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Collections of Works of Art on Paper in the Library of Congress

QUA RT E R LY

The Washington Print Club Quarterly(ISSN 0896-7598) is a publication ofThe Washington Print Club, a non-profit organization established in 1964in the District of Columbia to encour-age interest in prints and other worksof art on paper. Its members are col-lectors, artists, dealers, educators, cura-tors, students, and others interested inworks on paper.

Contributions to the WPC andmembership dues are tax deductible.Membership categories and annualdues are: Contributor, $50; Student,$20; Gallery, $75; Donor; $75; Col-lector, $200 (includes original print).Nonmembers outside the DC metro-politan area may subscribe to theQuarterly ($25). To join or subscribe,send a check payable to The Washing-ton Print Club, attn Joan Cooper,13804 Dowlais Drive, Rockville MD20853-2957. For more information,visit www.washingtonprintclub.org; e-mail, [email protected]; or call (301) 460-5019. WPCPresident Chris With can be reachedat [email protected] or (202) 797-8789.

As a matter of policy WPC mem-bership and mailing lists are kept con-fidential; however, gallery and artistmembers may send WPC membersexhibition announcements, etc. (formore information, see contacts above).

Contributions to the Quarterly arewelcome. To submit contributions or ads, write Marion F. Houstoun [email protected] or 739 10thStreet SE, Washington DC 20003, orcall (202) 544-2128. Material in theQuarterly, except that copyrighted,may be reprinted provided that propercredit is given.

COVER ART: Jules Guérin, View of the Library ofCongress, Jefferson Building, n.d.(between 1898 and 1915), colorgouache drawing.

A R T I C L E S

Editors: Margot Backas, Jenny Freestone, Marion F. HoustounEditorial Committee: Janet Tracy Anderson, Deron DeCesare, Joan Filson, Anne Collins Goodyear, Ginger Crockett Hammer, Gregory Jecmen, Harold Quayle, Ann WagnerExecutive Board: Janet Tracy Anderson, Jordan Benderly, Joan Cooper, Joan Filson, Jay Finkel, Meaghan Olwell, Margaret Adams Parker, Raymond Prince, Joan Root, Robert Steele, LuLenWalker, Brian Weinstein, Christopher B. WithAdvisors: Verna Curtis, Alan Fern, Jay Fisher, Helen Frederick, Jane Haslem, Joann Moser, Andrew RobisonWeb Page: http://www.washingtonprintclub.orgDesign and Production: Phoenix Graphics, Inc.

WINTER 2011-2012

VOL. 47, NO. 4

17 Contributions to the Quarterly Are Welcomed

32 “Drawn to Washington 2” Exhibition

32 Recent & Forthcoming Programs for WPC Members

A N N O U N C E M E N T S

2 Works of Art on Paper at the Library of CongressKATHERINE L. BLOOD, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CURATOR OF FINE PRINTS AND GUEST EDITOR

3 The Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress: Some His-torical BackgroundALAN FERN

5 Not Just Pretty Pictures: Fine Prints, Posters and Interdisciplinary Researchat the Library of CongressKATHERINE L. BLOOD

13 Timely and Timeless: Cartoons, Illustrations, and Documentary Drawingsand Prints at the Library of CongressMARTHA H. KENNEDY

18 Documentation & Art: Building the Photographic Collections at theLibrary of CongressVERNA POSEVER CURTIS

23 The Persistence of the Image: The Visual Arts in the Rare Book CollectionsMARK DIMUNATION

26 A Behind-the-Scenes View of the Library’s Rare Book & Special CollectionsDivisionDANIEL DE SIMONE

28 Connecting People with Collections: Visiting the Prints & PhotographsDivision in Person or OnlineHELENA ZINKHAM

Works of Art on Paper: Prints, Photographs, Drawings, and RareBooks at the Library of Congress

2 The Washington Print Club Quarterly

tions. My own offering explores thepotential of P&P’s fine prints andposters as primary research resources intheir own right but also in tandem withprimary materials housed in othermulti-format and multi-disciplinarydivisions in the Library. MarthaKennedy gives us a tour of P&P’s largecollections of cartoons, illustrations,and documentary drawings and printswith a focus on how the great artists ofthese genres, for example, Herblock,met, but also often transcended, thedemand that they address the politicaland social issues of their day. We thenget a taste of P&P’s vast holdings ofdocumentary and art photography inVerna Curtis’s article on the history andphilosophy of our collecting in thisfield. Next, RBSCD Chief Mark Dimu-nation provides a brief history andoverview of the division’s collections ofsome 800,000 rare books (the largest inthe U.S.) and describes its two collec-tions specifically devoted to contempo-rary book arts, the Fine Press Collectionand Artists’ Book Collection. He alsoindicates ways in which the RBSCDcollections can be used to study thedevelopment of graphic and printingtechniques, the history of printing, andthe physical book, in all its manifesta-tions over the centuries.

Daniel De Simone then takes us ona behind-the-scenes journey throughkey curatorial projects and programs inwhich he recently participated as theRBSCD Rosenwald Curator. We con-clude with P&P Chief HelenaZinkham’s article describing ongoingP&P efforts to make the wealth of itsvisual resources more accessible to thepublic at large as well as to researchers,students, collectors, and artists. In addi-tion, its sidebars list online P&Presearch resources on its collections,acquisition and appraisal policies, refer-ence aids, exhibitions, and special pro-grams, as well as selected publicationson the Library’s pictorial collections.

Given the space constraints of a peri-odical print publication, we have neces-sarily given short shrift to many other

remarkable visual collections in theLibrary. For example, P&P houses theCenter for American Architecture,Design and Engineering, founded in2002 to promote the study of its exten-sive collection of drawings and photo-graphs, which runs the gamut fromBenjamin Henry Latrobe’s statelydesign drawings for the U.S. Capitol tothe archive of Modernist master PaulRudolph. This hallmark collection hasbeen the source of numerous books,including a recent series, published inpartnership with Norton, on such sub-jects as barns, lighthouses, theaters, rail-road stations, and public markets.

Also notable for its visual holdings isthe Library’s Geography & Map Divi-sion, whose Martin Waldseemüller’s1507 map (the first known documentto use the name “America”) is the crownjewel in its wide-ranging collection ofcartographic works, many of which aremasterful works of art as well as func-tional objects. Indeed, works of art onpaper are found in research centersthroughout the Library, including thosededicated to the study of manuscripts,music and performing arts, motion pic-tures and television, sound recordings,and American folklife collections, butalso its area studies centers, which focuson different parts of the world.

Though these articles provide onlyglimpses of our pictorial holdings, we atthe Library and our WPC friends hopethat this inaugural special issue of theQuarterly will inspire readers to explorethem further. These are in fact your col-lections and resources: they are freelyavailable on our Web site and in ourresearch centers, where you can conferwith our curators and reference special-ists, as well as attend special programson the visual arts, such as tours, lec-tures, panel discussions, and exhibi-tions. Meanwhile, we hope you willenjoy the articles in this issue.

KATHERINE L. BLOOD

Library of Congress Curator of Fine Prints,Guest Editor, The WPC QuarterlyWinter 2011-2012 Special Issue

OPEN to the public at large, theLibrary of Congress serves asthe national library of the

United States and research arm of theU.S. Congress. Founded in 1800, it isalso America’s oldest federal culturalinstitution. After acquiring Thomas Jef-ferson’s extensive, multi-disciplinarylibrary in 1815, the Library followedthat Enlightenment thinker’s exampleby collecting works encompassing virtu-ally every facet of knowledge and cul-ture, including extensive holdings ofvisual art. Today, its collections offerresearchers and visitors nearly 147 mil-lion items, from printed books andelectronic resources, manuscripts, maps,and works of art on paper, to movies,music, and sound recordings, and itsreference services for the general publicrespond to more than half a millioninquiries each year.

Original art can be found in myriadforms and places in the Library’s vastnumber of special collections. However,the principal repository of its visual col-lections is the Prints and PhotographsDivision, which today holds about 15million photographs, prints, and draw-ings, dating from the 15th century tothe present day. In addition, the RareBook and Special Collections Divisionholds an impressive collection of materi-als relating to the art and technology ofthe print, ranging from 15th-centuryillustrated books and the grand produc-tions of the Renaissance and the En -lightenment to contemporary book arts.

Members of The Washington PrintClub, which was founded in 1964, havelong been familiar with P&P andRBSCD holdings, and we are delightedto be given an opportunity to reach outto new audiences by inaugurating aseries of occasional WPC Quarterly spe-cial issues on major public collections ofworks on paper. We begin with an his-torical perspective on the Library’s pic-torial collections by Alan Fern, whofrom 1961 to 1982 played a strong rolein shaping the Library’s collections, ini-tially as a curator, then P&P Chief, andultimately Director for Special Collec-

The Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress: Some Historical Background

Winter 2011-2012 3

decades that followed, neither the influxnor the need for more space abated;today, the Library is housed in threebuildings adjacent to the Capitol: theJefferson Building, 1897; the AdamsBuilding, 1939; and the MadisonBuilding, 1981.)

In 1897, just four months before theLibrary’s resplendent new building offi-cially opened, Congress authorized theestablishment of a Division of Prints inthe Library. As its holdings werepainstakingly sorted during the move,833 books and 54,000 prints and pho-tographs were assigned to the care ofthis new division. Among them were7,000 engravings and etchings, and5,000 lithographs, most received ascopyright deposits.

The new building included a gener-ous gallery space on the second floor.This permitted the Library, for the firsttime, to mount exhibitions open to thepublic. The Division of Prints was givenresponsibility for this new program,which it wasted no time in fulfilling: by1901, it had mounted 30 print exhibi-

IN 1800, when the seat of the U.S.government was transferred fromPhiladelphia to Washington, the

Congress established a reference libraryfor its use, and housed it in the U.S.Capitol. Almost immediately after theBritish burned the Capitol Building(including the Library of Congress)during the War of 1812, former Presi-dent Thomas Jefferson offered his per-sonal library as a replacement. In advo-cating Congress’s purchase of his com-prehensive library, Jefferson assertedthat the Congressional library shouldcover, not just books on law and legisla-tion, but every subject in which an edu-cated man should be interested. In Jan-uary 1815, when Congress accepted Jef-ferson’s offer, in effect it accepted Jeffer-son’s vision of the expanded role of theLibrary as well as his books. And sincethey included many illustrated volumesin the fine and decorative arts andarchitecture, the Library’s involvementin the visual arts commenced with itsacquisition of that historic collection.

The Copyright Act of 1870 madethe Library the nationalcopyright depository,and because many artistsand publishers protectedprints (and later photo-graphs) by copyright,this new functionbrought ever-increasingnumbers of prints andphotographs into its col-lections. Indeed, theinflux of earlier copy-right deposits, trans-ferred from the Depart-ments of State and Inte-rior and the FederalCourts, so overwhelmedthe Library’s rooms inthe Capitol that theLibrarian was able topersuade Congress thatit needed a new build-ing. (Not surprisingly,however, over the

tions, and the Library’s gallery hadbecome known as one of Washington’smajor cultural resources.

As the bulk of the Library’s works ofart on paper received before the Divi-sion of Prints was established werecopyright deposits, most were of Ameri-can origin. However, the acquisition in1898 of the Gardiner Greene HubbardCollection not only added works bySchongauer, Dürer, Rembrandt, Lor-rain, Hogarth, Reynolds, Turner, andmany other European artists, but alsoprints by important American artistsfrom Paul Revere onwards. It also pro-vided a fund to support future printacquisitions.

Shortly after the arrival of the Hub-bard bequest, the Librarian of Congress,John Russell Young, (1897-1899)decided that the expansion of the divi-sion’s responsibilities and scope of itsholdings warranted the appointment ofan administrator with a background inthe visual arts, and Arthur Jeffrey Par-sons was chosen to fill that post.During his tenure, from 1899 to 1911,

Joseph Morse, Five Celebrated Clowns Attached to Sands, Nathan Company’s Circus, 1856, color woodcut,printed by Morse, M’Kenney & Company.

A remarkable early American circus poster and copyright deposit.

The Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress: Some Historical Background


the collection grew to 340,000 works,including important architectural draw-ings and prints, and prints and draw-ings by Asian and Russian artists.

Each successive Chief of the Divisionof Prints expanded the collection intonew areas. Richard A. Rice (1911-1925) added Civil War drawings byimportant artist-journalists, includingWinslow Homer and A. J. Waud;posters from the Art Nouveau periodand World War I; a notable collection(once at Windsor Castle) of 18th-cen-tury British political and social satiricprints; and the Joseph Pennell Collec-tion of prints and drawings by his com-patriot and friend James A. McNeillWhistler, along with manuscripts relat-ing to the artist and his career.

Although Pennell, a much-laudedartist in his own right, had consideredplacing his own prints and drawings inNew York or in his native Philadelphia,he was so struck by the Division ofPrints’ active exhibition and acquisitionprograms that he decided to bequeathto the Library his own work (as well ashis wife’s important collection of bookson cookery, now in the Rare Books andSpecial Collections Division). The Pen-nells also left a substantial fund to sup-port the continuing acquisition ofprints by contemporary artists.

When Leicester B. Holland (1929-1943) became Chief, the name of thedivision was changed to Division ofFine Arts, to reflect the growing breadthof its holdings. Holland added largecollections of original drawings andpaintings by American illustrators, andcontinued building the collection ofworks by contemporary printmakers,now European as well as American. In1943, he inaugurated the Library’s firstNational Exhibition of Prints, a juriedshow held annually until 1977. Theseexhibitions at once introduced thepublic to the prints of a wide array ofinternational as well as American con-temporary artists and served as a newsource for the acquisition of contempo-rary prints through the Pennell Fund.After Dr. Holland’s resignation in 1943,

the post of Chief remained open untilafter the end of World War II.

In 1944, Librarian of CongressArchibald MacLeish (1939-1944)brought to the Library the landmarkFarm Security Administration-Office ofWar Information Collection of morethan 250,000 documentary photo-graphs covering America from the GreatDepression to World War II, as well asits cataloguer, Paul Vanderbilt. In recog-nition of the now extensive photo-graphic holdings, the division was givenits current name, the Prints & Photo-graphs Division, and in 1947 Vander-bilt was appointed its Chief.

Edgar Breitenbach followed Vander-bilt as Chief in 1956; when he retired,in 1973, I was appointed to that post.There have been several administratorsof P &P since my time—the longestserving was Stephen E. Ostrow (1984-1996), who greatly expanded the cata-loging of the collections and began thedigitization of images to enhance bothin-house and public access to them.The current Chief is Helena Zinkham,who was appointed in 2010.

As is evident from this account,every director of this division broad-ened the scope as well increased thenumber of works in its collections.Today, thanks to them, their staffs, anda growing roster of generous donors,both large and small, its many collec-tions together comprise more than 15million images. Among them are a sub-stantial number of great treasures. Ihave been pleased to see recent exhibi-tions and research projects on theremarkable collections of chiaroscurowoodcuts from the Pembroke Album,18th- and 19th-century Japanese wood-cuts and albums, and original cartoonsand caricatures by both American andforeign artists. One of my favoriteposters among the thousands in theDivision is the enormous woodcut, FiveCelebrated Clowns, a precursor of theenergetic posters of Chéret and Lautrec.Nor have I ever forgotten an excep-tional album of drawings by the Britishartist and engraver James Pollard, who

was famed for the hunting and coach-ing scenes he produced during the firsthalf of the 19th century. And I takespecial pride in the acquisition duringmy time of the daguerreotypes by JohnPlumbe, Jr., which are among the earli-est photographic depictions of the U. S.Capitol, the White House, and thePatent Office Building.

Lastly, it is worth noting that theLibrary of Congress has been collectingworks of art on paper for almost 200years—ever since its acquisition of Jef-ferson’s library—and since 1897 it hasbeen increasingly making them avail-able to the public. Other world-renowned libraries that were establishedfor the public, like the New York PublicLibrary (1895), or became public insti-tutions centuries after they had beenfounded, such as the BibliothèqueNationale in Paris (1792), the Biblio-thèque Royale in Brussels (1837), andthe Albertina in Vienna (1920), alsofocused strongly on collecting prints,drawings, and photographs throughouttheir histories—often well before muse-ums entered the field. Today, art muse-ums may claim most of the attention inthe public mind, but anyone wishing tosee some of the most rare and histori-cally significant works of art on paperto be found in the United States mustnot omit a visit to the Library of Con-gress.

ALAN FERN

Alan Fern came to the Library of Congressin 1961 after teaching at the University ofChicago, where he received his BA, MA,and PhD in the history of art. Starting asAssistant Curator of Fine Prints, hebecame Curator, Assistant Chief, andChief of the Prints & Photographs Divi-sion, and then served as the Library’sDirector for Special Collections. In 1982he was appointed Director of the NationalPortrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution,where he remained until his retirement in2000. He has been an advisor to TheWashington Print Club since its inception.

Winter 2011-2012 5

satt, Joseph Pennell, Käthe Kollwitz,Helen Hyde, John Sloan, George Bel-lows, John Taylor Arms, and ReginaldMarsh.

A number of hallmark collections inP&P were assembled by noted collec-tors. They include the Gardiner GreeneHubbard Collection of 15th to 19thcentury European and American prints,

the Ben and Beatrice Goldstein Collec-tion of American Social Realist printsand drawings, the Charles R. Dean Col-lection of American Abstract Expres-sionist prints, and many others. We arealso fortunate to preserve the core col-lection of prints from American artistRobert Blackburn’s legendary Printmak-ing Workshop in New York. Acquired

LIKE literature, poetry, and music,visual artworks operate in power-ful ways as primary documents

that reflect culture and history. Theycarry with them countless strands ofresearch DNA, including the historiesof their creators and audiences; theideas, technologies, and styles of theirtime and place; and trajectories of influ-ence between artists. The Library’sPrints & Photographs Division cur-rently preserves some 15 million prints,drawings, and photographs, which areregularly mined by scholars in manyfields as well as artists, collectors, stu-dents, teachers, the general public, andour own staff specialists. For me and formany of the researchers I meet, one ofthe most exhilarating features of work-ing with these visual collections is thatthere are so many opportunities tostudy them in tandem with primarymaterials housed in other divisions ofthe Library. This article introducessome highlights of P&P’s fine print andposter collections1 and provides a fewexamples of the rich interconnectionsresearchers can discover when exploringthe Library’s multi-format, multi-disci-plinary collections.

Fine Prints and Posters in P&PPrints. Today, P&P houses about100,000 fine prints, dating from the15th century forward, by both cele-brated artists and lesser-known print-makers meriting further study.2 OurEuropean Old Master prints includesubstantial Dürer and Rembrandt hold-ings and an important collection of Ital-ian Renaissance chiaroscuro woodcuts.3

P&P’s collections are particularly strongin works by American and Europeanartists active from the time of FrenchImpressionism in the late 19th centuryto the 1946-1964 post-World War IIbaby boom period. Most major print-makers active during that period arerepresented, with particularly largebodies of prints by such leading figuresas James McNeill Whistler, Mary Cas-

Not Just Pretty Pictures: Fine Prints, Posters, and InterdisciplinaryResearch at the Library of Congress

Rembrandt van Rijn, St. Jerome beside a Pollard Willow, 1648, etching and drypoint.

Rembrandt’s plein air view depicts St. Jerome as a scholar at work while surrounded by hisattributes, including the lion reputed to have been his constant companion after he removeda thorn from the animal’s paw.

Not Just Pretty Pictures: Fine Prints, Posters, and Interdisciplinary Research at the Library of Congress


from the artist directly, the collectionincludes his own artwork and prints byan international roster of artists active inthat workshop from the 1940s to theearly 2000s. We also have exceptionalholdings of 18th-century to contempo-rary Japanese prints and Latin-Americanand American Latino prints from the19th century to the present, with pri-mary strengths in Mexican and Chicanoprintmaking. The latter includes largeholdings of social and political protest

prints and posters by José GuadalupePosada, Taller de Gráfica Popular artists,and a number of artists represented inthe Library’s recently acquired La RazaGraphics/ Mission Gráfica collection,and many printmakers in the lattergroup count Posada among their influ-ences. Moreover, both Mexican andJapanese printmaking traditions had awidespread influence on U.S. (as well asFrench and British) printmakers. Forexample, after Japan was opened to the

West in the 1850s-1860s, traditionalJapanese printmaking and decorativearts were avidly collected and sparkedsuch hybrid Western aesthetic expres-sions as Japonisme.4

Our extensive and growing holdingsof contemporary artist prints representanother special facet of the Library’scollection. As Alan Fern discusses in hisarticle, American artist Joseph Pennell’sbequest to the Library5 included sup-port for an ongoing acquisitions com-mittee, one that includes printmakers.Since the late 1930s, the Pennell Com-mittee has steadily, selectively acquiredprints, guided by Pennell’s mandate topursue: “…original prints by modernartists of any nationality living or whohave produced work within the last onehundred years…of the greatest excel-lence only.” Artist members of the Pen-nell Committee have included suchluminaries as John Taylor Arms, GaborPeterdi, Yvonne Jacquette, MichaelMazur, and, currently, Jane Hammondand Judy Pfaff.6 Recent P&P acquisi-tions, including works recommendedby the Pennell Committee, feature anumber of narrative or issue-drivencontemporary prints by such artists asEric Avery, Ambreen Butt, ElizabethCatlett, Enrique Chagoya, Art Hazel-wood, Ester Hernandez, Hung Liu, andKerry James Marshall (to name a few),whose works address a wide range oftopics, such as war and peace, healthand the environment, cultural identi-ties, civil rights, and women’s history.

Posters. Our poster collection of some100,000 works ranges from large-scale1840s woodblocks to recent “born digi-tal” works.7 We hold fine art posters bysuch early masters as Jules Chéret,Théophile Steinlen, Alphonse Mucha,Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, EdwardPenfield, Pierre Bonnard, Will H.Bradley, and Aubrey Beardsley (manyalso known for their fine prints). Warposters, including substantial holdingsrelated to both world wars from theU.S., Britain, France, Germany, Italy,and Russia, are another strength.

Ester Hernandez, Sun Mad, 1982, screenprint.

One of the most influential artists of the Chicano art movement, Ester Hernandez made Sun Mad after discovering that pesticides had contaminated the water table in her hometownbarrio in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Reproduced courtesy of the artist.


Winter 2011-2012 7

Among them is James MontgomeryFlagg’s I Want You for U.S. Army, withhis iconic Uncle Sam, thought to havebeen modeled after the artist’s own like-ness. Other strengths include political

propaganda posters from the U.S. andbeyond; advertising and promotionalposters for a dizzying array of productsand events; rock concert posters fromCalifornia’s 1960s psychedelic move-

ment; and posters for the performingarts, from circuses and theaters to magicshows and movies. Recent acquisitionsof American posters include 1930sNational Park Service screenprintposters, such as a stunning opalescentdepiction of the Grand Canyon; DavidKlein’s 1956 modern design classic FlyTWA New York; Guerilla Girls 1989-1990 posters lambasting discriminationagainst women in the art world; andcontemporary political posters for the2008 Art of Democracy project.8

Visual Art as a Primary ResearchSource in P&P and in Tandemwith Primary Materialsthroughout the Library More often than not, P&P’s holdings ofworks of art on paper can be studied inconjunction with related, multi-formatmaterials in other Library collections.Cross-division research of primarymaterials in the Library is of potentialvalue to many different kinds ofresearchers. For example, art historians,cultural historians, musicologists, spe-cialists in literature, and other kinds ofexperts (including collectors and artists)can explore mid-20th-century AbstractExpressionist prints and experimentaljazz and poetry—all are well repre-sented in major Library collections.Photography historians, textile special-ists, folklorists, artists, and others canstudy P&P’s photos of the famous Gee’sBend, Alabama, quilters taken by FarmSecurity Administration photographerArthur Rothstein in the 1930s and bycontemporary documentary photogra-pher Carol Highsmith in 2010, intandem with our exquisite 21st-centurysoftground etchings by Gee’s Bend quil-ters, such as Loretta Pettway’s RememberMe (2006-2007) and Mary Lee Ben-dolph’s Mama’s Song (2005). Theaterand film historians and devotees canexamine in P&P’s collections the origi-nal 1951 movie poster for A StreetcarNamed Desire and photographs anddrawings of the actors in character (thisfilm was selected for inclusion in theLibrary of Congress National Film Reg-

Louis Rhead, The Quartier Latin, A Magazine Devoted to the Arts, Paris: Chaix, Imp., 1890-1900, color lithograph poster.

A leading turn-of-the-century poster artist, Rhead created poster designs for Century Maga-zine, Harpers Magazine, Scribners, Lady’s Home Journal, and other journals of the day. Inhis article, “The Moral Aspect of the Artistic Poster” for the June 1895 issue of The Book-man, Rhead proposed that “…the moral aspect of the artistic poster, then, is that it may be,if done well, an important factor in the community, and it is best to begin aright, with highideals and aims, to educate, ennoble, and make men and women think of life not as a sillydream, but as earnest and sublime.”



istry in 1999). They can also read, inthe Manuscript Division, the originalcorrespondence between Jessica Tandyand Marlon Brando, who originated thelead roles in the Broadway productionof Tennessee Williams’s play. Opportu-nities like these to study inter-relatedprimary documents, be they textual,visual, aural, or otherwise, can leadresearchers in various fields to uncoverunexplored (or underexplored) relation-ships that potentially expand theirunderstanding of their subject.

New Deal Art and Related Collec-tions. New Deal art and documenta-tion projects of the 1930s and 1940srepresent a Library-wide collectionstrength9 and offer a smorgasbord forresearchers working on this era. The

term itself encompasses multiple gov-ernment-sponsored arts projects,including the Works Progress Adminis-tration, established during FranklinDelano Roosevelt’s presidency to pro-vide jobs for unemployed artists and topromote American art and culture.P&P holds one of the largest extant col-lections of WPA posters (over 900), aswell as hundreds of WPA prints by suchnotable artists as Blanche Lazzell, LouisLozowick, Dox Thrash, Raphael Soyer,Richard Floethe, Fritz Eichenberg,Richard Correll, and Anthony Velonis.

The Mexican muralist movement ofthe 1920s and 1930s, featuring govern-ment-sponsored art promoting Mexicanculture, was a key inspiration in found-ing the New Deal art projects. Themuralist movement was led by three

widely influential muralist/printmakers,known as Los Tres Grandes, JoséClemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, andDavid Alfaro Siqueiros, whose printscan be studied in P&P along with thoseby the New Deal printmakers.

Moving from printmaking to pho-tography, P&P’s renowned collection ofFarm Security Administration-Office ofWar Information photographs chroni-cles rural and urban America from theGreat Depression to World War IImobilization efforts. Many FSA-OWIimages straddle the line between docu-mentary and art photography and theyoften depict subjects similar to those ofNew Deal printmakers, many of whomwere also interested in portraying theeveryday life and work of ordinaryAmericans. This was a dominant sub-

James Latimer Allen, Students Working on Art Projects, Soap Models in Foreground, Harlem Art Workshop–Georgette Seabrooke Powell, JacobLawrence, and Others, 1933, gelatin silver photograph.


Winter 2011-2012 9

ject in much American art of the time;for example, in Regionalist and SocialRealist prints, which P&P also holds inabundance. Furthermore, many NewDeal printmakers participated in theAbstract Expressionist movement of the1940s-1960s, which famously turnedinternational attention to American artfor the first time. In fact, our collec-tions include many examples of repre-sentational and abstract prints by thesame artists that merit further explo-ration.

Another collection that is ripe forcross-division research of primary mate-rials is The Historic American BuildingsSurvey, a National Park Service projectfor out-of-work architects established inDecember 1933 to document “Amer-ica’s antique buildings.” This collectionincludes photographs, architecturaldrawings, and written histories of suchdiverse examples of America’s builtenvironment as the Acoma Pueblo inNew Mexico; a one-room schoolhousein Wyoming; and Chicago’s RobieHouse, designed by Frank LloydWright. Today, this collection and stillongoing survey of historic Americanbuildings is part of our exceptionalArchitecture, Design, and Engineeringcollections.10

As previously noted, New Deal pri-mary materials abound throughout theLibrary. For example, the ManuscriptDivision contains the records of theWPA Federal Writers’ Project. And inthe Music Division/Performing ArtsReading Room, researchers can accessthe WPA Federal Theatre Project andWPA Federal Music Project collections,which include a wide variety of visualworks, such as costume and set designs,photographs, playbills, and posters, aswell as radio and play scripts, and otherproduction materials. Consideredtogether, the wide array of New Dealcollections at the Library provides particularly rich avenues of inquiry forresearching different aspects of federalart and documentation projects fromthat seminal period in American history.

Researching a Notable WPA Artist’sEarly Work at the Harlem Art Work-shop (1933-1937). P&P’s HarmonFoundation11 archive presents yetanother entryway for researching pri-mary materials on New Deal art. Estab-lished in New York City by real estate

magnate and philanthropist William E.Harmon (1862-1928) in 1922, theFoundation was an active promoter ofAfrican-American artists during andafter the Harlem Renaissance. In the1920s-1930s, it sponsored visual artsawards and traveling juried exhibitions

Katherine L. Blood, Georgette Seabrooke Powell Looking at her “Tropical Scene” linocut inthe Prints and Photographs Division Reading Room, Library of Congress, 2007, digital pho-tograph. We thank Ms. Phyllis Washington for kindly granting permission to reproduce thisimage of her mother.



to bring national attention to theachievements of African-Americanartists at a time when such opportuni-ties were rare. A true research gem,given to the Library by the Foundationwhen it closed its doors in 1967, theHarmon Collection contains over 120rare prints, drawings, and photographsby such notable artists as photographerJames Latimer Allen and printmakersRobert Blackburn, Allan Rohan Crite,David Driskell, William H. Johnson,Georgette Seabrooke Powell, JamesLesesne Wells, and Hale Woodruff, as

well as some 37,800 manuscript items.In 2007, my colleagues and I were

honored by a visit from the ground-breaking artist Georgette SeabrookPowell (1916-2011), who was theyoungest WPA master artist hired towork on the prestigious Harlem Hospi-tal Center mural project, which wascommissioned in 1936.12 The artistcame to P&P to see works that she hadproduced as a student at the HarlemArt Workshop,13 which was adminis-tered by the Harmon Foundation andHarlem Adult Education Committee,

with funding initially from theCarnegie Foundation and thenthe WPA. Ms. Powell lookedat our impressions of three ofher black-and-white linocuts,Tropical Scene, Young Motherand Child, and Tropical Moon.All were made around 1933,the year the HAW began itslife at the 135th Street branchof the New York PublicLibrary, where its SchomburgCenter for Research on BlackCulture is now located. Shealso carefully examined a 1933photograph by James LatimerAllen of a group of youngartists working in the HAWstudio. Allen’s arresting photo-graph depicts students andteachers busily making paint-ings, drawings, and maskswith an arrangement of smallsoap sculptures in the fore-ground. Powell is a captivatingpresence in the image: theonly person in the room to lifther gaze toward the photogra-pher. She was then sixteen orseventeen.

Powell confirmed thatAllen’s photo showed JacobLawrence, also a student atHAW, and an unidentifiedyoung woman helping herwork on a painting. Inspiredby her visit, I took a closerlook at all the related printsand photographs I could find

in the Harmon Collection. This led meto some exciting discoveries. Powell’sTropical Scene linocut depicts twowomen in a lush landscape, one stand-ing and one kneeling while collectingwater from a small pool. I comparedthis with a photograph by Allen of athree-panel, painted wooden screen byPowell. Not only is the screen’s title,Tropical Scenes (as recorded on the pho-tograph and in Harmon Foundationrecords), a variant of the title written atthe bottom of the linocut, the scenesare closely related, though the screen is

James Latimer Allen, Screen, “Tropical Scenes,” by Georgette Seabrooke, Art Workshop, 1933, gelatin silver photograph.


Winter 2011-2012 11

surrounded by a prominent border withAfrican design elements.14 With thosedetails in mind, I looked again at Allen’sHAW studio scene, and realized that hehad photographed Powell when she wasin a very early stage of painting thisscreen. I later discovered that glimpsesof the finished screen, which waspainted in rich colors, can be seen inRenaissance Woman, a 2008 Ron Hurt-ibese video interview of the artist.15

A subsequent search in the Manu-script Division’s Harmon Foundationrecords16 provided considerable contex-tual information about the Harlem ArtWorkshop, for example, the detailedlesson plans of its young director, JamesLesesne Wells (1902-1993), and theworkshop’s supply lists, as well as docu-mentation related to its 1933 studentexhibition, which included Powell’sscreen. I also unearthed a September28, 1933 New York Herald Tribune arti-cle that sheds more light on Powell’swork at HAW. Entitled “Art by Negroes

of Harlem Put on an [sic] Exhibition,”it singles out a charcoal portrait by heras “perhaps the finest single piece ofwork in the exhibition” and describesher ornamental screen: “…done in reds,browns and blacks, depicting two nudeAfrican women posed beside a tropicalspring. Miss Seabrooke drew the designand it was executed by other students inthe class.”17

Also among the Harmon records is amodest-looking typescript. It turnedout to be a draft of an article publishedin the Journal of Adult Education byAlain Locke,18 a Harvard-trainedphilosopher and Howard Universityprofessor who was a leading architect ofthe Harlem Renaissance’s “New NegroMovement.” Locke’s article describesthe collaboration between the HarlemCommittee on Adult Education and theHarmon Foundation in launching “aninteresting experiment in art educa-tion…an art studio workshop under thedirection of Mr. James Lesesne Wells,

one of the most talented and versatile ofthe younger Negro artists.”19 He thendiscusses HAW’s design and philosophy,mentioning cultural diversity in studentgroups and artistic appropriation ofmotifs from African design and directAfrican-American experience. Lockeconcludes this draft by noting thatWells, who had co-founded Howard’sart department, would soon return tohis “regular duties as instructor indesign in the art department of HowardUniversity.”

These related primary materialsincluding visual art, documentaryrecords, and (thanks to a special oppor-tunity) the artist’s personal recollectionshelp to amplify our understanding inways both wide and deep. In this case,we gained insight into the specific jour-ney of a pioneering WPA artist, begin-ning with student works she producedat the Harlem Art Workshop in 1933,its daily activities, training and workingmethods, and guiding aesthetic andeducational philosophy —all influencedby (and affecting) the artistic, cultural,and intellectual forces of the HarlemRenaissance and the New Deal arts pro-grams—a watershed period of time andplace in American cultural history.

ConclusionI have always loved the Library’s mis-sion and share it in tours, talks, andconversations at the slightest provoca-tion. It is no less than to help “…fur-ther the progress of knowledge and cre-ativity for the benefit of the Americanpeople.” An inspiring, if daunting, jobdescription. This 360-degree vision,which began with its 1815 acquisitionof Thomas Jefferson’s multi-disciplinarypersonal library, colors all we do, fromcollection building, research, and publi-cations to public outreach. The result-ing comprehensiveness and accessibilityof our collections is a large part of whatmakes the Library a vibrant, generativeresearch institution. I hope these fewresearch examples demonstrate thepotential of the Library of Congressvisual art collections as primary

Ron Adams, Blackburn, 2002, lithograph. Reproduced with the artist’s kind permission.

This homage from one master printmaker to another imagines Bob Blackburn at the press,pulling a lithograph from its stone matrix. Blackburn first learned lithography as a teenagerat the WPA-sponsored Harlem Community Art Center. The Library of Congress preservesthe most comprehensive collection of his oeuvre as well as a core collection of work from hiscelebrated Printmaking Workshop in New York.



resources in their own right and in thebroader context of related collections.Wonderfully, these collections arepublic and freely available, not only tomembers of Congress, but to anyone,anywhere. All you need to get started isa questing spirit.

KATHERINE L. BLOOD

Library of Congress Curator of FinePrints, Katherine Blood oversees its collec-tion of some 100,000 artist prints. Shehas co-curated such exhibitions as“Sakura: Cherry Blossoms as Living Sym-bols of Friendship” (2012), “On the Cut-ting Edge: Contemporary Japanese Prints”(2007), “Creative Space: Fifty Years ofRobert Blackburn’s Printmaking Work-shop” in collaboration with the New YorkInternational Print Center ( 2003-2004),and “The Floating World of Ukiyo-e” forwhich she also co-authored the exhibitioncatalogue (Abrams, 2001). Other publica-tions include contributions to LimitedEditions: Joseph Holston Prints, 1974-2010, A Retrospective (University ofMaryland David C. Driskell Center,2011), Eyes of the Nation (Bunker Hill,2004; Knopf, 1997), and DavidRoberts: Travels in Egypt and the HolyLand (Pomegranate, 1999). Her degreesinclude a BA from the University ofOklahoma with interdisciplinary studiesin history, art history, literature, lan-guages, and philosophy and an MLS fromCatholic University, where her studiesfocused on visual art collections. Amember of the Print Council of America,Blood previously worked at the Smithson-ian Institution museums of Natural andAmerican History, and the BishopMuseum in Honolulu.

NOTES

1. Most of the fine prints and posters referredto in this article can be found in oursearchable P&P Online Catalog atwww.loc.gov/pictures, where they are oftenaccompanied by digital images.

2. P&P also houses a Master Drawings Col-lection containing about 5,000 originaldrawings, some 4,700 of which are byAmerican artist, illustrator, printmaker,and writer Joseph Pennell. It also containsdrawings by such artists as American

artist/printmakers James McNeill Whistler(1834-1903) and Rockwell Kent (1882-1971); English etcher, cartoonist, andillustrator Charles Samuel Keene (1823-1891); Leonetto Cappiello (1875-1942),the Italian-born French caricaturist andposter designer; and Brazilian painter Cân-dido Portinari (1903-1962), who createdpreparatory drawings for his 1941 muralson the walls of the Library’s HispanicDivision. See www.loc.gov/pictures/collec-tion/drwgma/pennell.html.

3. As of this writing, Library of Congresspaper conservator Linda Morenus is work-ing with LC colleagues and a multi-insti-tutional team of curators, conservators,and artists to investigate Italianchiaroscuro printing inks and methods.

4. There are roughly 1,300 prints and postersin this collection of work from three com-munity workshops in San Francisco, Cali-fornia: Mission Gráfica, La Raza Graphics,and Alliance Graphics. Artists includeEnrique Chagoya, Juan Fuentes, RupertGarcia, Ester Hernandez, Calixto Robles,and Jos Sances, and many others.

5. The Pennell bequest included numerousexamples of his World War I posters,drawings, prints, printing plates, and per-sonal papers, plus an extensive collectionof James McNeill Whistler manuscripts,prints, drawings, and ephemera, assembledby Pennell and his wife, Elizabeth RobinsPennell, who were close friends ofWhistler.

6. The Committee currently meets every twoto three years to consider potential newacquisitions.

7. The author is indebted to P&P poster spe-cialists Jan Grenci and Brett Carnell fortheir help in preparing this article, whichalso draws on descriptions in the P&POnline Catalog and those published byformer LC poster curator Elena Millie (seeEyes of the Nation, New York: Knopf, 1997and The Poster Collection in the Library ofCongress, Washington DC: Library ofCongress, n.d.).

8. The 2008 Art of Democracy project was anationwide series of coordinated exhibi-tions and events featuring original politicalposters by a number of notable contempo-rary printmakers. For an archive of itsposters and exhibitions, seewww.artofdemocracy.org.

9. For an online guide to New Deal collec-tions throughout the Library, seewww.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/newdeal.

10. The Library’s Architecture, Design, andEngineering Center in P&P was founded

in 2002.11. Harmon Foundation collections are also

held in other local institutions includingthe National Archives and the Smithson-ian. For an excellent source of informationabout the Foundation, see Gary A. Rey -nolds and Beryl Wright, Against the Odds:African-American Artists and the HarmonFoundation, exh. cat., Newark NJ: TheNewark Museum, 1989, which includesessays by David Driskell and others.

12. To learn more about Georgette SeabrookePowell and her work on the Harlem Hos-pital Center murals, seewww.columbia.edu/cu/iraas/wpa/artists/gseabrooke.html.

13. Powell also studied in New York withGwendolyn Bennett at the WPA-spon-sored Harlem Community Art Center andat the Cooper Union School of Art.

14. Another Allen photograph in this collec-tion documents the existence of anotherHAW ornamental screen: Chester Dames’sMetropolitan Skyline. Comparison ofAllen’s photographs of the Dames screenand the HAW studio reveals that thisstudio scene shows a young man, verylikely Dames, painting the same (or a sim-ilar) screen. As with Powell, the collectionincludes a related linocut by Dames, alsotitled Metropolitan Skyline.

15. Renaissance Woman was made in 2008 forthe Daytona Beach News-Journal by RonHurtibese and journalist Kenya Woodard;today, it can be seen at http://blackarti-namerica.com/ video/georgette-seabrooke-powell. During Powell’s visit with us, sherecalled that she had been able to keep thescreen in her personal collection (but onlyafter purchasing it from the HarmonFoundation). This is also briefly men-tioned in her 1992 interview with CamilleBillops, published in Volume XII of Artistand Influence (New York: Hatch-BillopsCollection, Inc., 1993).

16. For a finding aid to this collection, seehttp://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/mss/ead-xmlmss/eadpdfmss/2010/ms010300.pdf.

17. See Harmon Foundation, Inc., Records,Container 119, scrapbook of newspaperclippings, Library of Congress, ManuscriptDivision.

18. Alain Locke, “Negro Art Exhibition,” Journal of Adult Education, January, 1934,86-87.

19. See Harmon Foundation, Inc., Records,Container 2, Art Workshop and StudiesHarlem Adult Education Committee,Library of Congress, Manuscript Division.

Timely and Timeless: Cartoons, Illustrations, and DocumentaryDrawings and Prints at the Library of Congress

Winter 2011-2012 13

Timeliness is a defining feature ofmuch cartoon art, which oftencomments on current events;

however, the messages and artistry theyembody frequently transcend the periodin which they were cre-ated so that they becometimeless reflections on thehuman condition andsociety.1 These popularworks of art on paper,housed in the Prints &Photographs Division,provide researchers inmany fields, as well ascollectors and artists, pic-torial time capsules. Edi-torial cartoons, forinstance, comment oncurrent political issues, asdo satirical prints and car-icatures; documentarydrawings record and distilunfolding events; andillustrations visuallyenhance and expandupon narrative texts andreflect the concerns andtastes of their day. Pro-duced primarily for broad dissemina-tion in newspapers, periodicals, andbooks (usually in print but increasinglyin electronic formats), these works areshaped by deadlines of varying degreesof urgency as well as by their artists’purposes, messages, and aesthetic con-cerns. Nevertheless, significant numbersof illustration and documentary draw-ings also share the apparently contradic-tory qualities of timeliness and timeless-ness. The text that follows describes theLibrary’s core collections of popularworks of art on paper and briefly dis-cusses examples in terms of the timesthat gave rise to them and the purposesfor which they were created.

P&P Cartoon Collections.2

P&P has been acquiring original car-toon art for over 140 years and cur-rently holds more than 128,000 draw-

ings and prints in this genre. Theselarge holdings encompass diverse sub-genres: political cartoons, caricatures,comic-strip and comic-book drawings,gag and other single-panel cartoons,

and animation drawings. Most numberin the thousands.

Political and social satire is a majorstrength. Our unrivalled holdings of19th-century American political andsocial satirical prints grew from thecopyright deposits mandated by the1870 copyright law, but they werequickly augmented by the acquisitionof works dated as early as the 1830s.Since timeliness is the driving forceunderlying most political cartoons,these 19th-century American printsprovide invaluable information aboutpopular perceptions of social and politi-cal issues of the day, chronicle nationalleaders’ standings with the populace,and demonstrate the evolving use ofallegory and social and political symbolsto shape or express public opinion.

The 20th century is even more richlyrepresented through collections of the

work of individual cartoonists and spe-cial collections assembled by generousdonors. Our largest archive is the Her-bert L. (Herblock) Block Collection,which includes more than 14,000 origi-

nal editorial cartoondrawings donated by theHerblock Foundation in2002. Most were pub-lished during the cartoon-ist’s long, illustrioustenure at The WashingtonPost, from 1946 to 2001(born in 1909, Block diedin 2001). When com-bined with an estimated46,000 of his roughsketches, this collectionaccounts for almost halfof our cartoon drawings.(In addition, Herblockpapers are available forresearch in the Library’sManuscripts Division.)

Block’s 1965 Jericho,U.S.A.,3 is a searing com-mentary on what wouldbecome a turning point inthe African-American

struggle for civil rights. This drawingwas published in The Washington Poston March 21, 1965, the day that morethan more than 1,000 people began yetanother peaceful march (the first washeld March 7) from Selma to Mont-gomery, Alabama, to protest the denialof their right to vote; the date becameknown as “Bloody Sunday.” By depict-ing a multitude of tiny figures begin-ning to circle a massively walled city,Herblock boldly likens the civil rightsmarches against the exclusionary wallsof public segregation to the Biblicalaccount of the miraculous fall of thewalled city of Jericho after the exiledIsraelites marched around it for sevendays. His inspired and superbly drawnvisual metaphor and evocative title tran-scend the historically specific event andinvite the viewer to consider Americanracial political struggles of the 1960s as

Joseph E. Baker, Columbia Demands her Children, 1864, lithograph on wovepaper, Cartoon Prints, American.

Baker decries the enormous human toll of the Civil War in this impassioned critique of the President’s war policy.

Timely and Timeless: Cartoons, Illustrations, and Documentary Drawings and Prints at the Library of Congress


a contemporary reflection of the age-old, timeless struggle of the oppressedto exact justice from the powerful. Oneof the most influential and accom-plished American political cartoonists ofthe 20th century, Herblock frequentlyaddressed fundamental issues of civiland human rights in his cartoons andthey continue to resonate.

Like his predecessors, peers, and car-toonists today, Herblock drew inspira-

tion from the rich cultural heritage ofissue-driven, popular art. P&P holdsfine impressions of iconic prints bysuch masters as Francisco Goya,Honoré Daumier, and Thomas Nast inour Fine Print collections and our“Case Book” collection includesHarper’s Weekly and other periodicalsfamed for their cartoons. In addition,our prized collection of nearly 10,000British cartoon prints,4 purchased from

the Windsor Castle Library in 1921,includes many beautiful, hand-coloredexamples by such well-known caricatur-ists as James Gillray and George Cruik-shank.

Two other key P&P collections, theCartoon Drawings Filing Series of morethan 9,000 drawings by some 700artists5 and the large Art Wood Collec-tion of Cartoon and Caricature of36,600 drawings (and a few prints)contain exemplary works by suchnotable 19th- and 20th-century Ameri-can political cartoonists as Homer Dav-enport, John T. McCutcheon, Jay N.“Ding” Darling, Ollie Harrington, BillMauldin, Bill Conrad, Garry Trudeau,and master caricaturists Miguel Covar-rubias and David Levine.6 In addition,the important Ben and Beatrice Gold-stein Foundation Collection and SamWillner Collection of American RealistArt include hundreds of works bynotable political cartoonists of the early20th century.

P&P has also acquired spectacularcollections of more recent 20th-centuryworks of social and political commen-tary from cartoonists as gifts or combi-nations of gift and purchase. To ourgreat pleasure, Library of Congress soloexhibitions of eminent contemporaryartists working in this genre led todonations from several artists, including1,000-plus works by Jules Feiffer, 100-plus by Pat Oliphant, and 150-plus byAnn Telnaes. In addition, both the ArtWood Collection and the CartoonDrawing Series have outstanding hold-ings of comic strip, single-panel humorcartoons, and caricature drawings. AndThe New Yorker Cartoon Drawings Col-lection of some 4,000 drawings is a pre-dictably rich repository of stunning gagcartoons and cover art by a wide arrayof well-known cartoonists.

Formed by New York advertisingexecutive Erwin Swann, the landmarkCaroline and Erwin Swann Collectionof Caricature and Cartoon came to theLibrary in 1974 and 1977, and contains2,085 drawings, prints, and paintingsproduced between 1780 and 1977.7 It

Herb Block, Jericho, U.S.A, 1965, ink, graphite, and opaque white over graphite underdraw-ing on layered paper. Herbert L. Block (Herblock) Collection.


Winter 2011-2012 15

includes exemplary comic strips, peri-odical illustrations, and editorial car-toons drawn by American artistsbetween 1890 and 1970; moreover, itsnumerous works by British, European,and Latin-American artists broughtgreater diversity to the Library’s cover-age of pictorial satire. Among the lumi-naries represented in this collection areR. F. Outcault, Winsor McCay, GeorgeHerriman, George McManus, JohnHeld, Jr., Peggy Bacon, Peter Arno,Dale [Dalia] Messick, Milton Caniff,Edward Sorel, and Claude Suares.

The Caroline and Erwin SwannFoundation for Caricature and Car-toon, also established in 1977, supportsthe Swann Collection, the preservation,processing, and development of carica-ture and cartoon collections at theLibrary, and ongoing exhibitions of car-toon, caricature and illustration art.8 Inaddition, its annual fellowship awardsfor graduate or postgraduate research inthe field of caricatures and cartoons9

(few of which are otherwise available)are intended to foster new findings andperspectives in the field, as well asincrease awareness and documentationof the Library’s collections.

Similarly, the 2002 Herb BlockFoundation gift of Herblock’s drawingsand papers to the Library was accompa-nied by funding for the conservation,processing, and exhibitions ofHerblock’s cartoons.10 Last, but notleast, thanks to support from bothfoundations, the Library’s new GraphicArts Galleries opened in the JeffersonBuilding in 2011. Together, they com-prise the Swann Gallery and theHerblock Gallery, two entry spaces withcartoons on view at all times, that openinto its third, larger gallery for changingexhibitions, which focus primarily oncartoon and illustration art.

P&P American IllustrationDrawings and PrintsThe Cabinet of American Illustration,11

the heart of our illustration art, con-tains 4,000 drawings and some printsthat illustrate literary classics and late

19th-century and early 20th-centurypopular fiction and non-fiction andwere published in periodicals andbooks. The collection features magnifi-cent works by many master illustratorsof the Golden Age of American Illustra-tion (1880-1930) and their immediatepredecessors, such as Daniel ChesterBeard, Edwin Austin Abbey, AliceBarber Stephens, Jessie Willcox Smith,Charles Dana Gibson, William Glack-ens, Elizabeth Shippen Green, andMary Hallock Foote. Formed in the1930s largely through the dedicated ini-tiative of William Patten, the art direc-tor of Harper’s Magazine during the1880s and 1890s, the Cabinet containssome of our most fragile works, manyof which can fortunately be seen inP&P’s online catalog. As a complementto this treasured collection, acquisitionsin recent decades include work by moremodern and contemporary illustrators,such as Lynd Ward, Bernarda BrysonShahn, and Jerry Pinkney.

As suggested above, strong represen-tation of several prominent womenillustrators distinguishes the Cabinet’s

excellent overall coverage of GoldenAge illustration. To give only one exam-ple, the collection contains 140 draw-ings by Elizabeth Shippen Green (1871-1934), a leading illustrator and worthyrival of her male peers. Her entrancing1909 drawing, Halley’s Comet at Dawn,12

embodies qualities that both typify anddeviate from many artists’ works in thecollection. Most of Green’s drawingsillustrate narrative fiction published inHarper’s Weekly; hence, her imaginativedepiction of this actual event is atypicalof her own work. This fine example,nonetheless, indicates the wide range ofsubjects and the exceptional artistry ofmany drawings in this collection. Whilemany illustrators depicted the cometafter the fact (Halley’s Comet appearedon April 21, 1910). Green executed herdrawing in 1909 at the height of antici-pation of its arrival (nevertheless herdepiction was not published in Harper’sWeekly until May 21, 1910). In theupper left of her drawing, Green hascaptured the event by envisioning thecomet’s passing sweep. This provides astrong contrast with the stillness of theearly morning sky, with the fixed formsof the Morning Star and crescent moonon the lower right, and even the darksilhouette of the earthbound trees,which anchors this celestial scene. Inher poetic rendering of a major scien-tific phenomenon, Green has appealedto her viewers’ imaginations and thushas transcended the traditional, purelytimely context of illustration art.

P&P American DocumentaryDrawings and Prints The drive to produce visually accuraterecords of people, places, and historicalevents to meet public demand fortimely information (but also to preservethem for posterity) underlies our sub-stantial holdings of documentary draw-ings and prints. Until the advent ofphotography, documentary drawingsdid—and still do—provide visualrecords of two age-old subjects: war andcourtroom proceedings.

P&P’s collection of more than

Elizabeth Shippen Green, Halley’s Comet atDawn, 1909, charcoal drawing, Cabinet ofAmerican Illustration.



100,000 19th-century American docu-mentary prints features views of Ameri-can cities, historic buildings, significantlandmarks, and geographical wonders;battles and portraits of the famous andinfamous; and advertisements of prod-ucts for the rising middle class by suchprominent, and still well-known, pub-lishers as Currier & Ives and Prang.

Although far less numerous than theprints, our 7,000-plus documentarydrawings by more than 150 artists on asurprising number of subjects range indate from 1750 to 2008. Key artistsinclude John Rubens Smith, whosedrawings recorded the early industrial-ization of the American East Coast andthe re-building of the U.S. Capitol,drawings by the Academic painterKenyon Cox and the Romantic painter

and illustrator Elihu Vedder (both ofwhom also painted murals in theLibrary’s Jefferson Building); Civil Warsketch artists Edwin Forbes and AlfredWaud; and courtroom artists HowardBrodie and David Rose. Of specialnote, a recent purchase and gift of4,000-plus courtroom drawings byMarilyn Church13 brought our court-room art up to date.

Considered by many as the mostaccomplished of the Civil War newspa-per sketch artists, British-born Waud isreputed to have been present at everybattle of the Army of the Potomacbetween the First Battle of Bull Run in1861 and the Siege of Petersburg in1865. The more than 1,200 sketches hecreated for Harper’s Weekly constitute aremarkably comprehensive and candid

view of life within and around theUnion forces that exemplifies the his-torical and aesthetic riches of the docu-mentary drawings under our care. Likehis meticulously observed scenes ofCivil War battles and troop movements,Waud’s 1866 African American soldiersmustered out at Little Rock, Arkansas14

not only meets, but surpasses, the essen-tial requirements of documentary draw-ing. It records specific actions occurringat a specific time and place, renderedwith exceptionally fine draftsmanship,attention to composition, detail, andatmosphere—all qualities for which hewas justifiably acclaimed. A large build-ing in the center of the background anda partial view of a small one on theright stabilize the dynamic scene filledwith men, women, and children caught

Alfred R. Waud, African American Soldiers mustered out at Little Rock, Arkansas, 1866, pencil and Chinese white on green paper. MorganCollection of Civil War Drawings.


Winter 2011-2012 17

in excited anticipation at the soldiers’release from combat. Dominating thefigures greeting one another, a couplejoyfully embraces in the foreground.The young girl near the pair, probablytheir daughter, reaches toward them, asan exhausted soldier and young boy onthe right walk toward her. Thus, likeHerblock’s Jericho, U.S.A, 1965, Waud’s1866 depiction of the mustering out ofa specific troop of African-Americansoldiers in a specific place duringanother pivotal era of American historyalso speaks to the timeless impact ofwar on human relationships, families,and the soldiers themselves.

MARTHA H. KENNEDY

As a Curator of Popular & AppliedGraphic Art at the Library of Congress,Martha Kennedy has published articles oressays in American Art, The Interna-tional Journal of Comic Art, CartoonAmerica: Comic Art in the Library ofCongress (2006) and Humor’s Edge:Cartoons by Ann Telnaes (2004). Inaddition to responsibility for promotingand monitoring the Swann FoundationFellowship in Caricature and Cartoonprogram, she has curated or co-curated

eight cartoon and illustration art exhibi-tions at the Library. Her current show,“Timely and Timeless: New Comic ArtAcquisitions,” runs from September 15,2011 through March 10, 2012. Kennedyholds an MA in the History of Art and anMLS from the University of California,Berkeley.

NOTES1. For an online version of the exhibition

“Timely and Timeless: New Comic ArtAcquisitions,” see: http://myloc.gov/exhibitions/timeless/Pages/default.aspx.

2. For a detailed overview of the Library’scartoon resources, see Harry Katz & SaraDuke, “Cartoon-Related Research at theLibrary of Congress,” Inks: Cartoon andComic Art Studies, vol. 1, no. 3 (1993),30-36. An updated version is available at:www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/cartoon_research.html. Examples of specific car-toonists’ works can be accessed online bysearching the artist’s name in the P & POnline Catalog at www.loc.gov/pictures.

3. See www.loc.gov/pictures/item/00652224.For more information about Herb Blockand the division’s holdings of his work, seewww.loc.gov/pictures/collection/hlb andHaynes Johnson & Harry Katz, Herblock:The Life and Work of the Great PoliticalCartoonist, Washington DC, New York:Herb Block Foundation & Library ofCongress in association with W.W. Nortonand Company, 2009.

4. See www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/cpbr.5. See www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/acd.

An invaluable research tool that bringstogether and makes easily accessible car-toon drawings acquired from manysources, including gifts and purchases ofsingle items as well as several large collec-tions.

6. The acquisition of the Art Wood Collec-tion of Cartoon and Caricature was madepossible in part by a generous contributionby H. Fred Krimendahl II and the gen-erosity of collector and political cartoonistArt Wood himself.

7. See www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/swa. 8. See www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/swann-

exhibits.html.9. See www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/swann-

fellow.html for titles of projects funded;www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/swann-fel-lowslist.html, for a list of Swann Fellow-ships Awards.

10. To date, the Library has mounted fourspecial exhibitions of Herblock cartoondrawings. For online versions, seewww.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/herblock,www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/hbgift,http://myloc.gov/exhibitions/enduringoutrage/pages/default.aspx, andhttp://myloc.gov/exhibitions/herblock/pages/default.aspx.

11. See www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/cai.12. See www.loc.gov/pictures/item/

2010716345. The drawing was publishedin Harper’s Weekly, vol. 10, no. 490 (1866May 19), 308. See also www.loc.gov/pic-tures/item/2009630216.

13. For examples, see www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=marilyn%20church.

14. See www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004660198.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE QUARTERLY ARE WELCOMED

Contributions to the Quarterly—essays, exhibition or book reviews, information of interest to lovers of works of arton paper—are welcome. The deadline for submissions to the Spring 2012 issue is March 1; Summer 2012 issue,June 1; Fall 2012 issue, September 1, and Winter 2012-2013 issue is December 1. Material to be considered shouldbe sent to Muffie Houstoun, [email protected] or 739 10th Street SE, Washington DC, 20003. For more infor-mation, call (202) 544-2128. All material must be in the hands of the editors by those dates.

Documentation & Art: Collecting Photographs at the Library of Congress


Photography, an invention lessthan two hundred years old, hasmade an enormous contribution

to the visual arts. Its dual role as docu-mentation and art has affected how,when, and why the Prints & Photo-graphs Division’s still photographic col-lections were formed. Among the 15million works on paper in P&P, 12.5million are photographs and negatives,while 1.5 million photographic materi-als are held in other divisions of theLibrary. This introduction to P&P’sholdings describes their acquisition his-tory via copyright, government transfer,donation, and purchase and discussesmajor recent gifts from photographersand collectors.

After the Library became the homefor U.S. Copyright Deposit in 1870, itspictorial holdings vastly increased, andphotographs were regularly entering thecollections.1 By 1896, more than73,000 photographs had piled up “inheaps in Library rooms, in unlet [sic]chambers above the Library, in vaults inthe basement.”2 This accumulation ofphotographs hardly constituted what wewould consider a “collection.” But over

time, librarians in the division beganculling photographs by generalized sub-ject and by format and they becamevaluable sources for research, attainingin the aggregate the status of collectionsthemselves. An example of the latter isour Panoramic Photograph Collectionof some 4,000 American cityscapes,landscapes, and group portraits.3

Photography as DocumentationLandmark Federal Government Col-lections. Because the Library predatesthe U.S. National Archives, theNational Gallery of Art, and the Smith-sonian’s art museums, it was for manyyears the only repository to which fed-eral agencies could transfer their photo-graphic holdings once they had outlivedtheir original purpose. Our outstandingcollection of Civil War photographsfrom the War Department4 and theextraordinary landscape photographsfrom the Army Corps of Engineers-sponsored surveys of the West from the1860s to the 1880s are stellar “acquisi-tions,” so to speak, which came to theLibrary via government transfer. Thus,Timothy O’Sullivan’s finest impressions

of the American West in our collectionwere invaluable to the SmithsonianAmerican Art Museum when, in 2010,it mounted the first major retrospectivedevoted to the master in nearly 30years.5

But the best known of P&P’s pho-tography holdings obtained from a gov-ernment source are the negatives andprints in the Farm Security Administra-tion-Office of War Information Collec-tion, which contains some of the mostfamous photographs ever produced.The FSA-OWI photographers, whoincluded Dorothea Lange, WalkerEvans, and Arthur Rothstein, initiallyworked for the Historical Section of theResettlement Administration, whichwas established in 1935 to amelioratethe dire rural poverty in the Americanheartland wreaked by the Great Depres-sion and severe drought, and the taskthey were given was to introduce that“America to Americans.”6 Although theRA became the Department of Agricul-ture’s Farm Security Administration in1937, the mandate of its photographersremained unchanged, and their imageschronicling the effects of those eco-nomic and environmental catastropheson ordinary people7 revolutionized pho-tographic documentation, as theirenduring influence on subsequent pho-tographers shows.

Newspaper and Magazine Collec-tions. The Library’s mandate to docu-ment the development of American lifesince the founding of the United Statesby acquiring visual as well as non-visualrecords continues to guide our acquisi-tion of documentary photographs.George Grantham Bain (1865-1944),who inaugurated the American newssyndicate business and was a news pho-tographer himself, founded the Wash-ington, D.C. picture agency Bain NewsService in 1898. During his lifetime,Bain deposited for copyright the photo-graphs he had commissioned. After hisdeath, P&P purchased his company’sfiles of photographs, including those he

Photographer unknown, Protest against Child Labor in a Labor Parade, New York City,1909, gelatin silver print, George Grantham Bain Collection.


Winter 2011-2012 19

had bought from European sources.The 40,000 photos in the Bain Collec-tion thus provide worldwide documen-tary coverage of sports, theater, celebri-ties, crime, strikes, disasters, and politi-cal activities, including the women’s suf-frage campaign, conventions, andpublic celebrations, primarily from the1910s.8

As other news organizations ceasedto exist or could no longer store thephotographs in their own files, P&Pacquired them as donations. TheNational Photo Company Collection,

which continues our photographic newscoverage into the 1930s, and the Harris& Ewing Collection, which followsthrough the mid-1940s, typify such“news morgues.” Acquired in the samemanner was The Eric and EdithMatson Collection, which consists pri-marily of negatives that were made bythe Photo Department of the AmericanColony, Jerusalem, a commercial photoservice started by the millennial reli-gious community in order to producephotographic images of the MiddleEast.9 Among our largest collections of

news photography, however, are theNew York World-Telegram and the SunNewspaper Photograph Collection of 1million photographs, dating primarilyfrom the 1940s to 1967, and the U.S.News & World Report Magazine Photo-graph Collection from the 1950sthrough the 1980s.10 The latter com-prises about 45,000 contact sheets inblack and white and more than 1 mil-lion negatives. A recent gift of over250,000 photos produced for CapitolHill’s Congressional Quarterly and RollCall in the 1980s and 1990s takes ourpictorial coverage of political eventsthrough the 20th century.

The Look Magazine Photograph Col-lection, spanning the magazine’s exis-tence from March 1937 to October1971, is by far the largest of P&P’snews company holdings. Its owner,Cowles Communications, donated thebulk of its archive of 5 million black-and-white negatives, contact sheets, andcolor transparencies, including pub-lished and unpublished images, whenthe magazine closed. During the 1930s,Look played a historic role in fosteringeditorial photography and photojour-nalism, and was a giant in the then-thriving magazine industry. Many of itsphotographs date from the 1950s and1960s, Look’s most influential decades.11

While the tabloid-style biweekly beganby covering sports, movie stars, andsensational subjects, it later becamemore family-oriented and included arti-cles about society and politics. DavidSeymour (Chim), John Vachon, ArthurRothstein , Charlotte Brooks, MichaelA. (Tony) Vaccaro, Stanley Kubrick,Paul Fusco, James H. Karales, andDouglas Kirkland are among the Lookphotojournalists recognized for theircontributions to the medium.

Acquiring Art Photography,Photographers Archives, andHistorical Collections Photography as Fine Art. Like TheMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston, and theMetropolitan Museum of Art, theLibrary of Congress was one of the first

Timothy O’Sullivan, Ancient Ruins in the Cañon de Chelle, New Mexico in a Niche 50 feetabove Present Cañon Bed, from Geographical Explorations and Surveys West of the 100thMeridian, Expedition under Command of Lieut. Geo. M. Wheeler, 1873, albumen silverprint mounted on original board. Transfer, War Department, 1915.



institutions in the United States to col-lect photography as art. In 1926 wepurchased the work of Clarence H.White (1871-1925), the highly influen-tial American art photographer andeducator, from his widow Jane FelixWhite. This seminal collection inaugu-rated our in-depth collections of pho-tographers who took part in the inter-national Pictorialist movement, whichbegan in 1891 with the first photo-graphic art exhibition in Vienna. Majorgifts and bequests of work by the earli-est wave of American art photogra-phers—in particular, Alfred Stieglitz, F.Holland Day, Gertrude Käsebier,Frances Benjamin Johnston, and JosephKeiley—followed. Their work, exempli-fied here by F. Holland Day’s superla-tive impression, is a major strengthamong P&P’s holdings.

Seven decades later, in 1998, we

were especially fortunate to acquire theWarren and Margot Coville Collectionof the Clarence H. White School ofPhotography.12 Opened in New York in1914, White’s innovative school fos-tered an aesthetic approach to advertis-ing, illustration, and documentary pho-tography. White helped train some ofthe world’s most celebrated 20th-cen-tury photographers, photojournalists,and early cinematographers, includingmany women, Margaret Bourke-White,Dorothea Lange, Laura Gilpin, DorisUlmann, and Margaret Watkins, amongthem. By building both an intellectualand historical bridge from Pictorialismto Modernism, the Coville Collectionperfectly complements our holdings.And in 2004, Kathleen B. White, thewidow of Clarence H. and Jane FelixWhite’s grandson, Maynard PressleyWhite, Jr., launched The White Family

Collection in their memory. This ongo-ing major gift further enriches thedepth of our important holdings inAmerican art photography.

Photographers Archives. P&P’s acqui-sition of photographers archives hasbecome increasingly selective over time:today, acquiring the massive output of aphotographer must be justified not onlyby the quality of execution but also bythe relevance of its subjects to theLibrary’s collections in general.

Significant archives acquired in the1940s included those of SergeiProkudin-Gorskii, whose 1905-1915tour of Russia produced a detailed pic-ture—remarkably, in color—of theEmpire and its people at the end of theCzarist era,13 and Arnold Genthe(1869-1942), who began chroniclinglife in San Francisco’s Chinatown as an

Marion Post Wolcott, Negro Going in Colored Entrance of Movie House on Saturday Afternoon, Belzoni, Mississippi Delta, Mississippi, 1939,modern positive from nitrate negative. Transfer, Office of War Information, 1944.


Winter 2011-2012 21

amateur before the 1906 earthquakeand moved to New York in 1911,where he became a famed portraitist ofsociety figures and the greatest talentsof his day.

Happily, many of the archives wehave been eager to acquire were dona-tions to the Library by the photogra-phers themselves. Key examples areFrances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952), whose output encompassed art,documentary, architectural, and land-scape photography; Theodor Hordy-czak, who photographed architectureand social life in Washington, D.C.from 1920 to 1950; the Gottscho-

Schleisner firm, which recorded NewYork City buildings and interiors from1935 to 1955; and Toni Frissell (1907-1988), who began her outstandingcareer as a fashion and society photog-rapher, became a World War II photo-journalist, and later, a specialist inwomen’s sports.14 More recently, MiltonRogovin (1909-2011) gave the Libraryhis archive of some 29,000 negatives.He also gave us 1,200 photographs thatrepresent the full scope of his work,above all, his internationally acclaimedsocial documentary photographs ofthose whom he called “the forgottenones”—workers and their families in

Buffalo, Appalachia, and mining com-munities across the globe.

Our Carol M. Highsmith Archivecontinues to be assembled. This distin-guished and much-published Washing-ton, D.C. photographer took FrancesBenjamin Johnston as her model andhas already spent 16 years comprehen-sively photographing the contemporaryAmerican scene from the restoration ofthe District’s Willard Hotel to the dev-astating effects of 9/11. Like Johnston,who gave her collection to the Libraryduring her lifetime, Highsmith ismaking her work available copyright-free for downloading from the Printsand Photographs Online Catalog.15

Historical Collections. P&P also con-tinues to fill gaps in its historical collec-tions. In the mid-1990s, we purchaseda portion of the William A. GladstoneCollection of African-American Photo-graphs and the Marion S. Carson Col-lection of Americana,16 then consideredthe most extensive private collection inthat field. The former comprises 350photographs of African-American life,primarily from the Civil War era,including images of Sojourner Truth,fugitive slaves, Buffalo soldiers, planta-tions, and a panoramic view of theopening game of the 1924 ColoredWorld Series. The Carson Collection,whose subject is early Philadelphia andPennsylvania history, contains some10,000 historical prints and drawings,books, pamphlets, and manuscripts—and more than 100 daguerreotypes,ambrotypes, paper negatives, and calo-types by America’s earliest photogra-phers. In 2010 Tom Liljenquist and hissons donated the Liljenquist Collectionof 1,000 ambrotype and tintype por-traits, mostly of Civil War Union andConfederate enlisted soldiers. The Lil-jenquists continue to search for theseunique mid-19th-century photographson glass or iron. As these acquisitionsindicate, the driving force behind manyprivate collections is an intense interestin history, and we have benefitedgreatly from the acumen of such collec-

F. Holland Day, The Novice (or Mater Dolorosa), circa 1898, platinum print on originalmount. The Louise Imogen Guiney Collection, Anonymous Bequest, 1934.



tors, who continue to seek out theseincreasingly rare kinds of photographsfrom dealers, auctions, and the Internet.

P&P Initiatives In recent years, we have acquired pho-tographs and other works of art onpaper that reflect issues affecting thenation in our time, such as AIDS, 9/11,the natural and built environment, andfood and nutrition, through combinedgift purchases. The Minichiello Collec-tion of Environmental Landscape Pho-tography contains a selection of over370 photographs by key American pho-tographers of the 1980s, including JohnPfahl, Emmet Gowin, Frank Gohlke,Joan Myers, and Mark Klett. This gen-erous 2001 donation from Kent andMarcia Minichiello was part of theLibrary’s “Gifts to the Nation” for itsBicentennial in 2000, and it spurredcurators to buy other environmentalwork by such contemporary photogra-phers as Edward Burtynsky17 andRobert Adams.

We curators at the Library continueto analyze our collections by mediumand topic as part of Library-wide strate-gic acquisition planning, acquire signifi-cant new collections, and fill importantgaps in our holdings. As technologyadvances the medium of photography,and the lines between documentary andfine art photography continue to blur,these tasks increasingly require percep-tion and discernment, as well as com-mitment and goodwill, from a widecommunity of creators and collectors.

VERNA POSEVER CURTIS

Verna Posever Curtis has been curator ofphotography since 1989 in the Prints &Photographs Division, where she overseesthe collections of art photography. Beforemoving to Washington, D.C., she wasfounding curator of prints, drawings andphotographs at the Milwaukee ArtMuseum, where she organized numerousexhibitions, catalogues, and checklists on

such topics as the Tauromaquia series ofGoya and Picasso, 19th-century Frenchposters, the Hope and Abraham MelamedCubist Print Collection, Georgia O’Keeffe’s drawings, Chuck Close’s andDavid Hockney’s grids, and photographers,e.g., Eugene Atget, Walker Evans, LewisHine, Nic Nicosia, Irving Penn, andAlexander Rodchenko. Her publicationson photography include Ambassadors ofProgress: American Women Photogra-phers in Paris, 1900-1901, F. HollandDay: Selected Texts and Bibliography,and Photographic Memory: The Albumin the Age of Photography. Curtis is amember of the Print Council of Americaand a Washington Print Club Advisor.

NOTES1. See Alan Fern’s article, p 3. Even before

1865, when the “deposit for use” provisionof the copyright law specifically mentionedphotographs, daguerreotypes were copy-righted through the deposit of engravings,woodcuts, and photographic prints ofthem. See also Verna Posever Curtis,“American Photographs at the Library ofCongress: Highlights and a History” inBicentennial Celebration United StatesPatent and Copyright Laws, Proceedings,Events, Addresses, Washington DC: Foun-dation for a Creative America, 1991, “635-48.

2. David C. Mearns, The Story Up To Now:The Library of Congress 1900-1946, Wash-ington DC: Government Printing Office,1947, 97.

3. Another example, the Stereograph Collec-tion, contains mostly copyright photo-graphs, but includes some gifts. We alsohave Geographical, Foreign Geographical,Biographical, Presidential, and SpecificSubjects “open files” of original photo-graphs and sometimes printed images,culled from copyright deposits as well asother sources that readers can consult inthe P&P Reading Room.

4. In 1920, the United States Army War Col-lege transferred the Mathew Bradydaguerreotypes to the Library; in 1943,the Library purchased his company’s nega-tives and prints. The 1953 gift to theLibrary of glass plate negatives and othermaterials from Brady’s successor studio,which was operated by his nephew Levin-Handy and is known today as the Brady-Handy Collection, rounds out our Bradyholdings.

5. See Toby Jurovics et al. Framing the West:

The Survey Photographs of Timothy H.O’Sullivan, New Haven: Yale UniversityPress in cooperation with the Library ofCongress and the Smithsonian AmericanArt Museum, 2009.

6. It is worth noting here that the OWI col-lection generally records World War IImobilization efforts.

7. See www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa forthe 175,000 FSA black-and-white nega-tives and 1,600 color transparencies nowavailable online; in addition more than100,000 prints can be viewed for researchin the P&P Reading Room. For a bibliog-raphy of the vast number of publicationsabout these documentary photos, seewww.loc.gov/rr/print/resource/030_pub.html.

8. See www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/ggbain.

9. For more information about the AmericanColony, its Photo Department, and theMatsons, see www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/matpc/colony.html. In recentyears, the successor American Colony ofJerusalem, Ltd. gave the Library moreearly photographs and other materials (see http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/americancolony), as did theheirs of John D. Whiting, the first childborn at the American Colony(www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2008676355).

10. See www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/130_nyw.html and http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awpnp6/usnews_coll.html.

11. See www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/lmc.12. In 2008 we purchased a significant por-

tion of the Covilles’ separate collection ofprize-winning news photographs, whichaugmented our outstanding collection ofphotojournalism.

13. The entire Prokudin-Gorskii Collection ofnegatives and album pages and an explana-tion of his pioneering early color processcan be accessed at www.loc.gov/pictures(see its alphabetical list of online P&P collections).

14. This acquisition spawned P&P photogra-phy curator Beverly W. Brannan’s ongoingproject to bring together the work ofwomen photojournalists in our collections(see www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/596_womphotoj.html).

15. See www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/highsm.

16. See Gathering History: The Marian S.Carson Collection of Americana, Washing-ton DC: The Library of Congress, 1999.

17. The Burtynsky acquisitions were exhibitedat the gallery of the Canadian Embassy(see Verna Posever Curtis, Edward Burtyn-sky in the Wake of Progress: Images of theIndustrial Landscape, Washington DC:Canadian Embassy, 2003).

The Persistence of the Image: The Visual Arts in the Rare Book Collections

Winter 2011-2012 23

tine working manuals. The arts wereever-present in his mission—especiallythe visual arts of painting, printmaking,and architecture. “You see I am anenthusiast on the subject of the arts,”Jefferson wrote to Madison while inParis in 1785. “But it is an enthusiasmof which I am not ashamed, as its objectis to improve the taste of my country-men, to increase their reputation, to rec-oncile to them the respect of the world& procure them its praise.” This interestlaunched what would emerge as one ofthe great subject strengths of the Libraryof Congress.

DURING his five years as Minis-ter to France, Thomas Jeffersonset about the serious business of

building his personal library. When hiscollection was eventually sold to theAmerican people in 1815, the titles heobtained at the book stalls along theSeine laid the foundation for the Libraryof Congress. At the time, Jefferson col-lected across a vast range of interests.While politics, law, and history predom-inated as major subjects, Jefferson alsoincluded the domestic sciences, foreignlanguage dictionaries, rhetoric, poetry,music, landscape architecture, and rou-

The study of visual art at the Libraryof Congress extends well beyond thecentral collections devoted to prints andphotographs. The history of printmak-ing and the persistence of the visualimage can also be traced in the Library’srepository for rare books. The RareBook and Special Collections Divisionwas formed in 1944 to serve as thehome for the Library’s rare book hold-ings, which today comprise 800,000books, including over 8,000 15th-cen-tury publications—the largest rare bookcollection in the United States. It ishome to a magnificent collection cover-

The Entrance to Thomas Jefferson’s Library, The Jefferson Building, Library of Congress.

When the British burned the nation’s Capitol in 1814, they destroyed as well the Congressional Library. Thomas Jefferson had offered to sellhis library, the largest personal collection of books in the United States, to Congress as a replacement. Congress purchased Jefferson’s libraryfor $23,950 in 1815. A second fire on Christmas Eve of 1851, destroyed nearly two-thirds of the 6,487 volumes Congress had purchased fromJefferson. To commemorate the Library’s Bicentennial in 2000, a project was launched to reconstruct Jefferson’s 1815 collection as it was soldto Congress. The Jefferson Collection is now on permanent display at the Library.



ing the history of written communica-tion from pre-Columbian glyphs toilluminated medieval manuscripts andfrom the Renaissance and the Reforma-tion through the subsequent longstretch of European and American his-tory. RBSCD was also the fortunaterecipient of one of the most celebratedcollections on the history of the illus-trated book, from the 15th centurythrough the 20th century, the Lessing J.Rosenwald Collection.

The RBSCD Collection is an amal-gam of many collections. For example,it includes perhaps Congress’s secondmost famous purchase for its Library,the 1930 $1.5 million purchase fromOtto H. Vollbehr of a collection of

3,000 incunables, including our copy ofthe Gutenberg Bible, which became thebasis for our 15th-century holdingsmentioned above. The division nowmaintains well over 100 separate specialcollections, whose stories mimic the his-tory of collecting and selling in theantiquarian market and mirror thenature of American philanthropy overtime. These collections bridge the spanof the book from medieval Europe tothe 19th-century, with prominentstrengths in the Renaissance and Refor-mation, the History of Science, Travelsand Voyages, the Encounter, and therise of American politics, arts and let-ters. Moreover, many of them in theirown right offer valuable resources for

the study of thevisual image. In par-ticular, subject collec-tions that intensivelydocument areas, suchas gastronomy, paper-making, the FrenchRevolution, Sir Fran-cis Drake, and magic(to name only a few)give historians, artresearchers, collec-tors, and artists,access to a variety ofprintmaking tech-niques and stunningvisual images.

At the center of allRBSCD holdings isthe core rare bookcollection, a pro-found gathering ofmaterials that docu-ments the book fromits earliest Europeancontext to the fullvista of the book inAmerica. It is herethat the entire his-tory of printmakingand graphic tech-niques can beexplored—at thepopular as well as atthe connoisseur level.

Vast numbers of natural histories, forexample, such as Mark Catesby’s Natu-ral History of Carolina, Florida and theBahama Islands (1731-1743) or JohnJames Audubon’s Birds of North America(1827-1839) contain magnificent platesof flora and fauna. Geological studies,architecture and engineering surveys,furniture and apparel catalogs, and thewhole show of science all offer a similarparade of visual images.

RBSCD collections can also be usedto track the development and applica-tion of various graphic and printingtechniques, such as engraving and etch-ing, mezzotint, lithography, andmodern machine applications. Techni-cal advances in the 19th century

The Four Gospels of the Lord Jesus Christ According to the Authorized Version of King James I., decorations by Eric Gill, Waltham Saint Lawrence, England: Golden Cockerel Press, 1931. Press Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

One of the most important fine press books produced in the 20th century, this 1931 Golden Cockerel press editionof the Four Gospels set the text of the King James gospels into a modern book design. Eric Gill (1882-1940),philosopher, sculptor, and type designer (he developed Perpetua type), designed the text and illustrations to weaveand intertwine, producing a modern homage to the tradition of illuminated text.


Winter 2011-2012 25

prompted the rise of the embellishedbook, including exquisite plate books,as well as an avalanche of popular pub-lications with glossy four-color litho-graphs, mezzotints “suitable for fram-ing,” and elaborate machine-press bind-ings. The visual culture emerging atthat time would propel graphic arts intothe marketplace. Collections of chap-books, gift books, and popular maga-zines trace the rise of illustration andthe graphic novel. And thanks to the1870 copyright deposit law, the divisionbuilt the largest collection of dime andhalf-dime novels in existence—nearly40,000 titles. Their color-printed coverart is the precursor to modern dustjackets and paperback covers, such asthose found in the Division’s compre-hensive collection of Dell paperbacks orits collection of 6,000 cowboy novels.

These collections hold even furtherpromise when they are considered as asource of exemplars of the book as amaterial object. Various historicaldevices used to transmit text, such ascuneiform tablets, papyri, scrolls, andvessels, gave way to modern devicessuch as horn books and moveableobjects. The physical book, with all ofits resonance as a conveyer of text andmeaning, can be easily examined bystudying the RBSCD collections. Simi-larly, various collections document allaspects of the making of the physicalbook with devices that are employed inprinting, binding, and papermaking,such woodblocks, matrices, handmoulds, binding tools, paper moulds,and copper plates.

There are two collections in the divi-sion specifically devoted to book arts,the Fine Press Collection and theArtists’ Books Collection. The founda-tion of the Division’s holdings of bookarts is built on the narrative thread ofthe story of letterpress printing. With500 years of the history of the printedbook preceding the Fine Press Collec-tion, it is, in effect, the extension of the

rare book collection into the contempo-rary realm of the fine press book. Wehave built an extremely strong book artscollection over the years—one that ishighly representative of the field and, inmany cases, comprehensive. Thousandsof titles plot the chronology of themodern letterpress tradition, beginningwith a comprehensive collection of theKelmscott Press and then movingthrough the decades of presswork fromthe early English movement to theAmerican fine presses, from the Califor-nia Printers to the present. Many arerepresented by complete and compre-hensive holdings, such as VictorHammer, Bruce Rogers, the GehennaPress, and Granary Books. But the divi-sion also holds in other collections largegatherings of materials that sit at thefringe of our consideration—shapedbooks, comic books, pop-up books,miniatures, juvenile collections. All inall, we have a vast collection of themodern fine press tradition and one ofthe earliest established efforts in collect-ing artists’ books.

These collections are bolstered byarchival collections in the book arts thatprovide significant opportunities forresearch. The division holds the archivesof two of the greatest American bookdesigners of the first half of the 20thcentury: Frederic Goudy and BruceRogers. Goudy commands a specialplace in the American book arts. Inaddition to his work as a printer, bookdesigner, and writer, he was the firstAmerican to make the designing of typea separate profession. Bruce Rogers,American typographer and typedesigner, is known for his classical style,his own design of Centaur, and the pro-duction of the Oxford Lectern Bible. Inaddition, RBSCD also holds the papersof type designer and artist VictorHammer and the extensive archives ofClaire Van Vliet’s Janus Press.

Finally, printmaking is documenteddirectly in the division’s Artists’ Books

Collection, which includes examples ofprintmaking from the traditional livred’artiste to the dynamic experiments ofFuturism. Today this collection is therepository for hundreds of contempo-rary artist’s books, highlighting the col-laborative ventures between artist,printer, and binder that characterize thepostmodern book.

MARK DIMUNATION

Mark Dimunation was appointed Chiefof the Rare Book and Special CollectionsDivision in 1998. He came to the Libraryfrom Cornell University, where he hadserved since 1991 as Curator of RareBooks and Associate Director for Collec-tions in the Division of Rare and Manu-script Collections and taught in the Eng-lish Department. He had his start withrare books in 1981, when he wasappointed the Assistant Chief of Acquisi-tions at The Bancroft Library at the Uni-versity of California, Berkeley until 1983,when he became the Rare Book Librarianand Assistant Chief for Special Collectionsat Stanford University. A graduate of St.Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota,after course work at Christ Church Col-lege in Oxford, he entered the graduateprogram in American History at the Uni-versity of California, Berkeley. Dimuna-tion specializes in 18th- and 19th-centuryEnglish and American printing and hasconsiderable experience working withantiquarian materials as well as fine pressand contemporary artist’s books. Onbehalf of the Library, he recently com-pleted a major project to reconstructThomas Jefferson’s Library. In addition,he has lectured extensively about book col-lections and has written a number ofexhibition catalogues. Dimunation is aFellow of the American Antiquarian Soci-ety, a member of the Grolier Club, theInternational Federation of Library Asso-ciations, the English Short Title CatalogBoard, and the Board of the Council onLibraries and Information Resources.

A Behind-the-Scenes View of the Library’s Rare Book & Special Collections Division


THE most surprising benefit ofworking at the Library of Con-gress is the number of opportu-

nities that have come my way. As thecurator of the Lessing J. RosenwaldCollection, a library of books that doc-ument the origins of printing, the his-tory of bookmaking, and book illustra-tion over six centuries, I am in the envi-able position of being able to poke mynose into just about every subject col-lection that comprises the Rare Bookand Special Collections Division. Thisdoes not mean that my nose has notbeen rapped on occasion, but it hasallowed me to help develop programs,events, and projects that foster relation-ships between the Library and the inter-national research community.

Being a specialist in the developmentof printing technology and the art ofthe book as it evolved from the manu-script tradition, my skills are well suitedto an institution as large and varied asthis. My favorite part of the job is theinteraction with colleagues here at theLibrary and with the scores ofresearchers from all over the globe whocome to use our collections. Workingwith them has sharpened my curatorialskills and broadened my knowledge ofthe Library’s collections and its vastpotential as a resource for the study ofjust about any aspect of western culture.

When I first arrived here in January2000, after some three decades in therare book business, my immediate goalwas to get a handle on the RosenwaldCollection. For me there was no betterway than to take a physical inventory ofthe books. I had the good fortune to beassigned a young conservator namedBeatriz Haspo, who at the time was aGetty fellow working in the Conserva-tion Division. She had skills I lacked,and she helped me record our findingsas we examined every book in the col-lection. This experience was transforma-tional. First, I learned that collaboratingwith colleagues was the key to produc-ing high-quality work. Second, by han-

dling the books and learning theirsecrets, the potential of the RosenwaldCollection to both educate and delightwas revealed to me, and my under-standing of the responsibilities of acurator began to take shape.

The traditional mission of librarieshas been to collect, preserve, and pro-vide access to the accumulated record ofmankind in all of its manifestations.The stunning postwar growth of Ameri-can libraries at once expresses anddemonstrates our commitment to thepreservation of our cultural patrimony.The simultaneous development of thenation’s collections of antiquarian mate-rials was so extensive that, by the end of20th century, the collections of rarebooks and special materials collectionsin American institutions came to rivaltheir European counterparts. Moreover,the application of computer science anddigital technology to library systemsover the course of the last 20 years hasturned the mission of most Americanlibraries on its head. Libraries are nowcharged with the responsibility of pro-viding public access first, followed bythe preservation and growth of theircollections. This message has not beenlost on the Library of Congress. Custo-dial divisions like Rare Book and Spe-cial Collections and Prints & Photo-graphs are diligently working to providegreater access to their materials throughmore numerous public programs, Webpresentation of exhibitions, blogs, andonline digital collections.

The enhanced emphasis on publicaccess is one of the most importantparts of my job as Rosenwald Curator. Ihave been encouraged to take an activerole in bringing the Library to thepeople, so to speak, and opening ourcollections to the public through exhi-bitions, speeches, and collaborativeprojects. It is this aspect of the job thathas provided me the most opportunityto develop as a curator. Along with ithave come unexpected rewards, some ofwhich I have been asked to describe.

I was lucky early on to come up witha concept for an exhibition that as itdeveloped became ever more com-pelling. It incorporated a strong schol-arly component with a beautifullydesigned public presentation. I call itlucky because as I was going throughthe Rosenwald reference library, I cameacross an auction catalogue that con-tained Mr. Rosenwald’s notes on the 84lots that he bought from the DysonPerrins sale in 1946. Dyson Perrins wasone of the great English collectors ofearly woodcut books printed in themajor commercial centers north andsouth of the Alps. Mr. Rosenwald’s pur-chase was a significant addition to hisgrowing collection of 15th- and early16th-century illustrated books. One ofthe principal goals of the exhibition wasto document the mid-20th-centurytransfer of rare book collections fromone generation to the next and high-light the philanthropic impulse that ledthese two giants of the book collectingworld to bequeath them to their respec-tive countries. The exhibition, itsaccompanying catalogue, and the sym-posium that followed all focused on thethemes of philanthropy, the stylisticdevelopment of the woodcut in West-ern Europe, and the interrelationship ofdescriptive bibliography and art history.Its success brought significant benefitsto the Library and its users and rein-forced RBSCD’s commitment to devel-oping new ideas for outreach and pro-gram development.

In April 2000 the Library celebratedits 200th anniversary. As a part of theyearlong celebration, Librarian of Con-gress James Billington initiated a projectto reconstruct the library of ThomasJefferson, which had been partiallydestroyed by fire in 1851. This projectwas to be funded by a member of theMadison Council, the donor groupwhich supports Library programs. AsKatherine Blood’s introduction andAlan Fern’s historical overview of theLibrary discuss, when Congress bought

A Behind-the-Scenes View of the Library’s Rare Book & Special Collections Division

Winter 2011-2012 27

Jefferson’s library in 1815, it becamethe cornerstone of the nation’s newlibrary, and today it is on permanentexhibition in the Thomas JeffersonBuilding. By 2006 RBSCD Chief MarkDimunation, working from the desider-ata list he created for the Jefferson Proj-ect, had purchased about 1,200 titles,each the exact edition found in Jeffer-son’s original library. Because of myconnections with the European booktrade, I was asked to organize an expe-dition to Europe to locate the 600 titlesneeded to fulfill our goal. This questopened doors that led me to visit somevenerable bookshops in London, Paris,and the Netherlands. In London, Quar-itch, Maggs, and Pickering & Chattogave me carte blanche to scout their oldinventories, while my other friends inthe trade, using the desiderata list,scoured their databases for the missingtitles.

One unforgettable moment camewhen the owner of Pickering & Chattoinformed me that one of his clients hada book described in the Jeffersondesiderata that I never thought wewould find: four titles, separately pub-lished between 1754 and 1756, boundtogether in one volume. But there itwas, a single volume of Hoyle’s rules ofchess, twist, backgammon, andquadrille.

As you can imagine, huntingthrough the ancient inventories in thebookshops of Paris was like living adream. Jefferson’s great reputation inFrance led shops as famous as Thomas-Scheler, Chamonal, Lardonchet, Magis,Forgeot, Girout-Baden, and Viardot toopen their attics and basements to me,and numerous titles on the list emergedfrom those great repositories. A goodexample came from my visit to JeanMagis, who took my list and suggestedI return the next day. Upon my arrivalhe proudly produced a 16-page pam-phlet, published in Paris in 1791. Bynormal standards this was not a signifi-cant purchase, but because it was an

ephemeral title we had been seeking fornearly a decade, it was a great find (andat 125 Euros a bargain).

In the Netherlands, Laurens Hes-selink, the son of one of the great book-sellers in that country, helped meexplain the Jefferson Project to hisDutch colleagues. Together we visitedshops in The Hague, Haarlem, Amster-dam, Utrecht, Vianem, Vorden, t’GoyHouten, Egmond aan Den Hoef, Apel-doorn, and Leisdchendam. This tripwas especially rewarding. In addition tolooking at thousands of books, Ibecame reacquainted with booksellerswhom I had not seen in over a decade,and traveled to many small towns inNorth Holland that I had never visitedbefore. By the end of the trip, we hadadded about 300 items to the Library’sJefferson Collection. To date we aremissing about 200 titles—and we arestill looking.

This past summer another assign-ment took me to Europe, this time toItaly. I was sent to help curators fromlibraries in Rome, Florence, and Sienaorganize displays of some of their rarestcultural materials to coincide with avisit by the Madison Council. TheCouncil was hoping to encourage Ital-ian libraries to participate in the WorldDigital Library, a global Website(www.wdl.org), created by the Libraryto foster international and interculturalunderstanding by providing free digitalaccess to primary documents from cul-tural institutions around the world. Myjob was to help the curators identifyimportant items in their collections thatwould fit WDL requirements and thencreate small exhibitions of them for theCouncil. In Rome we worked with theBiblioteca Angelica, the IstitutoNazionale degli Grafica, the BibliotecaLincei, the Vatican Library, and theBiblioteca Casanatense. In Florence, theBiblioteca Laurenziana, the BibliotecaRiccardiana, the Uffizi Gallery Library,and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centraledi Firenze participated, and in Siena,

the Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronatidi Siena. The outcome of this projectwill take years to unfold, but the impactof the Madison Council on initiatingpartnerships with the Italian librarieswas immediate and will no doubt provehighly important for the developmentof the WDL.

From a curatorial perspective, thistrip to Italy was the highlight of mycareer at the Library, as it allowed me todo two of the things I like best in theworld: work with rare materials andwith others who share my love for rarebooks and manuscripts.

When I was asked to write an articledescribing some of the curatorial oppor-tunities I have been given since arrivingat the Library 12 years ago, I was reluc-tant to focus on myself. I have beenextraordinarily fortunate to be given theassignments that I briefly describeabove. But it goes without saying thatnone of this would have been possiblewithout the help of fellow curators andadministrators, especially the support ofMark Dimunation, Chief of my divi-sion. For this I am very grateful.

As this issue of The Washington PrintClub Quarterly documents, curators likeKatherine Blood, Verna Curtis, andP&P Chief Helena Zinkham, anddozens of others working at the Library,all have remarkable stories to tell. It isthe nature of the place and the missionof the agency. I hope that my storiesprovide insight into what we do andwhy we do it.

DANIEL DE SIMONE

Daniel De Simone has been Curator,Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection of theLibrary of Congress, since January 2000.Previously, he ran his own rare book com-pany in NYC. Over the past 35 years hehas developed expertise in antiquarianbibliography, early illustrated books, and18th-century French, Italian, and Irishbooks. He is now doing research on theorigins of printing in Ferrara, Italy.


ONE of the best parts of my jobas chief of the Prints & Photo-graphs Division at the Library of

Congress is preparing special displays ofworks of art on paper for visitors. Forgeneral tours in our Reading Room, Ipull out original Civil War drawings,child labor photos by Lewis Hine, orhistorical political posters to tell some ofthe fascinating stories about how theseimages influenced their era and howthey can teach us about our own time.Visitors express warm appreciation forthis kind of special program, which isgratifying. But more importantly, in aworld filled with digital copies of pic-tures, people need to see the originalworks and have an opportunity toexamine them closely. With this objec-tive in mind, P&P staff members partic-ipated in more than 125 displays,courses, and lectures last year alone.

These special programs can also bemini-courses in visual literacy. P&P’smission is not only to acquire and pre-serve the myriad kinds of pictorialworks in our collections but also tomake them accessible to many audi-ences. Therefore, we make a point ofhelping college students, schoolteachers,documentary filmmakers, the newsmedia, and even printmakers and pho-tographers to learn how to read narra-tive and documentary images, such as18th-century satirical prints and CivilWar photographs. We sometimes askvisitors to look at one picture for twominutes (which seems like a lifetime tosome), and then describe what they seein it. We also challenge them to thinkabout why and how a picture was madeand for whom, as a way of teaching, byexample, the pitfalls of false assump-tions. The need for more visual literacy

has become so critical that our staff hascreated online tip sheets, case studies,and Webcasts to demonstrate visual lit-eracy methods in our “Researcher’sToolbox” and “Picture This” blog.

Nurturing visual literacy is not, how-ever, P&P’s biggest challenge. Likeevery cultural heritage enterprise, theLibrary of Congress could use moreresources: funding for acquisitions, con-servation, digitizing, cataloging, andstaff. But the special problem for P&Pis that we are always seeking ways tomake more people aware of our collec-tions because libraries generally housebooks and periodicals, not pictures;therefore when people want to see origi-nal works of art on paper, they tend toturn to art museums, not to libraries.However, those who do discover thedepth and uniqueness of P&P’s collec-tions use them to produce doctoral dis-

Connecting People with Collections: Visiting the Prints &Photographs Division in Person or Online

A View of the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog

Connecting People with Collections: Visiting the Prints & Photographs Division in Person or Online

Winter 2011-2012 29

sertations and master’s theses as well asbooks, articles, exhibitions, TV shows,classroom presentations, and family his-tories. While staff spend considerabletime helping professionals in diversefields undertake research with our col-lections, we are also committed tointroducing people unfamiliar withP&P to its wonderful collections,whether they can visit us in person orneed to contact us through e-mail anduse the collections available on theWeb. In addition, we offer people, fromcollege students to retirees, internship

and volunteer posts that provide hands-on opportunities to work with our his-torical collections.

The Internet has made P&P’s picto-rial collections vastly more visible. Forexample, in order to share our docu-mentary historical photographs with thepublic at large, we reached out to thepopular photo-sharing Web site, Flickr,where millions of people upload theirphotographs and comment on imagesthat attract their attention. In 2008, theLibrary and Flickr launched a pilot pro-gram, Flickr Commons, whose mission

is to facilitate access to public photogra-phy collections and to invite people tocontribute any information they mayhave about these photographs in theircomments. The response of the Flickrcommunity was overwhelmingly posi-tive, and today more than 50 libraries,archives, and museums share photo-graphs with no known copyrightrestrictions in their collections on thislandmark interactive online public out-reach project. So far, Flickr statisticsreport more than 30 million views forthe Library’s Flickr collection of 14,000

GENERAL INFORMATION

Prints & Photographs home page: www.loc.gov/rr/printAsk a Librarian: www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/ask-print.htmlPrints & Photographs Online Catalog:

www.loc.gov/pictures “Picture This” blog: http://blogs.loc.gov/picturethis LC Research & Reference Services (lists all reading

rooms): www.loc.gov/rr LC Duplication Services: http://lcweb.loc.gov/preserv/pds

P&P ACQUISITION & APPRAISAL POLICIES

Criteria for donating works of art on paper:www.loc.gov/rr/print/acquis.html

P&P REFERENCE AIDS

Lists of images on popular topics:www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/listguid.html

For example, Civil Rights, Columbus, Dry Years, First Ladies,Lincoln

Researcher’s Toolbox:www.loc.gov/rr/print/resource/researchertool.html

Includes the Webcast, “Looking at Pictures,” visual literacyaids, and other tips for exploring P&P collections

Collection and Subject/Format Overviews:www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/collguid.html

Examples include: Albums of Photographs, 1850-presentBaseball CardsCartoon-Related Research at the LibraryCivil War Photographs

EXPLORE THE P&P PICTORIAL COLLECTIONS ONLINE

Illustrated English Language Periodicals Images of Indians of North AmericaMiddle East Images“Opinionated Art’’: A Window into the Fine Art Print

CollectionsPembroke Album (chiaroscuro woodcuts)Popular Photographic Print ProcessesResearching Historic Washington, D.C., BuildingsWomen’s History Resources

EXHIBITIONS

The Library usually has several exhibitions open to visitors,including the Graphic Arts Galleries that highlight worksof art on paper. Information about current shows as wellas images from current and past exhibitions are online atwww.loc.gov/exhibits/all

Examples of the latter include:“Creative Space: Fifty Years of Robert Blackburn’s

Printmaking Workshop”“Empire That Was Russia: The Prokudin-Gorskii

Photographic Record Recreated” “Floating World of Ukiyo-e: Shadows, Dreams, and

Substance”“Timely and Timeless: New Comic Art Acquisitions”

P&P SPECIAL PROGRAMS

Center for Architecture, Design & Engineering:www.loc.gov/rr/print/adecenter/adecent.html

Flickr Project: www.loc.gov/rr/print/flickr_pilot.html Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon:

www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/swannhome.html



images. We also use Flickr to gatherinformation about old photographs thatarrived in our collections with sparsedescriptions. A strong corps of virtualvolunteers, with expertise in everythingfrom aircraft, cars, and ships to base-ball, boxing, and World War I, has pro-vided thousands of comments that havehelped us add extensive information toour catalog records—including theidentification of places in photos withno titles at all.

The Prints & Photographs Online

Catalog on the Library of CongressWeb site, remains, however, the primaryonline window on our collections. Theentries in this searchable catalog coverabout 95% of the 15 million-plusworks in our holdings. When PPOCusers know what they want to look for,they can simply type those words intothe blank “Search All” box. To find outwhich artists and topics can beresearched in PPOC, they can turn tothe “Browse by” indexes that alphabeti-cally list creators and related names

(including artists, printmakers, photog-raphers, and donors); subjects (whichinclude even place names); and formats(which include genres and printingprocesses among other things). In addi-tion to searching all our online collec-tions at once, PPOC users can explorealmost 70 collections individually, forexample, the Cabinet of American Illus-tration, Cartoon Drawings, the FarmSecurity Administration/Office of WarInformation Photographs, Fine Prints,Master drawings, and WPA posters.

ENJOY BOOKS ON THE LIBRARY’S PICTORIAL COLLECTIONS

More than 50 books sponsored by the Library highlightP&P pictorial collections. For a full checklist, seewww.loc.gov/rr/print/resource/030_pub.html. Coresources include:

Cole, John Y. and Jane Aikin, eds. Encyclopedia of theLibrary of Congress: For Congress, the Nation & the World.Washington DC: Library of Congress, Lanham MD:Bernan Press, 2004.

Goodrum, Charles A. Treasures of the Library of Congress.New York NY: H.N. Abrams, 1991.

Ham, Debra Newman, ed. African American Mosaic: ALibrary of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of BlackHistory and Culture. Washington, DC: Library ofCongress, 1993.

Prints & Photographs: An Illustrated Guide. WashingtonDC: Library of Congress, 1995. (also online atwww.loc.gov/rr/print/guide)

Virga, Vincent and curators of the Library of Congress,with historical commentary by Alan Brinkley. Eyes of theNation: A Visual History of the United States. CharlestownMA: Bunker Hill, 2004. 1st published, Knopf, 1997.

CARTOONS, DRAWINGS, AND PRINTS

Beall, Karen. American Prints in the Library of Congress: ACatalog of the Collection. Manfield CT: Martino Publish-ing, 2002. 1st published, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1970.(itemized checklist of P&P fine prints)

Katz, Harry, ed. Cartoon America: Comic Art in the Libraryof Congress. New York NY: Abrams, 2006.

Kita, Sandy, et al. Floating World of Ukiyo-e: Shadows,Dreams, and Substance. exh. cat. New York NY: Abrams inassociation with the Library of Congress, 2001.

Peatross, C. Ford, ed. Capital Drawings: ArchitecturalDesigns for Washington, D.C., from the Library of Congress.Baltimore MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press inassociation with the Library of Congress, 2005.

Shaw, Renata V., comp. Graphic Sampler. WashingtonDC: Library of Congress, 1979.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Collins, Kathleen. Washingtoniana: Photographs: Collectionsin the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library ofCongress. Washington DC: Library of Congress, 1989.

Curtis, Verna Posever. Photographic Memory: The Album inthe Age of Photography. New York NY: ApertureFoundation, 2011.

Fleischhauer, Carl, and Beverly W. Brannan, eds.Documenting America, 1935-1943. Berkeley CA:University of California Press in association with theLibrary of Congress, 1988. (Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Collection)

Jurovics, Toby, et al. Framing the West: The SurveyPhotographs of Timothy H. O’Sullivan. exh. cat. WashingtonDC: Library of Congress and Smithsonian American ArtMuseum, New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2010.(chapter on P&P stereographs by Carol M. Johnson)

Shaw, Renata V., comp. A Century of Photographs, 1846-1946. Washington DC: Library of Congress, 1980.


Winter 2011-2012 31

Moreover, these collections are oftenaccompanied by a special feature thatprovides biographical and other infor-mation that helps researchers under-stand the scope and content of the collection.

Many PPOC entries are accompa-nied by digital images (to date about1.25 million images of original works ofart have been scanned, and thousandsof new images are added each year).Most of our online images can also bedownloaded, because we use our lim-ited scanning resources to digitize ourmost popular and copyright-free collec-tions. If we do not know whether awork is in the public domain, we dis-play only thumbnail-size images ofthem on our Web page; however, thefull-size digital images can be seenonline at the Library.

Researchers who do not find imagesof the works they want online can stillbegin their research on P&P’s Web pageby consulting the PPOC entries. Theserecords provide summary descriptionsfor individual works, but also forgroups of related works in our holdings,such as sets of architectural drawings forconstruction projects and all the photo-graphs taken for a photojournalismstory. The original works can then beseen in the P&P Reading Room; inaddition, digital reference copies can beordered from the Library’s DuplicationServices. For fine prints and posters,however, our extensive card catalogs inthe Reading Room remain the principal

tool for learning about those holdings(conversion of these data to onlineinformation is one of the large projectson our to-do list).

Besides looking at the originalworks, another good reason to visit theLibrary in person is to tap into thehundreds of databases to which we sub-scribe, for example, ArtFACT, Ances-try.com, and Oxford Art Historyonline. In addition to researchingrelated holdings in other divisions ofthe Library (the subject of KatherineBlood’s article), many researchers alsobenefit from the hundreds of thousandsof magazines, newspapers, and illus-trated books in the Library’s generalcollections. These published texts areoften essential resources for establishingthe original context in which a work ofart was created.

What is the most important thing toremember about P&P’s public services?That students, teachers, collectors,artists, and amateur as well as profes-sional researchers in a wide range of dis-ciplines should not hesitate to ask us forhelp when seeking information aboutour holdings. A dedicated group of staffis hard at work caring for our morethan 15 million architectural designs,cartoons, documentary and masterdrawings, fine art and documentaryprints, and photographs and posters ofmany kinds, but we have a long way togo before every item is fully catalogedand digitized. Above all, however, anycollection as vast as ours can be difficult

to navigate. Our special e-mail service,“Ask a Librarian,” is the best methodfor contacting reference and curatorialstaff for information about using ourresources, because we can connect youto whomever can best respond to yourspecific needs. The contact informationon our home page (www.loc.gov/rr/print) lists our telephone, fax, andReading Room numbers—and we’reopen Monday-Friday, 8:30 am-5:00pm.

HELENA ZINKHAM

For nearly 30 years, Helena Zinkham hashelped shape collections and programs inthe Library of Congress Prints & Photo-graphs Division where she is Chief. Heressays on visual literacy appear in Photo-graphs: Archival Care and Management(Chicago: Society of American Archivists,2006) and Working in the Archives(Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Univer-sity Press, 2009). Her publications by theLibrary of Congress include DescriptiveTerms for Graphic Materials: Genre andPhysical Characteristic Headings (1986).Before coming to the Library, she worked atthe New-York Historical Society and wroteA Guide to Print, Photograph, Architec-ture & Ephemera Collections: at theNew-York Historical Society, (New York:The Society, 1998). In 2008, Zinkhamwas elected a Fellow of the Society of Amer-ican Archivists in recognition of hernational contributions to research collectiondescription and access.


“DRAWN TO WASHINGTON 2” EXHIBITION

This is to announce the results of our 2nd juried print exhibition of Mid-Atlantic printmak-ers, co-sponsored by The Washington Print Club and the Metropolitan Center for the VisualArts in Rockville MD. The show, installed in the Center’s stunning VisArts Kaplan Gallery,was on view September 26-October 23, 2011. More than 50 works in a wide variety of printmedia were selected for exhibition by juror Christine Neptune, a longtime fine print dealerand publisher in NYC and, more recently, also in DC. In addition, Katherine L. Blood,Library of Congress Curator of Fine Prints, awarded Maryland artist Max-Karl Winkler’swoodcut, Karisa, The WPC Purchase Prize for inclusion in the permanent collection of theLibrary’s Prints & Photography Division.

Recent & Forthcoming Programs for WPC Members

Recent ProgramsSunday, November 20. A discussion and demonstration ofthe Corcoran College of Art + Design’s “Book Art” programat the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

Friday, December 9. A well-illustrated lecture, “18th-Cen-tury French Illustrated Books: Masterpieces of Printing andDesign from the Rosenwald Collection,” by Daniel P. DeSimone, Curator, Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Rare Bookand Special Collection Division, The Library of Congress.

Saturday, December 17. A walking tour of “Print by Print:Series from Dürer to Lichtenstein,” at The Baltimore Museumof Art by its curator, Rena Hoisington, BMA Curator ofPrints, Drawings & Photographs.

Friday, January 13. A walking tour of “Multiplicity,” 83 mul-tiple prints by such notable contemporary printmakers as

John Baldessari, John Cage, Chuck Close, Sol LeWitt, MartinPuryear, and Kara Walker by its curator, Joann Moser, SeniorCurator, Smithsonian American Art Museum and WPC advi-sor.

Forthcoming ProgramsIn February, “Collecting with Artists, 1940s-2011,” abehind-the-scenes display and discussion by Library of Con-gress Curator of Fine Prints Katherine L. Blood of contempo-rary fine prints selected by the Library’s Joseph and ElizabethRobins Pennell Fund’s Acquisitions Committee, established inthe 1940s, which has always included eminent contemporaryprintmakers, ranging from John Taylor Arms, Stow Wengen-roth, Gabor Peterdi, Yvonne Jacquette to Jane Hammond andJudy Pfaff. A walking tour of “Picasso’s Drawings, 1890-1921:Reinventing Tradition” at the National Gallery of Art by theexhibition’s co-organizer Andrew Robison, Mellon SeniorCurator of Prints and Drawings and WPC advisor.

Max-Karl Winkler, Karisa, 2010, woodcut, 24¼ x 5½ inches, edition of 10.

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