Library Support for Visual Art
2001

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Subject specialist: Norine Duncan (x33082, Norine_Duncan@Brown.edu)

To support the undergraduate program in Visual Art, the Library collects materials about 20^th century painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, papermaking, book arts, photography, digital media, and color theory, at the collecting level of Basic/Study. Nearly all titles acquired are English-language. The record of expenditures for the last five years is as follows:

During this period, the Yankee approval plan supplied a steadily increasing proportion of the titles purchased, while firm orders decreased. Visual Art faculty members continue to circulate catalogs and slips, however, returning requests to the subject specialist. Visual Art also benefits from another approval plan with Worldwide Books (approximately $5,000) that is funded under History of Art & Architecture. The plan supplies the major current English-language exhibition catalogs, many of which cover contemporary art.

During this academic year, two courses in photography are being taught for the first time. Fortunately, books on this subject have been collected by History of Art & Architecture in the past. The Library has holdings of more than 3,000 monographs and 38 serials. In the future, the Library will collect more intensively in 20^th century photography to support the new Visual Art courses, with more attention to contemporary photography than formerly.

Currently, the Library subscribes to eighteen serial titles for Visual Art. Several new titles in contemporary photography will be added in the near future. A few electronic journals support Visual Art (Representations, Journal of Multimedia History, Postmodern Culture, and Modernism/Modernity). Some of the History of Art & Architecture serial subscriptions are of interest to Visual Art.

The electronic resources of greatest interest to Visual Art include the Grove Dictionary of Art Online, Art Abstracts, and ArtBibliographies Modern. The first is a full-text encyclopedia, while the latter two index and abstract periodical literature.

In recent years, more videos and CD-ROMs have been purchased for Visual Art, always in response to specific requests. Resources to support the study of digital media are meager, as this subject is a relatively recent addition to the curriculum. The Library is willing to purchase more titles in this area, but needs guidance to understand precisely what is needed.

Some Visual Art courses are cross-listed with Modern Culture and Media, and the two departments offer an interdepartmental major in Art-Semiotics, focusing on the cultural role of artistic production. Most purchases on the subjects of semiotic theory, filmmaking, and video production are funded by MCM. The MCM department also collects film and video formats, perhaps duplicating some of the Library’s purchases. An effort to coordinate acquisitions should be undertaken. Sound effects recordings are collected by the Library and located at Orwig Music Library. In addition to considerable overlap of interests with MCM, Visual Art also benefits slightly from titles purchased for Computer Science. Many of the resources purchased for History of Art & Architecture are of interest to Visual Art as well.

Visual Art students and faculty have access to the resources of the RISD Library. While Brown collects major publications on contemporary art, RISD’s holdings are more extensive. RISD acquires exhibition catalogs from galleries and smaller museums that Brown does not attempt to cover. RISD’s collection is also stronger than Brown’s in media other than the fine arts, such as decorative and applied arts. Some effort is made not to duplicate expensive purchases if the anticipated usage makes sharing between the two institutions feasible.

Brown participates in a Boston Library Consortium agreement on cooperative resource sharing. The goal of the BLC Art Group is to coordinate acquisition of exhibition catalogs that feature the work of women artists. Brown allocates $500 annually to cover 20^th century Italy, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Nine other institutions have committed between $500 and $1000 each annually to cover other geographic areas and time periods.

Visual Art faculty and students have access to approximately 280,000 slides and 38,500 photographs and reproductions in the Art Slide Library. On a weekly schedule, slides are shot in-house to satisfy the demand for new images. Electronic catalog records exist for part of the collection (slightly less than half), and these are searchable through the web interface known as Anita: http://128.148.7.229:591/anita/. There is a pressing need for digitization of the images themselves, as well as for software and hardware to facilitate their display in the classroom and on the web. Visual Arts faculty rank the effort to digitize slide holdings (and/or to acquire other digital images) as a high priority.

The Art Slide Library’s collection grows on average by 7,500 slides annually, including purchases and gifts as well as in-house production. Exhibitions in the David Winton Bell Gallery provide an opportunity to shoot original slides directly of works of art; a renewed effort to build the collection in this manner is planned. Vendors of slides of contemporary art offer spotty coverage, and extra effort needs to be made to obtain slides from galleries and directly from practicing artists. Two major vendors with subscription plans that were used in the past to acquire contemporary art slides are no longer in business.

Mounted photographs and reproductions from the Art Slide Library circulate to students for class assignments.

Special Collections Support for Visual Art
Subject Specialist: Rosemary Cullen (x31514, rosemary_cullen@brown.edu)

The John Hay Library holds, and continues to acquire, materials in Special Collections that provide support for Visual Arts. While retrospective holdings of fine printing, illustrated books, bindings, papermaking, and works of art in various formats are of primary importance for the study of the history of art, they are also useful to studio artists in a variety of ways. They furnish examples of virtually every technique of artistic production; they provide information about materials and methodologies; and perhaps most importantly for students, they serve as sources of ideas and inspiration. Special Collections holdings that may be considered most important for Visual Art are:

The Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays includes examples of contemporary fine printing and artists' books that are used by classes in bookmaking, printmaking, papermaking, and related studies. The Library's online catalog has nearly 1,500 titles with subjects such as artists' books or concrete and visual poetry, primarily dating from the past 25 years, and representing a wide variety of printers and techniques. Also acquired are reference works, exhibition catalogs, and serials in support of fine printing. Detailed information about holdings is available on the Harris Collection's web site on Fine Printing.

The Broadsides Collection acquires fine printing in the same manner as the Harris Collection. In addition to regularly published works, Broadsides includes a considerable amount of fine printing ephemera, including publishers' announcements and flyers, and book club and publishers' invitations, cards, and the like. Detailed information about holdings is available on the Harris Collection's web site on Broadsides.

The general Rare Book Collections are added to regularly in areas that complement the holdings of the Harris Collection.

The Dard Hunter Collection on Papermaking is added to regularly, with both current and antiquarian titles being acquired. The Collection includes most of the works printed or written by papermaker, printer, and paper historian Dard Hunter, as well as works by his associates in the Roycroft shop.

Support for continuing acquisitions for Special Collections comes from a combination of endowed funds and Library appropriation, with the bulk of purchases made on endowed funds. Annual acquisitions expenditures for the collections mentioned above are estimated to be as follows:

In recent years, the archives of several fine press publishers have been acquired by Special Collections. The archives of Gary Young's Greenhouse Press includes printer's proofs, galleys, manuscripts, correspondence between authors, designers, and printers, and business records. Similarly, the archives of Providence's own Burning Deck Press (which the Library is still in the process of acquiring) document the activities of letterpress printers and book designers over a period of forty years. Both collections, and other related holdings, are of interest to contemporary artists and designers in that they illuminate current practice in the realities of fine print production. The archives of one of Rhode Island's leading private presses, Third & Elm Press, include an earlier gift from the press' founder, Alexander Nesbitt, of type specimen books.

The Koopman Collection, formed as a laboratory collection for the study of the art of the book, includes original artwork upon which book illustrations were based, many examples of blind- or gilt-stamped bindings, specimen leaves, William Morris textiles, and the publications of some of the most influential private presses, including Ashendene, Doves, and Kelmscott.

The Sheet Music Collection includes lithographic covers and color lithographs; vast holdings of 20^th century illustrated sheet music covers, featuring airbrush art, distinctive lettering, collage techniques, cartoons, and photography.

The Michael J. Ciaraldi Collection consists of nearly 60,000 comic books and graphic novels, and related works from the past 25 years, notably featuring the productions of small and non-mainstream artists and companies. Many review publications and works on the comics publishing industry are included.

The Lucy Truman Aldrich Collection of Rare Illustrated Children's Books and the Pillar Collection of Children's Literature hold a total of 3,500 titles, including both classics of children's book illustration and a notable collection of recent illustrated children's books, including many Caldecott prize/honors winners.

Many of the collections include examples of photography, such as glass-plate negatives, daguerreotypes (most notably, the renowned Hartshorn daguerreotype of Edgar Allan Poe), ambrotypes, albums of photographs, and fine printing illustrated with photography.