TAKE FIVE: PART THREE

REFLECTIONS ON THE SPIRIT OF GIVING AND THE LAST FIVE YEARS OF LIBRARY DONATIONS

In addition to the rare books, periodicals, and other ephemeral materials donated by persons interested in finding permanent homes for their cherished collections, the Wolfsonian-FIU library has also received many works originally collected by design researchers and enthusiasts with a specific project or agenda in mind. Sometimes these collections grew slowly over time as an individual began collecting a few items here and there related to a lifelong obsession or passion; other times, items were selected deliberately and relatively quickly as authors and researchers prepared publications or exhibitions.

Over the last few years, the Wolfsonian-FIU library has had the privilege of collaborating with a number of educators, enthusiasts, and authors interested in design aesthetics. Vicki Gold Levi, for example, has assembled a large collection of materials, ranging in topic from the promotion of Atlantic City as a resort town; the U.S.-Cuba tourist trade in the pre-Castro era; Times Square and Broadway productions in New York City; and U.S. “Victory” propaganda from the Second World War. Following the publication with Steve Heller of Cuba Style: Graphics from the Golden Age of Design (2002), Vicki gifted several hundred rare periodicals, advertisements, and other ephemeral items to our library. She has since worked with Mr. Heller on another publication, Times Square Style (2004) and again gifted some of the original items acquired in the course of researching that book to the Wolfsonian library for which we are deeply grateful.

HIGHLIGHTS OF A GIFT OF VICKI GOLD LEVI

Steve Heller not only consulted and used a substantial number of Wolfsonian objects and artifacts in writing his Iron Fists: Branding the Twentieth Century Totalitarian State; he also assembled an impressive collection of primary resource materials on his own. Following the publication of his impressive tome, he generously donated hundreds of Italian Fascist, German National Socialist, and Russian and Chinese Communist visual propaganda to the museum. Although the Wolfsonian is renowned for its collection of political propaganda from this period, there was virtually no duplication in the donation, and the gift has done much to add to our strength and depth on the subject.

HIGHLIGHTS OF A GIFT OF STEVEN HELLER

William H. Helfand has been interested in and writing about pharmacy-related topics for many years. He has also spent much of his life collecting pharmaceutical and medicine-related propaganda. In 2002 organized and exhibition at the prestigious Grolier Club in New York City and concurrently published an illustrated history of medical quackery entitled Quack, Quack, Quack: The Sellers of Nostrums in Prints, Posters, Ephemera & Books. Thanks to a donation by Robert J. Young (mentioned in an earlier blog), the Wolfsonian Library was also beginning to build an important collection of popular health, hygiene, and physical fitness materials, even as Florida International University began to establish its own College of Medicine. Contacts between our founder and curator and Mr. Helfand recently resulted in his gifting more than a thousand pharmaceutical, medical, and propagandistic ephemera to the Wolfsonian-FIU library.

HIGHLIGHTS OF A GIFT OF WILLIAM H. HELFAND

Local Miami artist and long-time Wolfsonian supporter, Michelle Oka Doner also pulled together an impressive collection of Miami Beach memorabilia in the course of working with Micky Wolfson to create an artistic memoir, Miami Beach: Blueprint of an Eden: Lives Seen through the Prism of Family and Place. Her beautifully crafted book (which uses natural materials in each limited edition binding) documents the development of Miami Beach as a tourist destination from the 1930s through the 1960s. As both the book and the archive of photographs, blueprints, clippings, and correspondence she later donated to the library demonstrates, Michelle and Micky’s fathers ably served as Miami Beach mayors and were “movers and shakers” who helped transform and shape the image, history, and culture of the city.

HIGHLIGHTS OF A GIFT OF MICHELLE OKA DONER

Frederic A. Sharf, (who recently donated more than fifty rare view books documenting the Spanish American war, the Russo-Japanese war and Sino-Japanese conflicts), not only loaned and gifted some extraordinary automotive design drawings for an exhibition our curators were organizing; he also introduced us to Theodore W. Pietsch III. Theodore’s father was a talented automobile design artist and had left his son a large collection of sketchbooks and design drawings, many of which were reproduced in Theodore W. Pietsch II (1912-1993) and the Development of Automobile Design in the Golden Age. In the wake of the publication and an exhibition held at the Wolfsonian, Frederic Sharf facilitated the donation of thirty sketchbooks and a hundred or so drawings by Ted Pietsch by his son, establishing the Wolfsonian as an important repository of automotive design history. The librarians and digital library specialist are feverishly working to catalog and link digital images of these original works to our OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog). http://207.67.203.78/W10054

HIGHLIGHTS OF A GIFT OF THEODORE W. PIETSCH III, FACILITATED BY FREDERIC A. SHARF

TO BE CONTINUED…

TAKE FIVE -- PART TWO OF FIVE!

REFLECTIONS ON THE SPIRIT OF GIVING AND THE LAST FIVE YEARS OF LIBRARY DONATIONS

WANTED: INCREDIBLE COLLECTION ASSEMBLED WITH LOVE AND CARE SEEKS COMMITTED, LONG-TERM RELATIONSHIP WITH A VIBRANT, SOCIALLY-EXTRAVERTED, RESPONSIBLE REPOSITORY. MUST BE WELL-ENDOWED, STABLE, AND WILLING TO OFFER PERMANENCY AND A BRIGHT FUTURE

Following Mitchell Wolfson, Jr.’s donation of the museum to Florida International University in 1997, other members of the Wolfson family have stepped up to the plate to help ensure that the institution would have the funding to make targeted acquisitions of additional objects and artifacts appropriate to the museum and library’s collecting mission. Just months ago, for example, several rare and important pieces were added to the library thanks to the generosity of the Wolfsonian-FIU’s Collectors’ Council Fund, with contributions from Ellen and Louis Wolfson III and Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. These monetary contributions demonstrate the faith and confidence the Wolfson family has in the competence of the curators and librarians to guide the growth and future development of the museum collection.

PURCHASED WITH COLLECTORS' COUNCIL FUNDS, CONTRIBUTED BY ELLEN & LOUIS WOLFSON III AND MITCHELL WOLFSON, JR.

Soon after The Wolfsonian became part of Florida International University, I was tasked with organizing and installing an exhibition of some of the Wolfsonian-FIU library’s material in the Green Library on the University Park campus with the aim of introducing our collection to the faculty, staff, and students. The choice of theme was an easy one: the Wolfsonian library holds an incredible collection of interwar period steamship company travel ephemera, and we knew that then director of libraries at FIU, Dr. Laurence A. Miller was an ocean liner buff.

http://www.librarydisplays.wolfsonian.org/Bon%20Voyage/Bon%20Voyage.htm

What I did not know at the time, was that Dr. Miller was not only an avid cruise line enthusiast, (contributing articles and reviews to a number of trade periodicals), but had been amassing and assembling a collection of post-war cruise line promotional materials since the 1950s. Years later, associate librarian Nicholas Blaga and I were invited to lunch by Larry, who had since retired and was enjoying even more time aboard ship. At that meeting, Dr. Miller showed us his exhaustive collection of books, periodicals, and original cruise line industry materials from the post-war period and expressed interest in donating the same to the Wolfsonian. Needless to say, we were delighted at the prospect of acquiring such a comprehensive collection that complemented rather than duplicated our own. It took fifty banker’s boxes to transport the collection to the museum and we have yet to come up with a definitive number of items, though something hovering in the neighborhood of 25,000 to 35,000 would not seem too far off. Even as our interns have been working with Dr. Miller to catalog the materials, Royal Caribbean International CEO Adam Goldstein and the Director of global facilities and properties Russ Bogue visited and had the opportunity to meet the collector and to see a wide variety of archival materials documenting their company’s history and ships. Naturally, with such an extensive collection to choose from, this blog will only be able to provide a small teaser of the many wonderful items in the collection.

HIGHLIGHTS OF GIFTS FROM THE LAURENCE A. MILLER COLLECTION

After the passage of a number of years, I sometimes find it difficult after so many subsequent visits and conversations to remember exactly when first contact was made with a particular collector-turned-donor. Such is the case with Robert J. Young. What I do know is that Mr. Young was living in Deland, Florida (where some of the Wolfsonian staffers involved in the publication of the Florida Theme Issue of The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts had traveled in researching one of the entries), and afterwards journeyed down to Miami Beach to pay the museum a visit. During that visit, Mr. Young (an octogenarian) talked with enthusiasm about his idol Bernarr Macfadden and the American Physical Culture movement and expressed interest in finding a permanent home for his collection of rare periodicals and books. Since our curator Marianne Lamonaca had long been contemplating a health and hygiene themed exhibit, she and I encouraged Mr. Young to send down some materials on approval. What arrived soon thereinafter were numerous boxes of rare periodicals and other materials that have greatly enhanced our coverage of the subject and period. With Mr. Young’s recent passing, we decided to organize a library display of some of those materials as a tribute to his generosity. http://www.librarydisplays.wolfsonian.org/Physical%20culture/PC.htm

HIGHLIGHTS OF A GIFT OF ROBERT J. YOUNG

Sometimes gifts to museums come after many years spent cultivating relationships with high profile collectors; other times museums are contacted “out of the blue” by collectors or their agents expressing interest in placing them in an institution where they can be sure that their materials will be cared for and appreciated. In 2009, our rare books cataloguer Dr. Nicolae Harsanyi was contacted online with an offer by Harry Gottlieb of a collection of 398 pristine color lithographic prints taken by William Henry Jackson. Jackson had been hired by the railroad companies to take scenic views of the railway routes to promote tourism and had produced beautiful color prints using the “Photochrom” process, and we were as eager to acquire a set as the collector was to find them an appropriate home.

HIGHLIGHTS OF A GIFT OF HARRY GOTTLIEB

Sometimes gifts are made to museums to memorialize loved ones who have passed away. John and Ideal Gladstone had always been active contributors and supporters of the Wolfsonian and Florida International University. John had contributed several articles to the Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts and they had gifted an archive of twenty-two publications and hundreds of issues of nineteenth century periodicals to FIU’s Archive Collections. After John passed away, Ideal began inviting the Wolfsonian’s librarians into her home to sift through her late husband’s library, allowing them to select whichever rare and reference books they considered appropriate for the collection. John was a real renaissance man and his library has proven to be a real gold mine for important reference works on such diverse subjects as: art history; the American labor movement; Communist art and aesthetics; World’s Fairs; technology and industrial design; and illustrated books by Rockwell Kent and others.

HIGHLIGHTS OF GIFTS MADE BY IDEAL GLADSTONE, IN MEMORY OF HER HUSBAND, JOHN

The Wolfsonian has always been interested in acquiring archives or large bodies of the work of individual artists from our period. The library, for example, has great collections of the work of a number of important book designers and graphic artists, including a group of Dutch artists working in the Nieue Kunst (or Art Nouveau) style; a collection of books, periodicals, posters and clippings of American graphic artist Bill Bradley; a collection of hand-painted book covers designed by the Rupprecht Presse in the mid-1920s; and a collection of books designed by Merle Armitage. While the Wolfsonian also had a fair number of limited edition books designed by Mac Harshberger (1900-1975), that collection was recently swelled by the generous bequest of a cousin of the family who donated scores of musical scores, song books, archival photographs and other ephemera left behind by Mac, his lyricist sister, and his partner and composer, Holland Robinson.

HIGHLIGHTS OF A GIFT FROM THE ESTATE OF WILLIAM WHITNEY

We were also recently approached by a local Miami resident Elinor Brecher, who had a gem in her possession that originally belonged to her grandfather. This rare oversized portfolio entitled Century of the Common Man: two speeches by Henry A. Wallace contains autographed color silk-screened illustrations drawn by Hugo Gellert. Born in Hungary in 1892, Gellert had moved to the United States where he used his artistic talents to support the Communist Party of the United States of America. The portfolio had been passed down to Ms. Brecher, who gifted it to the Wolfsonian in her grandfather’s memory. It joins more than fifty other illustrated works by that artist.

HIGHLIGHTS OF A GIFT OF ELINOR BRECHER, MADE IN MEMORY OF HER GRANDFATHER

As it would be impossible in such a short space to mention each and every donor to the collection, I will conclude this installment with a brief nod to a number of individuals who also donated significant rare pieces to the Wolfsonian librarian within the last five years. I thus conclude by recognizing the generosity of Dolores Trenner, Richard Schick, Tim Gleason, and Abbey Chase who gifted some of the wonderful items pictured below.