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

Hello and Getting Started

Many thanks to the Jean Outland Chrysler Library staff for their welcome in the stacks and blogosphere! It may be cold in the stacks (for good reason) but my reception here at the Chrysler couldn’t have been warmer. Now that I’m settling in, it’s down to business. In my first two weeks I’m starting to tackle the backlog of unsorted and/or un-cataloged material, focusing on traditional art-related monographs. I’m sorting and identifying duplicates in the un-cataloged material and adding catalog records for those books we don’t have. In the coming weeks I’ll start working with smaller exhibition catalogs and pamphlets. Armed with coffee (tightly controlled and un-spilled) I’ll be getting as much material as possible to the shelves and into the catalog where it can searched, researched, and browsed.

Like many archivists and librarians, I face the continuing temptation to fully explore every book I catalog, sort, or work to preserve. In the interest of ever getting anything done, I can only occasionally indulge that urge. Each shelf or stack of un-cataloged material is a treasure trove of interesting material and, as in the case of a book I cataloged this week, that material can sometimes produce personal connections. I discovered and cataloged a book of photography by Joel-Peter Witkin (appropriately titled Joel-Peter Witkin), to whom I’m very distantly related through marriage. The book is dedicated to my second cousin, his wife at the time of printing. I’ve never met either my cousin or Mr. Witkin, but vividly recall a family gathering at which his work was discussed and uniformly criticized as being bizarre, disturbing, and in poor taste. My discovery of the book has not only sparked a shared memory, but also highlighted a challenge often faced by catalogers and the acquisitions staff of a library. Librarians often confront material fully within a collection’s scope which they find personally uninteresting, misguided, false, or even offensive. I don’t share my family’s sense of outrage at Witkin’s art, but personally think his work relies too much on staged grotesqueness as manifestation of his themes. Individual value judgments are unimportant, however, when wearing my cataloger’s cap and Joel-Peter Witkin will take its place beside Joel-Peter Witkin: Forty Photographs on our shelf. His books fall within the library’s collecting policy and, as a cataloger, I’m happily bound to the loftier Chrysler Library missions of fostering research and supporting the Museum’s collections.

Come back for more updates on my cataloging efforts. I’m looking forward to a successful summer!

--John Curtis, 2010 Jean Outland Chrysler Cataloging Fellow

Item of the Week: Bausch and Lomb AT WAR

If you are one of the 125 million people in the world who wear contact lenses, you may recognize the brand name “Bausch and Lomb” from your bottle of contact solution. However, in the 1940s you were more likely to see the company’s logo plastered on pamphlets highlighting their vast contributions to the war effort. The Jean Outland Chrysler Library is delighted to possess one of these pamphlets entitled: “Bausch and Lomb AT WAR.”
Long before contacts were invented, Bausch and Lomb specialized in such military wonders as searchlight mirrors, telescopes, and aviator goggles. They even built a new Glass Plant to provide desperately needed optical glass to American troops. In order to advertise these and many other achievements, they created pamphlets that not only captured the spirit of a nation at war, but emphasized the value of the American worker. Through vivid colors, photography and highly evocative language,
the pamphlet portrays Bausch and Lomb
as a corporate hero, ready to do whatever is necessary to protect the American way. The cover of the pamphlet features a hand-drawn Bausch and Lomb logo, jabbed into a star-spangled sky by a silver dagger. Underneath the logo is a shadowy clock tower. The symbols of the clock and the dagger emphasize the timeliness of the war and the company’s involvement. They also allude to Bausch and Lomb’s elaborate history of military service; a crucial part of the company’s hero narrative. Despite such obvious sentimentality and tendency toward propaganda, the Bausch and Lomb pamphlet presents a truly unique view of American history. It is sobering to think about where we would be without the clarity of site. Perhaps it is fitting then to look back at our nation’s “Greatest War” through the lens of an eye-wear corporation. In an era of contact lenses and multipurpose saline solution, maybe it is better to dust off our binoculars and take a deep look into our past. Maybe then we can get a better glimpse of the future.

- Library volunteer Jessica Ritchie