#bkmlibrary

Happy Birthday, Walt Whitman! 

Today marks the 200th anniversary of the American literary icon who influenced Brooklyn’s artistic and intellectual life in the mid-1800s. Did you know that Whitman was an acting Librarian at the Brooklyn Apprentices’ Library? The predecessor institutions of the Brooklyn Museum, the Apprentices’ Library and the Brooklyn Institute, engendered cultural legitimacy in the rapidly expanding village of Brooklyn, and fostered a creative atmosphere that bolstered Whitman’s talents. These institutions played a role in Whitman’s writings throughout his adult life—from Brooklyn Standard, a poem recounting Revolutionary War hero General Lafayette laying the cornerstone of the Apprentice’s Library building, to the multiple Brooklyn Daily Eagle art reviews praising the Institute’s representation of Brooklyn artists. An art aficionado himself, Whitman inspired many young artists, including painter Walter Libbey whose portraits are currently on view in our fifth floor Luce Visible Storage and Study Center. His deep-rooted connection to Brooklyn as a whole is pervasive in his literature: Crossing Brooklyn Ferry describes the common commute of a Brooklynite traversing the East River from Brooklyn to Manhattan, and Leaves of Grass was published here. Even after moving away, Whitman’s lasting love for the borough caused him to return multiple times over the following decades, and his legacy remains alive in Brooklyn today. Come visit the Brooklyn Museum and help us celebrate two centuries of Walt Whitman!

We’ve been having a lot of fun sharing materials with visitors through our Pop-Up Library! In honor of World Book Day, here is a list of the Frida-themed materials that have been featured at our events. In addition to the traditional art books featured, there are also a beautiful selection of zines created by emerging artists, collectives, and presses.

Here is a complete list of the creators who put together these small works of art and learning:

Amy Bravo Brett Gundlock Claire Hurtig Colectiva Cósmica Fredrik Andersson Homie House Press Julia Arredondo Keet Geniza Maryam Adib Muchacha Fanzine Mujersitas Collective Press Press Sky Cubacub Théo Paul When Language Runs Dry: A Zine for People With Chronic Pain and Their Allies

As always, if you are interested in viewing these or any other materials, the libraries are open for research by anyone, so we encourage you to schedule an appointment.

This First Saturday I’ll be continuing the Archives as Raw History tour series, focusing on the theme of the Museum’s history of accessibility. One of the central features of our Kahlo exhibition focuses on her disabilities. This spurred me to look into the Museum’s history of working with disabled artists and visitors. The first mention I’ve found dates back to 1930 when the Education Division held twice yearly events for children with disabilities. For this installation of “Archives as Raw History” materials from the Archives will be available to browse for visitors to learn about Brooklyn Museum’s history and come to their own conclusions by reading primary source documents.

In 1970 the Community Gallery held an exhibition called Touch’N’See that was comprised of works by blind and partially sighted people. The success of this exhibition and a previous investigative study from 1966 spurred the Museum to consider building a “Touch Gallery” for both sighted and blind people that allowed objects from the Museum’s collections to be handled. The project was pursued for several years with support and collaboration from the New York Association for the Blind, the American Foundation for the Blind, The Jewish Guild for the Blind, and other. Unfortunately the project never received adequate funding to come to fruition. With the city fiscal cuts in the early 1970s and a change of administration in the Museum, the project was sadly abandoned in 1974. However, instead of creating a designated space for collections objects to be handled, the Museum has continued programs that invite visitors to experience certain objects in a multisensory approach. Today our Verbal Description and Touch Tour continues that legacy by inviting blind individuals and those with low vision to experience our collection through a descriptive gallery tour featuring tactile opportunities and other sensory engagement.

Other records from the Archives that will be available cover exhibitions that featured the work of disabled artists, for example the 1978 Bushwick: A community in Brooklyn Through the Eyes of Its Youth and National Exhibits by Blind Artists: 5th Annual in 1983, and the era from Section 504 in 1973 to the mid 90s, just after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Tour: Archives as Raw History will take place on Saturday, April 6, 2019 from 5:30–6:30 pm. 20 free tickets will be available at Admissions at 5 pm. Hope you can join us!

Author’s note: This post was written before the passing of Carolee Schneemann. So just want to reiterate her impact, her work was vital and radical and important to so many. Thank you for everything, Carolee Schneemann.

As we wrap up the first week of March we are also entering the final month of our show Half the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection. The exhibit features several items from from the library’s artists’ book collection including one by Carolee Schneemann called Video Burn. Organized in a calendar-like structure, it features drawings over television static and images of the female body.

Through her career Schneeman has worked extensively with video and analog film both alone, and incorporated into her “happenings” and performance art pieces. Her work Up to and Including Her Limits, featured super 8 double reels projecting continuously as the artist suspended herself from a tree surgeon’s harness, drawing as she swayed and moved around the space. The video footage included “Kitch’s Last Meal,” Schneeman’s 18 year old cat eating, and videotapes of previous iterations of this project. In our collection we have a thorough description of how to create this piece in a booklet that contains descriptions, diagrams, artist explanations, conversations with curator Daryl Chin, and printed reviews of the installation-performance.

Our collection also has Cézanne She Was a Great Painter, from January 1975. This book, compiled by Schneeman, contains her writings from the 1960s and 1970s: letters, notebook fragments, and performance scripts. Schneeman also includes autobiographical and manifesto-like pieces describing her attraction to painting, even as a child:

“I decided a painter named ‘Cézanne’ would be my mascot; I would assume Cézanne was unquestionably a woman—after all the “anne” in it was feminine. Were the bathers I studied in reproduction so awkward because painted by a woman? But “she” was famous and respected. If Cézanne could do it, I could do it.”

If you are interested in viewing these or any other materials, the libraries are open for research by anyone, so we encourage you to schedule an appointment.

As Brooklyn Museum prepared for Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving, I began searching through our library materials to see how we could contribute to this landmark show. I’ve previously written about the folio in our collection illustrated by Carlos Mérida, Mexican Costume, which is featured the exhibit, so I began to take a different approach. I wondered about contemporaries of Kahlo, women artists living and working in Mexico around the same time as Frida. From that search I learned about Lola Cueto, who also found herself interested in Mexican handicrafts and folk arts. She incorporated that interest into her paintings, but she is best known for design and construction of puppets and marionettes!

The Brooklyn Museum Libraries have some wonderful examples of her work. The first is a small book written by Roberto Lago with drawings by Cueto, called Mexican Folk Puppets, Traditional and Modern. Titeres Populares Mexicanos also by Lago features 40 aquatints illustrated by Lola Cueto. And finally, possibly most unusually, I found a collection of greeting cards by 20th century artists which were mailed to curators working at the museum over the years. Lola Cueto’s card, from 1948, wishes the recipient a “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year” and is signed by the artist.

The libraries are open for research by anyone. If you are interested in viewing these, or any other materials, we encourage you to schedule an appointment with us.

While the whole museum has been abuzz with Frida Kahlo-related activities and preparations for Appearances Can Be Deceiving, over in the libraries, we’ve been working on something fun for our visitors as well! Because our library is open only by appointment, we wanted to bring the materials straight to you by building a Pop-Up Library. In addition to our collection of monographs and exhibition catalogues we’ve purchased new materials focused on other women artists working in Mexico at the same time as Khalo all the way through artists working today. In an effort to support these emerging artists, we will have a collection of zines addressing issues of racism, body image, disability, feminism, politics, gender, sexuality, and class. Many issues Frida herself was passionate about and addressed in her work.

We will be in the Museum Pavilion periodically through April, please come by, say hello, and browse our new materials! And, as always if you are interested in viewing any of our other materials, the libraries are open for research by anyone, so we encourage you to schedule an appointment.

The Brooklyn Museum Libraries has a fantastic collection of pop-up books (both old and new), artists’ books, as well as beautifully illustrated works by the influential and acclaimed illustrators Walter Crane and Kate Greenaway. Are they books? Art? Sculpture? All we know for sure is they’re wonderful to look at!

If you want to see these books in action, the Libraries and Archives are open to everyone by appointment and we are always looking for a reason to show off these charming works of art. The titles can be found in our catalogue, as well as many others!

The Baby’s Own Aesop

Hercules Counts to XII

Robot

Ruckus Rodeo

Unwrap the Mummy

Walter Crane’s Painting Book

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: A Commemorative Pop-up

With this year’s Brooklyn Artists Ball honoring Nick Cave around the corner, I thought I would look into our historic balls to see if anything resonated. The themes of several of our previous balls had to do with material, design, and color, some of the first elements viewers notice about Cave’s works. The conceptual frameworks that underlie his work are much deeper than their materiality and surfaces. Cave’s Soundsuits primarily deal with racial terrorism, identity, and inequality in America. Cave has cited the celebrations and rituals of Mardi Gras, Carnival, and West African dress as sources of inspiration. The past Balls that, to me, resonated with Cave’s practice were the 1965 Festival of the Sun, the 1973 Silver Jubilee Ball, the 1978 Design Galaxy, and the 1988 Cleopatra Gala. This year’s Artists Ball (and After Party) is on April 16th. See you there?