VISIT TO WOLFSONIAN BY DASH STUDENTS

This last Friday, the Wolfsonian hosted a visit by 43 students from DASH (Design and Architecture Senior High School), a magnet school located in the heart of Miami’s Design District recently ranked as the 5th best high school in the nation. The students primarily came to see Beauty on the Beach: A Centennial Celebration of Swimwear, an exhibition exploring influence of designers on the marketing of swimwear. The DASH students also spent half of their time in our rare books library listening to a lecture-presentation that highlighted some of our rare materials dealing more generally with fashion and design issues. There was plenty of lively discussion by the students over the radical changes swimsuits underwent from the Victorian era to the present day.

The students were also intrigued by other materials marketing other fashion products. Many of the students were both simultaneously entranced and taken aback by a ninety year-old advertisement for fur coats and stoles that pictured the “cute and cuddly” animals on the same front cover as the glamour girl showing off the product. Obviously the counter-commercial propaganda of animal rights organizations and activist group like PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has had a powerful and enduring influence on attitudes towards fur as fashion.

VISIT TO WOLFSONIAN BY THE INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S FORUM

This past Thursday large groups of persons attending the International Women’s Forum in Miami visited the Wolfsonian and received guided tours through the galleries led by museum director Cathy Leff and curators Marianne Lamonaca and Sarah Schleuning. Sixty-seven of the visitors stopped off in the third floor foyer of our rare books library and became the first visitors to view the newly-installed library exhibit, Advertising American Automobiles Abroad. Stepping inside the main reading room, the visitors were treated to an additional display of materials dealing specifically with women and gender issues including century-old books designed by European women graphic designers and American arts and crafts artisans. The presentation also featured all manner of ephemeral items and promotional materials featuring women in a variety of formats, including vintage postcards, advertisements, brochures, and display cards. Our guests appear to have been taken with one item in particular which I will now share with those of you following this blog. The object that caught their interest was Catalogus van de Tentoonstelling “De Vrouw, 1813-1913,” a catalog produced for an exhibition highlighting the work and achievements of Dutch women in the early twentieth century. The hardcover book features a beautiful art nouveau cover design by Wilhelmina Cornelia Drupsteen, but what made it especially unusual was that it included in its binding two silk straps that allowed the attendees of that earlier women’s conference to carry it away like a purse.

THE "OUT-GOING" LIBRARY EXHIBIT

This week I have been busy preparing interpretative and label texts for the installation of a new library display, Advertising American Automobiles Abroad. This display of promotional materials garnered from our library collection and loans by Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. and Leonard Lauder has been designed to complement Styled for the Road, an exhibition opening to the public in our seventh floor gallery this October 16th. The installation of a new display is always a busy and exciting time, but also bitter-sweet as it necessarily involves the dismantling of the previous display.

Today I would like to introduce those of you “out-of-towners” to our “out-going” display, Youth in Uniform: Selections from the gift of Steven Heller. Steve, an educator and prolific author of books dealing with graphic arts, donated these and many other rare items to our library following the completion of his recent publication, Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State. This exhibit will continue to live on in a virtual format put together by our digital library specialist, David Almeida and can be accessed at the following web address: http://www.librarydisplays.wolfsonian.org/
You can also access a more general selection of Mr. Heller's donation at:
http://www.librarygifts.wolfsonian.org/2008.htm

As we have limited display space in our library foyer, we often have to cut some items from our original checklist even though they are perfectly suited to the theme of the display. To remedy this loss, I am adding to today’s blog an image of an item that I would have liked to have included in the show had there been sufficient space. So without further ado, here is the…

LIBRARY OBJECT(S) OF THE WEEK