlet may include anything from 19th century British oil paintings to bronzes from the 1970’s. Clearly, some pamphlets represent a cataloging challenge. For example, this past week I came across about 20 exhibition pamphlets from the now-defunct IBM Gallery in New York City. The pamphlets spanned the 1960’s and represented the gallery’s diverse lineup of shows and interests. Should I catalog each pamphlet by subject individually? Should I group them as serial publications? Are these pamphlets more valuable as an IBM Gallery collection? How could I offer subject-based access points to individual pamphlets without complicating our library catalog with so many individual records? Ultimately, I decided to catalog the pamphlets as a collection; initial access is available under the heading IBM Exhibition Catalogs, but users searching for individual titles or subjects will still turn up specific pamphlets related to their search terms. Hopefully, it’s a win-win situation.
These pamphlets are valuable as records of specific exhibitions, facilitating historical research in the broadest sense and sometimes offering insight into the provenance of individual pieces. And, of course, sometimes there’s cool stuff tucked into them! This week I found a copy of a paper by Prentiss Taylor, a noted artist and teacher of the Harlem Renaissance, titled “Art As Psycotherapy” and reprinted from a 1950 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry. Within the pamphlet was a Picasso postcard, newspaper clippings, and a letter to “Alice”. After briefly hoping I had found a long-lost letter to Alice Toklas, with whom he communicated, I’m now certain the letter is to Alice Jaffe, an art historian and Chrysler volunteer who specialized in Pre-Columbian art. The library has a portion of Ms. Jaffe’s papers and many of our books on Pre-Columbian art are courtesy of Alice Jaffe. Thanks to the knowledge of librarian Laura Christiansen and some poking through the Prentiss Taylor papers at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, the mystery was solved. The letter alludes to the McCarthyism sweeping the country at the time, as well as fellow Harlem Renaissance figure Carl Van Vechten, and should be a nice addition to either the Alice Jaffe papers or the library’s Prentiss Taylor vertical file.

--John Curtis, Cataloging Fellow