Please note!
The Jean Outland Chrysler Library will be closed Friday September 30, 2011 until Friday October 14, 2011.
Regular Library Hours will resume on Wednesday October 19, 2011.

A View From the Stacks: Kersti's Journal Week 4

Our Library Interns have headed off for the summer. They are missed and certainly not forgotten. They've left us with some great journal entries written during the course of the summer. I hope you'll enjoy reading about their adventures and efforts over the next few weeks. - L. C.

Week 4- Collections Development and Management

 
This week I focused on how the library builds its collection and deals with acquisitions. One thing I’ve noticed while I’m here is the library gets a LOT of book donations. All of the books are interesting, but the library’s limited space and scope means that some of them can’t be added to the stacks. As I mentioned in an earlier entry, the library focuses first and foremost on subjects related to objects in the museum’s collection. If a text can’t be tied into the library’s scope some way, it needs to be deaccessioned.

The Library’s Goals (from the Collections Development Policy)

·         Provide a primary source of information for the public about Chrysler Museum collections.

·         Provide resources, reference service, and collections management services to enable all museum activities including study, care and interpretation of Chrysler Museum collections.

·         Provide the public with intellectual and physical access to arts-related information through communication and sharing of a wide variety of available resources.

Part of my job this week was to determine if some of the recent acquisitions could be included in the collection. This task was surprisingly difficult; for the assignment I picked a book of architecture, a book about one artist’s focus on American folk art, and a glossy book of recipes. Surprisingly, I had to determine that none of them could be included. The book of folk art was a duplicate of what we already had in the collection; the book of architecture was a “lookbook”, almost an advertisement, for an architectural firm, and perhaps less startlingly, the cookbook was entirely outside of the library’s focus. I also needed to come up with some suggestions of how to deal with those books the library is unable to retain and must deaccession. This, too, proved tricky. My first thought was to donate them, but many organizations that accept book donations have very specific guidelines for what they will and won’t accept- one organization wouldn’t accept anything older than a decade! A sale could work, but would be difficult to organize. I even found that many people use old books to make items like lamps or other pieces of art.

The end of the week was devoted towards something that others have already blogged about…. Making our bookcart! Sarah, Jamie, and I tossed around a lot of ideas, but finally decided on the pirate ship from Muppet Treasure Island, one of my all-time favorite movies. We're keeping our fingers crossed...

The Intern Submission to the 2011 Book Cart Contest:  The Hispanola

The Intern Submission to the 2011 Book Cart Contest: The Hispanola

The Intern Submission to the 2011 Book Cart Contest: The Hispanola

 - Kersti Francis, Summer 2011  Library Intern

 As you may already know, the intern's Book Cart Contest submission, the Hispanola sailed into second place in our annual competition.

Guess who visited the Library today?

Curious George stopped by this afternoon to learn a bit more about this history of Children's book illustration. Books from the 19th, 20th  and 21st centuries are all on view. Curious? Stop by and take look.

A View From the Stacks: Jamie's Journal Week 4

Our Library Interns have headed off for the summer. They are missed and certainly not forgotten. They've left us with some great journal entries written during the course of the summer. I hope you'll enjoy reading about their adventures and efforts over the next few weeks. - L. C.

Walter P. Chrysler Jr. with former Museum Director Dr. David Steadman and an unidentified woman.

 

For Whom in Which Will?

        Continuing on my journey through Walter P. Chrysler Jr’s records, I came across another interesting bump in the road: his will. After a life filled with the constant buying and selling of art, by 1988 Walter had accumulated quite a distinguished personal collection.  Upon his death in September of 1988, it was assumed that he would donate most, if not all, of this collection to the museum he worked so hard to build and maintain.

          In his will, Walter named the Chrysler Museum as beneficiary of over 75% of the Chrysler family trust fund along with $1.6 million for endowment and 17 of his remaining personal works of art.  Also in the will, of the 785 works of art from Walter’s personal collection on loan to the museum, 768 were named to Jack, Walter’s nephew.  Many people, including the Chrysler Museum’s director at the time, Dr. David Steadman were surprised by this decision.  It was reported that before his death, he led his closest friends to believe that he would leave the majority of his artwork collection to the museum.  So, what did he truly want?

       Here is where it gets really interesting.  There was a second, unsigned will that emerged months after his death.  If signed, this will would have given most of Walter’s personal collection to the museum instead of to his nephew, Jack.  751 works, on top of other money given to Jack, would have gone to the museum.  Walter died two days prior to an appointment designated for signing the will.  If the contents of this will were what he truly wanted, why wouldn’t he have taken care of it already? Was his death just unfortunate timing?

           And another thing. Thomas H. Willcox Jr., board of trustees president, said that Walter was an “avid writer of wills” and had made lots of unsigned wills in his life (Daily Press, 4/11/89).  So was this unsigned will just another one of those? We are fortunate enough to have a draft of this controversial, unsigned will in the Chrysler’s archives.

 

 - Jamie Sawyer, Summer 2011  Library Archives Intern

A View From the Stacks - Kersti's Journal Week Three

Our Library Interns have headed off for the summer.  They are missed and certainly not forgotten.  They've left us with some great journal entries written during the course of the summer.  I hope you'll enjoy reading about their adventures and efforts over the next few weeks.  - L. C.

                                                                              

Intern Journal- Week Three

Week three at the JOC Library was incredibly busy. This week’s theme was cataloging, and so I spent the first part of the week learning about the library’s catalogue system from behind the scenes. This was really interesting to me- I use libraries all the time, but never really thought about what goes into the process of creating a functional catalog.

Laura showed me the library’s cataloging program, which, like most programs in use by the OCLC consortium, uses MARC (MAchine-Readable Cataloging), a type of cataloging language. In MARC, categories are described by a series of numbers  (go here for a full description of the MARC process- it’s a little complex! : http://www.loc.gov/marc/umb/um11to12.html#part11) which ensures that data can be translated into catalogs across the globe. MARC’s useful because it provides a standardized system for libraries to use- before it was developed by the Library of Congress in the 1960s, this process was done by sharing “union catalogs”, copies of card catalogs that were both difficult to change and expensive to create.  I spent some time updating our catalog, but then turned to the project that dominated the week.

VERTICAL FILES

The Library’s Vertical Files contain information about artists, whether they’re represented in the Museum’s collection or not, and their works. My fellow intern, Jamie, is working on organizing the information the library has on hand about the Chryslers, so to help out we both tackled the seemingly endless files to determine whether or not a file would be helpful to a researcher looking for relevant material on the Chryslers.  The files are made up of various clippings and letters, so digging through to find any reference to the Chryslers took some time.
This project took up the rest of the week- although we didn’t finish the process (to be honest, we were only able to get through about the first 6 letters of the alphabet even though we spent all week on it) Jamie was able to get enough information to begin creating a database of those files deemed useful.

Just one of the many files we dealt with

The vertical files are incredibly useful because they’re the first stop for anyone looking for information on an artist or a work exhibited in the Museum. Although Jamie is still working on putting the database together, I moved on the next week to the wild world of… COLLECTIONS DEVELOPMENT AND MANAGEMENT!

These files are just on Picasso alone!

-Kersti Francis, Summer 2011 Library Services Intern

Postscript: Jamie and Kersti very diligently finished this project before the end of the summer. The database will help researchers looking for information about Walter P. Chrysler Jr.'s collection and will also help focus future cataloging of the Vertical file collection.  More Intern adventures next week!

  - L.C.

And the Winner is....

This year's Annual Book Cart Decorating Contest Winner is entry # 3 inspired by the work of artist Nick Cave. Entry 3 was constructed by the Interns and Students at Old Dominion University's Hofheimer Art Library. Congratulations to the winning team!

If you were wondering how the voting stacked up:

Entry #     Team         In-house votes     Web votes         Total
  3             ODU                    9                      28                   37
  2          Library Interns      16                      20                  36
  1          Education Interns  21                       3                   24
  4          Library Staff         10                        8                  18

Whew!  That was a close race!   Thank you to everyone who voted and to all the contestants!  

A View From the Stacks: “The Controversial Century”

The building that formerly held the Chrysler Museum at Provincetown, today.

         Walter Chrysler’s exhibition titled “The Controversial Century” was quite the controversy itself.  It began as a show at his Provincetown museum in 1962, showcasing works by extraordinary artists like Renoir, Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Matisse. It moved to Ottawa, Canada a few months later, as a traveling exhibit.  One problem.  Experts declared many of these works to be forgeries.

This week, after finishing the processing of Garbisch-related archives, I began work with archival material having to do with Walter, himself, I found most interesting his involvement in the 1962 scandal mentioned above.  It raised many questions in my mind.  How could such a distinguished art collector have fallen into this trap?  What can be said about standards on ethics in the art world (both past and present)?

At the time of “The Controversial Century” exhibition, the Art Dealers Association of America was just forming.  This organization was formed in order to ensure higher ethical standards in the art world.  The ADAA caught wind of certain rumors pertaining to the authenticity of a good number of the paintings in Chrysler’s 1962 show.  Teaming up with Canada’s Parliament, U.S. income tax officials, and the New York County’s district attorney’s office, the ADAA found that some of the paintings in the exhibit had no “pedigree” and were stylistically unlike the work of the pronounced artists. The works that were pronounced fake were then removed from public view.

A painting’s “pedigree” is a listing of all of its progressive owners, traced back to the original buyer.  The authenticity of a painting can be guaranteed by its “pedigree”. Most of the questionable art came from a New York gallery, known as Hartert Galleries.

Reading headline after headline about this incident made me begin to feel bad for Chrysler.  For someone who had the reputation of being a wonderful art connoisseur, striving to educate the public about art’s importance to society, Chrysler was hit hard by many harsh words in and out of the art world.

Walter P. Chrysler Jr. c. 1970

Fortunately, despite this controversy in the early 60’s he was able to bounce back, becoming one of the most distinguished art collectors in America.  Yet, it still makes you wonder: how could he have made such an outrageous mistake?  It still remains a mystery.


 -Jamie Sawyer, Summer 2011 Library Archives Intern