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…

SOMETHING TO SING ABOUT

Some wonderful gifts arrived this week just in time for inclusion in our up-and-coming exhibition +five: Recent Acquisitions from The Wolfsonian Collection. This show which will open on April 23, will highlight some of the gifts and acquisitions that have come into the museum in the course of the last five years. The most recent additions to the Wolfsonian collection had been sent to the museum library by collector, friend, and donor, Vicki Gold Levi.

We first encountered Vicki nearly a decade ago when she came down to Miami in the course of looking for materials to be included in a book project she was preparing for publication in collaboration with Steve Heller (another Wolfsonian donor and supporter). For some time, Vicki had been voraciously collecting ephemeral items documenting U.S.-Cuba tourist trade relations in the pre-Castro era. Her project culminated in the publication of Cuba Style: Graphics from the Golden Age of Design by the Princeton Architectural Press in 2002. Soon after her first visit to the Wolfsonian, Vicki arranged to have the bulk of that collection gifted to the Wolfsonian library, where some of the hundreds of ephemeral items were soon after exhibited in one of our galleries. Highlights from her donation can be seen online at the following web address: http://www.wolfsonian.org/collections/c9/indexvgl.html Other items from Vicki’s personal collection and loans from some of the materials she donated to the Wolfsonian also appeared in another exhibition organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2008: ¡Cuba! Art and History from 1868 to Today.

Following that first meeting and subsequent donation, Vicki has not been idle. In 2004 she published yet another book entitled: Times Square Style: Graphics from the Golden Age of Broadway—again donating to our institution some of the colorful items in the wake of the project’s completion. A number of these gifts were exhibited in a library display in 2005 X: A Decade of Collecting when the Wolfsonian celebrated the acquisitions that had come in during our first ten years as a public institution. http://librarydisplays.wolfsonian.org/Decade%20Collecting/DC%20displays.htm

Once again Vicki has sent some wonderful materials our way, including some programs, sheet music covers, postcards, and periodicals. All of these materials will be added to our Web catalog http://207.67.203.78/W10054 with direct links in the records to digital images. Included in this blog are a few of the items being considered for the +five exhibition which I offer up as a teaser.