LATE NIGHT VISIT TO THE LIBRARY--AND A VIRTUAL VISIT FOR MY READERS

Last evening a number of VIP guests were given “after hours” access to the Wolfsonian’s galleries and rare books library. Museum founder Mitchell Wolfson, Jr., director Cathy Leff, curator Marianne Lamonaca, and I were all on hand to greet the visitors and provide them with a guided tour through the museum.

The diverse group had very different interests, but the library is capable of providing something for nearly anyone’s taste. And so the visitors were able to see rare books and other small print format materials covering such diverse themes as: pharmaceutical paraphernalia; circuses; garden and landscape portfolios; architectural masterworks; modern furniture catalogs; and illustrated Russian and Soviet era books. There was not much I could do to string the hodge-podge menagerie together with anything other than “and now for something completely different,” but the visitors did not seem to mind.

And so I thought that my virtual visitors might like to share in the “behind the scenes” tour with a glimpse of some of the varied items included in our diverse holdings.

WOLFSONIAN TOUR BY HISPANICS IN PHILANTHROPY

Last evening museum founder Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. was on hand to conduct a tour arranged by Cristina Eguizabal of FIU's Latin American and Caribbean Center for fifteen visitors from foundations that fund Hispanic organizations. The rare books and special collections library was one of the first stops on the tour, and the participants appeared to relish the opportunity to see some of our rare Latin American and Caribbean materials laid out on the front table of the reading room.

The group responded with enthusiasm to the display of Latin American treats which included: rare books from Mexico; magazines and other printed materials from Argentina; a city planning book for Rio de Janeiro and some oversized commercial labels from Brazil; some illustrated sheet music covers, two large posters from pre-Castro Cuba, and a run of the periodical, Social with cover designs by Conrado Massaguer.

Although our library holdings are not as strong as we would like them to be with regard to materials from the West Indies and the Caribbean, we did have a few gems laid out for the group to see. Among the items were some beautifully illustrated cruise ship brochures, and—with Haiti figuring some prominently in the news owing to the tragic earthquake there—a novel set during the tumultuous years of the Haitian Revolution entitled Black Majesty, written by John Vandercook with illustrations by Mahlon Blaine. Puerto Rico was represented as well in the American Guide Series' Guide to the Island of Boriquén. The book was compiled and written by the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration in cooperation with the Writers’ Program of the Work Projects Administration to document the Roosevelt Administration's efforts to rebuild the economy, put people back to work, and stimulate interest in tourism during the Great Depression.

We are still “beefing up” our Latin American holdings. Persons interested in gifting materials in keeping with the Wolfsonian’s collection interests are encouraged to submit in writing any offers. Emails or letters should provide a full description of the items intended for donation (including an assessment of condition) and provide an image of the same prior to sending the actual item in question.

VISIT BY MIAMI-DADE COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS IN MA PROGRAM AT FIU

Miami-Dade County Public Schools and Florida International University have for a number of years now been collaborating on program designed to encourage teaching professionals to earn a Master’s degree from the university while only incurring the cost of incidental fees, textbooks, and other related materials. Twenty of these teachers are currently enrolled in my Readings in American History: The Great Depression & New Deal Era course being taught at the Modesto Maidique campus at FIU this semester. This weekend, two of those ambitious students braved the South Beach parking nightmare and visited the Wolfsonian museum to learn more about the New Deal era.

Michael Littman drove out to the museum on Friday evening to one of our public programming events—a screening of the documentary Soul of a People: Writing America’s Story, followed by a question and answer session with the producer and director, Andrea Kalin of Spark Media. Renowned author and activist, Stetson Kennedy was also on hand to answer questions from the audience. Mr. Kennedy, who was featured in the film, had joined the WPA Florida Writers’ Project at age 21 and served as editor, oral history and folklore collector. Mr. Littman was thrilled to have the opportunity to speak with Mr. Kennedy and to have him autograph one of his books which he had brought with him.

Mr. Littman returned to the Wolfsonian today in order to begin researching his final project—a virtual exhibit that will compare some of the similar programs enacted by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States, Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany, Benito Mussolini in Fascist Italy, and Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union. He was joined in the main reading room by another teacher enrolled in the pilot Masters program, Brian Orfall who is interested in using our original holdings related to the infamous Scottsboro race trial, the International Labor Defense, lynchings, and other civil rights agitation in the 1930s.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ONE OF OUR OWN!

I could not be more pleased to be able to announce that our own Digital Library Specialist, David Almeida was one of ten finalists selected out of 2,100 international artists applying for the West Prize, originally launched in 2008 with the aim of discovering new artists. David is largely responsible for digitizing the library collection, training and overseeing the scanning work of interns, and for creating our virtual library displays and donor acknowledgement web pages.

www.librarydisplays.wolfsonian.org ; www.librarydisplays.wolfsonian.org

David’s latest work plays on the scientific tradition of depicting plant and animal specimens by focusing his attention and camera lens not on real creatures but rather on their plastic representations which have become a ubiquitous part of our consumer society. As a finalist, David stands to receive $10,000 and his work will be added to the West Collection. Additionally, his artwork will be featured in a catalog documenting the work of all ten 2010 winners. The catalogue will be available at the time the exhibition with the same name, “10”, opens this spring at the SEI Gallery in Oaks, Pennsylvania. All of us at the Wolfsonian are extraordinarily proud of his artistic accomplishments and the recognition he has earned for his work.

A FLOOD OF FIU STUDENTS INNUNDATES THE WOLFSONIAN-FIU LIBRARY!

NO DAMAGE (AND LOTS OF ENTHUSIASM) TO REPORT

This Thursday was a rather busy day here at the Wolfsonian-FIU Library. With David Almeida and I taking down and packing up the student exhibit at the Green Library on the Modesto Maidique Campus, rare books cataloguer Dr. Nicolae Harsanyi was left to hold down the fort, supervising interns, volunteers, and visiting scholars. At the same time, he was on hand to make a presentation to more than a dozen FIU students enrolled in Professor Tori Arpad’s exhibition installation class. The main reading room tables were laid out with all manner of rare materials garnered from nineteenth and twentieth century world’s fairs and international exhibitions, and the professor and her students had the opportunity to peruse the items on display and ask questions.

Shortly after those students departed and Mr. Almeida and I returned, we all had to scramble to quickly change out the display in preparation for the arrival another batch of FIU students. Professor Dennis Wiedman had been awarded a Mellon curriculum development grant and had devised an Ethnohistorical Research Methods class for graduate students with an interest in researching museum materials illustrative of globalization and modernity. The students were first given an introduction to the library collection and an orientation on the rules and regulations to be followed in scheduling research appointments. I also delivered a Powerpoint presentation in our classroom downstairs utilizing lots of digitized images of artifacts organized thematically and designed to show off some of the areas of strength that might prove useful for them as they begin to consider final research paper topics. But as the expression goes, “there’s nothing like the real thing,” and the students seemed to especially appreciate the opportunity of seeing an array of original primary source materials up close. I think it safe to assume that we can expect lots of FIU students emailing us with requests for research visits over the course of the Spring semester.

ALL THE WORLD’S A FAIR!

This past Monday, Dr. Lara Kriegel and eleven FIU students enrolled in her senior seminar: World’s Fairs, Exhibitions, and History, came up to our rare books and special collections library to meet the librarians and learn how to access the collection via our web catalog and how to schedule research appointments. Following the brief orientation, the students were treated to a presentation of original international exhibition materials aimed at giving them a chronological overview of the world’s fairs while simultaneously introducing them to themes that might serve to inspire their final research paper topics.

The library’s holdings of world’s fair materials is particularly rich with regard to the fairs ranging from the first major international exhibition—(the so-called “Crystal Palace” exhibition in London, 1851)—through the San Francisco and New York World’s Fairs in 1939-1940. Although we do have some materials from some of the later fairs, our collection is far less comprehensive for the post-World War Two period. Our rare books cataloguer, Dr. Nicolae Harsanyi, having recently delivered a paper dealing with Romania’s pavilions at various world’s fairs, addressed the students about the importance of the fairs in terms of national self-representation. It was also evident from the original materials laid out on the table how important certain fairs were in terms of promoting and disseminating new artistic and architectural styles.

Although we often think of the fairs in terms of education and entertainment, we also wanted to impress upon the students the idea that there was also a darker side to these expositions as the nations participating in the early exhibitions used the occasion to propagandize the audiences. In addition to the ubiquitous nationalistic “chest-beating” and games of one-upmanship played by rival countries, the West also used the fair to sell the attendees on the legitimacy of colonial and imperial projects. Many colonial expositions lauded the achievements of civilized nations and the “white man’s burden” of Christianizing and civilizing pagan “primitives” around the world. Many of these fairs shared the Orientalist tendencies of the age and “represented” colonial peoples as “others” in order to justify their economic imperialism under the guise of humanitarian campaigns. Other popular exhibits in these early fairs were those which glorified war by showcasing the latest military technological weaponry and warships. Even the entertainment provided in the Midways was far from politically-correct by today’s standards, perpetuating stereotypes with exhibitions of human oddities and zoos where “freaks” and “primitives” could be gawked at by “civilized” spectators.

World’s fairs organized during the worldwide depression were often courted by cities anxious to provide work for the idle and unemployed, to stimulate tourism, and to provide at least some temporary boost to the economic doldrums. The corporate presence and pavilions at these later fairs often rivaled those sponsored and built by many smaller nations and reflect their growing influence in modern society, economy, and life.

WOLFSONIAN LIBRARIAN NICOLAE HARSANYI DELIVERS TWO PAPERS

Wolfsonian rare books cataloguer Dr. Nicolae Harsanyi spent part of the winter break between Christmas and New Year’s Day presenting papers at two different panels organized by the Romanian Studies Association of America, of which he is a life member. On Dec. 29-30, 2009, Dr. Harsanyi participated in the Annual Convention of Modern Language Association (MLA) held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he delivered a paper entitled: “Romanian Pavilions at Word’s Fairs between the two World Wars.” This paper used sources available in the Wolfsonian library, where we have extensive primary source holdings of World’s Fair and international exposition materials.

Romania’s Pavilion at the 1937 Paris Exposition

Source: Exposition internationale, Paris, 1937. Participations étrangères, Editions Alexis Sinjon, Paris, 1937, pl. 39.

The second paper presented was “Programmatic Discourse and Problematic Realities” and focused on the rhetoric and legacy of the Proclamation of Timisoara (Romania) issued in March 1990. The latter presentation required little in the way of reading from his presentation paper as Dr. Harsanyi was able to rely on his own personal memories as a founding member of the society which issued the Proclamation, on the political and societal urgencies that engendered this document, as well as on the textual structure of it.

Both panels were attended by approximately fifteen scholars hailing from various universities across the United States.

VISIT BY FIU ARCHITECTURE FACULTY AND STUDENTS

Earlier this week, thirty-three students from Florida International University’s School of Architecture came to the Wolfsonian museum and library for a tour of the facilities and a look at some of the 11,000 vintage postcards in our collection. Professors Claudia Busch, Eric Peterson, and Michelle Cintron brought their students over to the beach so that they could get an idea of exactly what would be involved in designing a museum that would have to house and exhibit a large postcard collection. After their tour of the gallery spaces, the students came down to the main reading room of our special collections and rare books library to view some of the more unusual postcards in our collection and to listen to and participate in a discussion about some of the less obvious environmental, storage, lighting, and other considerations that would be involved in designing a museum exclusively devoted to preserving and exhibiting vintage postcards in the subtropics. One important preservation and access idea that proved popular was the idea of digitizing and projecting images of postcards on the gallery walls to avoid exposing the fragile originals to damaging UV light. Since postcards were originally designed for travel, one of the professors suggested the possibility of creating a non-static display in which images of postcards might zip around the gallery spaces as if they were flying through post office sorting machines. All of us here at the Wolfsonian look forward to the students’ future research visits this semester and to seeing the final projects dreamed up by these budding architects.

Here are a couple of the more unsual poscards (made of leather and wood) seen by this group:

EXHIBITION EXTENDED AN EXTRA WEEK

ONE MORE CHANCE TO GET ANOTHER DOSE OF FDR'S "ALPHABET SOUP" CURE FOR THE GREAT DEPRESSION

The student-curated exhibition on display on the second floor of the Green Library on the Modesto Maidique campus of Florida International University was originally slated to come down on January 5th, but has been extended to the 12th of this month. The display features rare books and ephemera from the New Deal era selected, described, and interpreted by Mariana Clavijo, Jessica Tejeiro, Michelle Zavala, Christie Vina, Kevin Pineiro, Maria Aliano, and Miriam Kashem. These undergraduate students taking a course on the Great Depression and New Deal period in film and history this last fall opted to do an exhibition project using primary source materials garnered from the Wolfsonian-FIU library. This display examines several of the Roosevelt administration’s programs, including: the NRA (National Recovery Administration), the AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Administration), the FAP (Federal Arts Project), the FWP (Federal Writers’ Project), the FTP (Federal Theatre Project), the FMP (Federal Music Project), the NYA (National Youth Administration), the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps), and the WPA (Works Progress Administration).

There is also a large flat screen virtual display of the exhibits created by six students taking the same course in the fall of 2008. Mario Montoya selected original programs and exhibition catalogs promoting the arts in various federal art galleries and government supported community art centers. Al Pena and Nicole Saltzmann, on the other hand, exhibited the politically-charged artwork of Socialist and Communist artists Lynd Ward, Giacomo Patri, and Hugo Gellert, whose artwork was critical of Roosevelt’s reforms as being insufficiently radical and transformative. Michelle Narganes and Brian Villar focused on the worst ecological catastrophe of the twentieth century–the dust storms that rolled across the Great Plains during the so-called dirty thirties. Finally, Robert Gueits used museum artifacts to bring to light the treatment and experiences of those African Americans enrolled in the Civilian Conservation Corps—the program which set three million young men to work planting trees and otherwise laboring to address the ecological crisis.