45 Photographs exhibit at the Wittliff Collections

Masterworks from the Wittliff’s Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection On view August 15 – September 28, 2008

With a few weeks still to go before construction begins on the new exhibition galleries, the Wittliff Collections present one more show on the seventh floor of the Alkek Library at Texas State University-San Marcos. 45 Photographs from the Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection will be on view August 15 through September 28, 2008.

The images in this 45-day exhibit are representative of the range of the permanent collection as it crosses the border between the U.S. and Mexico, and include one of the Wittliff’s oldest photographs, François Aubert’s albumen print Corpse of Emperor Maximilian, made in 1867.

Some of the more famous pictures include the 1945 Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima by Joe Rosenthal, Raúl Ortega’s 1995 signature image of famous revolutionary Subcomandante Marcos taken in the jungle of Chiapas, the 1956 Portrait of Georgia O’Keefe by Yousuf Karsh, and a vintage 1941 silver gelatin print of Ansel Adams’s Moonrise Over Hernandez.

On display for the first time at the Wittliff is the collection’s print of Jack Ruby Shooting Lee Harvey Oswald, captured on film in 1963 by Bob Jackson.

Also on the show’s long list of celebrated artists—more than 40 in all—are Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Kate Breakey, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Edward Curtis, Héctor García, Laura Gilpin, Graciela Iturbide, Danny Lyon, Lee Marmon, Richard Misrach, Garry Winogrand, and Joel-Peter Witkin.

The Wittliff Collections will be undergoing construction this fall to expand their public and exhibition spaces. For updates, and more about the Wittliff’s literary archives, photographs, exhibits, and events, call (512) 245-2313, or visit the Wittliff Collections

Alkek Library / Texas State University - San Marcos News

Tara Spies, Reference/Instruction Librarian at Texas State University, is now also the Art & Design Subject Librarian. Tara will assist with ordering books, periodicals, a/v materials for the Art & Design department.

Carla Ellard, Assistant Curator of the Wittliff's Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection, is now the bibliographer for MFA in Communication Design. The MFA in Communication Design is a relatively new program on campus with courses in typography, corporate marketing and identity systems, experimental book and web design.

Amon Carter Library News

Library Staff / Davidson Family Fellow News

Jonathan Frembling was promoted to Archivist and Reference Services
Manager at the Amon Carter Museum Library.

Nancy Palm, Davidson Family Fellow, presented a roundtable discussion in the library reading room in early July: "Thomas Cole's National Landscapes and the Context of Indian Identity Construction in Nineteenth-Century America: Preliminary Findings at the Amon Carter Museum."

Database & Access Update

The library introduced museum-wide access to JSTOR in spring of this year. Public Wi-Fi is now available in the reading room.

Library Exhibitions

Currently on view in the library reading room is Ephemeral Moments, 2006 by David H. Gibson (b. 1939). The handmade artist's book consists of three accordion-fold volumes and clamshell box, with twenty-seven archival pigment prints.

New Acquisition

Crane, Hart, 1899-1932.
The bridge / a poem by Hart Crane ; with three photographs by Walker Evans. Paris : Black Sun Press, 1930.

Dallas Arts District News

Dallas Arts District

Two of the new buildings in the Dallas Arts District, the Winspear Opera House and the Wyly Theater, are nearing completion and due to open within the next two years. As a season ticket holder of the Dallas Opera and the Dallas Theater Center (this puts me in a class of about 19,999 other season ticket holders), I was invited to preview, at different times, each of these venues, on the mezzanine of the Trammel Crow Center where their architectural models are kept. Administrators of the opera and the theater group were there each time to answer questions and give information about the future of their performing arts organization.

At the Dallas Opera’s preview the patrons could also make their ticket requests. Compliance with patron requests is based on several factors such as how long has the patron been a season subscriber (I’m good here; I’ve subscribed for the twenty-two years I’ve lived in Dallas. They wouldn’t let me count the years I subscribed to the Houston Grand Opera though.) Another consideration was how much you contributed financially to the opera. (I usually contribute $100 each year which is not very much in the great scheme of opera contributions. I might add that it will decrease next year since the price of tickets has gone up by 40%. Oh, well, I’ll be able to hear it no matter where I sit.) On a serious note though, the building designed by Norman Foster Associates of London looks wonderful. If you did the Arts District tour last October at the regional ARLIS meeting here you saw the building being built. It was behind the cyclone fence next to the Meyerson Symphony Hall. It will be covered in red tiles which were partly visible at that time. The organization has already received complaints about the color red. But at least it will be easily identifiable. Will it receive the nickname, “New Red”, as opposed to “Old Red,” the name of Dallas County’s first courthouse? Only time will tell what commonplace parlance will do. But all opera lovers who suffered through the bad acoustics and the too-big-for-opera size of the Music Hall in Fair Park for the fifty years it has been located there will be grateful for a new building that takes opera’s special needs into account.

The Wyly Theater, designed by Dutch architect, Rem Koolhaus, looked beautiful too. If you are wondering where this one is, the ARLIS attendees did not go far enough up in the District to see this site last year; there was a fence in the street before we got to it. It is designed to be a theater on the second floor with entry underneath on the ground floor. According to theater administration there won’t be a bad seat in the house. And it will be small enough for this to be true.

Ever the devil’s advocate, I had to ask what would happen to the Kalita Humphries Theater on Turtle Creek, currently the home of the Dallas Theater Center. This is the only theater Frank Lloyd Wright ever designed and joins two personal homes as his only work in Dallas. I was assured that it will still be used by other theatrical groups, but no one knows which ones at this time. I also asked about parking and was told that there was an underground garage leading directly into the Wyly Theater. Parking in the Arts District will be problematical if every theater is having an event at the same time. There are plans for a Dallas Area Rapid Transit station in the area in the future.

Also, both of these venues will be used by other performing arts groups as well as the ones for it is ostensibly built. The Dallas Ft.Worth Ballet and the Dallas Black Dance Theater, as well as a touring musical company will use the Winspear Opera House, and other local theatrical groups will use the Wyly. There are also plans for another theater to be built in the District for the theaters and performances which draw a very small audience.

-Gwen Dixie

Elizabeth Schaub attends Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians

Elizabeth Schaub, University of Texas at Austin, attended the tenth annual ACRL/Harvard Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 3-8, 2008. The week-long program focused on assessment of one’s own leadership abilities and an analysis of how well positioned one’s organization is to meet current and future challenges. Using the case study method, faculty from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, along with guest faculty from other institutions, facilitated discussion among the almost one hundred librarians attending the institute. The week long program allowed time for reflection and networking with fellow professionals from around the world.

Information about the ACRL/Harvard Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians can be found here http://www.gse.harvard.edu/ppe/highered/programs/acrl.html.

Kimbell Art Museum Library Profile

The Kimbell Art Museum Library opened in 1967. Its collection consists of 42,000 books; 4,800 bound periodicals with subscriptions to 155 current periodicals; 17,000 auction catalogues, plus microfiche collections, including the Witt Library Collection and Deloynes Collection; microfilms; and online-research databases.

The Library’s strongest area of collecting, corresponding to the Museum’s acquisitions, is European painting and sculpture from the Renaissance to the mid-twentieth century. This is followed by Asian art from antiquity to the nineteenth century. The Library also acquires materials on Mediterranean antiquities, Western medieval art, Precolumbian art, and African art. Reflecting its emphasis on European and Asian art, the Library includes hard-to-find sets of artist monographs, exhibition catalogues, encyclopedias, dictionaries, conservation materials, and auction catalogues.

The Library is located within the Kimbell Art Museum. It serves primarily Museum staff but is also open to art historians, especially faculty and graduate students from surrounding universities. Access is by appointment only.

The Kimbell Art Museum Library is a member of OCLC Online Computer Library Center and the Cultural District Library Consortium.

Submitted by Chia-Chun Shih, Librarian

McNay Art Museum Library News

Robert Beebe has joined the staff of the McNay Art Museum Library as Associate Librarian (part-time). He will assist with reference, acquisitions and collection development.

President's Column: Guadalajara 2008

Greetings ARLIS/NA, Texas-Mexico chapter members. As you all know, this year we are holding our annual chapter meeting in conjunction with the Guadalajara International Book Fair. I hope to see as many of you there. I know that you will find the fair and the city enlightening and exciting. If you don’t know Guadalajara or the book fair, let me tell you one of my unique stories. Once there, I know you will come away with your own special memories and favorites.

The venue is LARGE, and you will see books and meet book vendors from all over the world. Take the time to visit the Latin America and Caribbean vendor aisles. Last year, Cuba had several booths, and you will have the opportunity to purchase library material, as well as unique gifts you will never see in the States. Last year I bought a T-shirt with the Andy Warhol /Che Guevara prints screen printed on it. Because the photographer (Alberto Korda), who took that famous picture of Che, lived and died in Cuba, never receiving remuneration (not even from Andy), for what became an incredibly lucrative (to others) popular culture, iconic image… buying it from the Cubans just made perfect sense. It was a unique opportunity.

Each year, a country is honored at the book fair. This year, Italy is the country to be highlighted. I can only imagine the fabulous art books that the Italian vendors will showcase. It seems like a perfect venue for art librarians. I look forward to seeing you all there.

Regards,

Selene