Annual Reports of the Picture Collection
Excerpt from Javitz, Romana, Excerpted Annual Reports of the Picture Collection, New York Public Library, 1929 – 1939, transcripts prepared by Anthony Troncale, originally published in Words on Pictures: Romana Javitz and the New York Public Library's Picture Collection. Photo Verso Publications LLC, 2020, Permission of New York Public Library
Excerpted by Diana Kamin
Annual Report of the Picture Collection, 1929 (excerpted from Bulletin of the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations, New York, Vol. 33, p.428-429)
The year saw the accumulation of a plan by which it is now possible for the Picture Collection to keep abreast of the great tide of illustrative material coming to it as gifts from all sides. For years an appalling quantity of picture material has been accumulating through lack of enough associates to care for or classify it adequately. After some three summers’ work, a scheme has been evolved which has made it easier to handle all incoming gifts at once and roughly classify the great store of accumulated material. Through the development of this scheme all pictures in the collection, classified or unclassified, are available for immediate use. Pictures of society in a Southern Hot Springs resort in 1870, Balzac in slippers on the streets of Paris, and ward healers’ activities during a Presidential campaign were found in a few minutes’ consultation of this previously inaccessible material.
The constant criticism of the Collection has been that, although there were many pictures, there were few modern ones. Because the growth of the Collection has depended primarily on gifts, some subjects have been better represented than others. To remedy these conditions the work of classification was put on a new basis. Each month a fresh subject or source was assigned for classification to each assistant. Thus by the end of the year a greater diversity of sources had been tapped, and fresher material added to the Collection. For the first time newspapers and current magazines were regularly clipped. This policy has already made an impression on the public which can now find not only a picture of Zoroaster but also Commander Byrd; the Graybar Building as well as the Taj Mahal.
Each year has shown more and more that the public not only depends on the Collection for the actual use of the pictures, but also for all kinds of information pertaining to them. Where to buy prints, where to obtain free material on birds, what kind of print is best for reproduction in a newspaper article and how to locate illustrations in magazines are typical questions met with in a day’s work. To make such service satisfactory and also to help the schools, libraries and business firms turning to the Collection for advice in starting similar files, a card index of information was begun. This file indicates dealers in prints, and periodicals and books which yielded picture material.
All this work was made possible by the addition to the staff of pages who now carry the burden of cleaning, mending, filing and lettering of returned pictures – work that in previous years drained the energy of the trained assistants.
The steady increase in the number of borrowers and in the number of inquiries about pictures created a serious problem; curtailed hours of opening continued to work hardship on public and staff. Instead of decreasing, the circulation has steadily increased despite the fact that the Collection is open to the public afternoons only. The pressure during these five hours has become so great that the time allowed each borrower is inadequate and does no justice to the resources of the Collection.
Branches have continued to draw upon the fine prints in the Collection to supplement exhibits of books.
In surveying the year’s development, it is interesting to note that it is the art student above all others who derives the greatest amount of inspiration and help from this Collection. It was gratifying to hear at a recent banquet, one of New York’s distinguished artists say, “among the many opportunities offered the student in New York, the privilege of using the Picture Collection stands first.”
Annual Report of the Picture Collection, 1930 (excerpted from Bulletin of the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations, New York, Vol. 34, pp.422-424)
At the beginning of the year, the Picture Collection was growing at such a pace as to demand complete re-organization. The increasing and more discriminating use of the Collection intensified the existing problems caused by inadequate space and equipment, and a staff too small to serve the public.
In February, Room 100 was re-arranged. The cutting board, all work tables, and shelves for returned pictures were relegated to the stacks. For the convenience of the public, the desk for charging, discharging and registration was transferred to the entrance of the room. All routine classifying, filing, mending, cutting, etc. could now be done in the stacks near the files of pictures.
With this arrangement and open-shelf collection could be achieved. Previously, it had the character of a closed-shelf library. Each borrower was personally conducted to and from the stacks where the material is kept. The assistant waited until the borrower chose the pictures he wanted. This meant that only one request could be met at one time by one assistant. As the collection was restricted to card holders, the files were available for circulation only. No reference work whatsoever was permitted; those of the public interested in looking at pictures, were referred to the Reference Department.
Now, a clerical worker is left in charge of the desk in Room 100. This frees the trained staff from desk work. The staff can now give more thought, attention, and research help to the public. The public comes directly into the stacks and consults the files. The staff is scheduled in the stacks to assist. This change has enabled the borrower to become more familiar with the scope and possibilities of the Collection. By allowing the public to consult the files freely, the staff has gained more time for reference work and classification. The Collection is now available for reference as well as for circulation use. It is to-day vastly more useful and valuable tool, not only for the general public but also for other divisions of the Library.
Formerly, each picture before being issued was mounted on heavy-card board. The boxes were crowded to capacity. With increasing circulation and a parallel growth in the number of mounted pictures there seemed no end to the floor space the pictures would soon need. All mounting was stopped early in the year. As an experiment, pictures were circulated unmounted. This years’ experience has proved that the circulation of unmounted pictures is practicable and economical. It is imperative where floor space is limited. It has saved time, labor, and expense. It has decreased mending, cleaning, and filing work and has eliminated the awkwardness of the former method of handling. […]
The requests are covering broader fields. An afternoon’s requests have included such variety as : pictures of a footprint of an elephant, a lamp in a New York boarding house in 1860, a scene from the film play “Metropolis”, the button-wood tree in whose shade the Stock Exchange had its beginnings, a face laughing hysterically, an Hebraic dance, and a perpetual motion machine.
Much favorable comment has been aroused by the re-organization. Artists have expressed themselves as feeling a greater responsibility in handling the pictures, as they now feel that the Collection, its growth and welfare, is a matter of personal and professional pride. It is a source for ideas and as such indispensable to their profession. In the new and freer relation, the collection and its public have developed intimacy, consideration, and a more human quality.”
Annual Report of the Picture Collection, 1931 (excerpted from Bulletin of the New York Public Library, Vol. 35 pp.386-388)
The Picture Collection continues to attract the public in greatly increasing numbers and for more diverse uses. The circulation of 261,611 pictures in 1930 is an increase of 49.9 per cent over that of 1929 and 125 per cent over 1928.
Such statistics overlook the amount of reference work entailed in the circulation of pictures. Continually questions arise: the date of the picture, its source, where it can be purchased, what medium was used, where reading matter can be obtained on the subject, etc., etc. The picture requests demand research, time, and ingenuity. A local museum needed the detail of a pack on a donkey in ancient times and in early America; a school required the history of the wheel in agriculture; a department store was interested in early advertisements of corsets; a magazine cover artist asked for the color of a flea’s eye; a necktie manufacturer wanted internationally known waterfall as a basis for designs to be used in silk manufactured in Switzerland; for a stage set, a designer needed the lettering of an 1930 menu; and among myriad requests for illustrative material such subjects were included as – the use of lipstick in Japan; famous people who had committed suicide; historic examples of gift presentations; an Assyrian milking scene; and, sleeping garments worn by men in 1710.
The growth in circulation has necessitated many physical changes. During the summer the entire file was shifted to merge its arrangement in one alphabetic file, reading wholly from left to right. The cases were clearly labelled, and large guides were placed at the beginning of each row. The increased burden of filing returned pictures was simplified by the addition of special sorting shelves for each letter of the alphabet. To replace the former cumbersome closed folder for unmounted pictures, a new envelope was devised which is open at two sides. Pictures can now be seen and refiled without removing the folder from the file.
The next problem was the inadequacy and clumsiness of much of the classification. The subject headings had been based on precedent of collections primarily serving school needs. Broad divisions such as “Forms of Land and Water” were general. Such classifications are obscure where a public is not a specialized group. The Picture Collection is unique in the public it serves and must make its own precedents. Each picture should be of help to school teacher or artist, author or manufacturer. A careful scheme was mapped out. During the summer, work was begun on a section of the alphabet. Pictures were reclassified and cross-indexed, and much additional information entered on cards.
The first year of registration of borrowers throws light on the use of the collection. About one-third of the borrowers are teaching; some training classes in the department stores, others lecturing at universities. Another third includes theaters, publishers, advertising agencies, printers, barbers and wig makers. The rest is made up of the individual artist, from mural decorator to trade-mark designer.
Twice as many new pictures (64,207) were added during the year as were included in the previous year. The public follows with interest the growth of the Collection. More and more the gaps are being filled by gifts from the public. Often not finding the picture in our file, an artist will give a print from another source. Most welcome are the many gifts of proofs of designs based on research in the Picture Collection. Gifts during the year included 1,000 half-tones, 52 framed pictures, 39 volumes,5 subscriptions to magazines using the Collections, 50 posters, 155 photographs, 150 prints, 287 miscellaneous items.
Among the principal donors were the New York Herald-Tribune Books, New York Times Sunday Magazine, RKP Productions, Inc., Chile Exploration Company, Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, Columbia Pictures Corporation, North German Lloyd, UFA Films, Inc., Messrs. Lambert Guenther and Ferdinand Hutzi-Horvath.
Visitors from other libraries, business organizations, and museums come for advice, interested in the methods of classification, storage, and circulation peculiar to this collection because of its size and the varied interests it serves. Mail brings inquiries from all parts of the world. The All Union Lenin Memorial Library is starting a picture collection in Moscow. A model picture file was prepared to answer their inquiry.
The Collection is becoming widely known and it is flattering that this publicity has come solely from the borrowers. Local art schools have arranged for visits to the Collection as part of their courses. Professional guilds periodically remind their members of the opportunity this Collection offers to enrich the historic background of a design and to keep abreast of old and new technics. Despite the physical handicap of the stack space, the public does not cease to comment of the privilege it enjoys in having the picture files open for “browsing” and borrowing. The public is realizing that the Picture Collection is not an art file but a picture encyclopedia. As such it is a valuable tool for graphic presentation and for research.”
Annual Report of the Picture Collection, 1932 (excerpted from Bulletin of the New York Public Library, Vol. 38 pp.339-342)
For the first time since its beginnings fifteen years ago, the Picture Collection is housed in a room devoted entirely to it. In August the entire Collection was transferred to Room 73 of the Central Building. […]
The Collection now numbers 316,877 classified pictures in its files. The additions of new material during the year (44,034 pictures) and the discarding of poor material during the moving, raised the quality of the entire file. The gifts during the year had much to do with improvement in the type of picture the Collection offers. Gifts in 1931 numbered 4,617 photographs, 1,882 prints, 40,762 moving picture stills, 124 books, and 1,166 miscellaneous items. The principal donors during the past year included: Mr. Valentine Dudensing, Miss Cecil Castegnier, the New York Central Railway, the Frank G. Shattuck Company, Kurt H. Volk, Inc., the Autogiro Company of America, the Frick Art Reference Library, Mr. Jules J. Brodeur, the Culver Service, Mr. Ludwig Roselius, and The Bureau of Navigation.
The Picture Collection continues to show an increase in circulation. In 1931, there were lent 316,633 pictures, an increase of 21 per cent over 1930. This seems remarkable when one realized the unavailability of a good part of the stock at moving time, and the general unemployment among artists. Lending of pictures for school use was somewhat curtailed because the requests far exceeded the supply.
The most fruitful innovation of the year was requiring the public to present picture requests in writing. This was started to overcome the repeated difficulty encountered in understanding the public’s myriad accents, enunciations, and pronunciations. For example, a man searching for pictures of wharves and docks was repeatedly given those of wolves and ducks. From timesaver and interpreter, the written request has become a strong adjunct to the classification and purchase of new pictures. Requests in the language of the public give practical help in making cross-indexes from the subjects as called for to the subject as classified. The request is written according to the needs of the borrower and not as a cataloged subject-heading. The reader does not ask for a picture in zoology, but for the “profile view of a lamb”.
Economic conditions have strongly affected the year’s work; the use of the Collection by advertising agencies has been almost wiped out. Business firms have taken more interest in experimenting with new ideas and media to overcome the dullness of trade. As artists lost employment they made more use of the Collection for technique, style and ideas to keep abreast the market. More intensive studies were made to assure the sale of design and drawing.
Fad and fashions seem to crop up and die despite economic deflations; 1931 saw Eugenie hats, models of covered wagons, Matisse, and Scotch terriers. An interesting development has been the repeated request for pictures showing textures, the texture of walnuts, tree barks, wet pavements, and sparkling beverages. The year’s fads, slang, news events, scientific interests, world politics, diseases, fashions, and depressions appear in a day’s questions; requests for pictures of panhandlers, men on bread lines, beauty contests, interplanetary warfare, Godey brides, racketeers, gangsters’ machine guns, “gun molls’, hungry man eating, frail boy, hand knitting, baseball suit of 1898, degraded human being, illustrations of bartering, body floating in water, newsboy crying out “extra,” donkey braying, scurvy, baby carriage in Victorian period, flying geese showing feet in position, butcher cutting meat, theatergoers in seventeenth-century France.
Early in the year the Child Study Association asked for an exhibit of pictures suitable for hanging in a child’s room. Successful experiments were made in mounting pictures in inexpensive colored papers. This improved the appearance of the prints and helped to make the display thoroughly attractive. For the Regional Arts Council an exhibit on “Theatre Through the Ages” was prepared for display in a local theater lobby and a School of the Drama. For Seward Park High School, exhibits were arranged on the story of the alphabet, facsimile pages of the Aztec writing, color plates of illuminated manuscripts, old block prints of early presses, photographs of modern newspaper plants. The success of these exhibits encouraged continuance of this work, so that more than one hundred exhibits on various subjects are now available. Each is mounted on attractive background and is suitable for exhibition purposes. These exhibits are not restricted as to use and many individuals borrow them: for example, a letter carrier borrowed some to hang in his child’s room, some are broadcast each week from television station WINS to illustrate a series of lectures on art appreciation.
The Picture Collection is trying to represent current life in New York City in its files. With the co-operation of local firms and organizations, photographs were obtained of outstanding window displays, architecture, vehicles, fashions, vaudeville acts, the dance, etc.
The proximity of the Central Children’s Room and the Central Circulation Branch emphasizes the importance of the circulating privilege. The pictures go into the workshops of the city. In the theatre district the pictures are at work in a wigmaker’s shop and at the make-up mirror. On Wall Street, in a new office building, and in Radio City, walls are being painted from designs borrowed from the Library. To New Yorkers art means something caught within frames in a museum. To the Picture collection art is a live profession, hungry for ideas, inspiration, and experimentation.
Annual Report of the Picture Collection, 1933 (excerpted from Bulletin of the New York Public Library, Vol. 37 pp. 400-402)
This lean year accentuated the practical attitude of the public in coming to the Picture Collection. Essentially, these pictures are put to a bread-earning use.
There were 406,967 pictures lent during 1932, an increase of 28 ½ per cent over the 1931 circulation, 316,633. This indicated but meagerly the work involved, since, in general, each request requires research.
Gifts to the Collection amounted to 545 volumes, 1,727 pamphlets; 1,631 magazines; 5,580 prints; 17,024 clippings; 1,485 photographs; 1,352 cards; 128 drawings; and 2,734 moving picture “stills”. Through the generosity of Mr. A.A. Hopkins, valuable additions were made on military insignia and uniforms, nineteenth-century London, heraldry, and Dickens.
For the Picture Collection the year seemed built of alternating requests for Goethe, George Washington, and Spinoza, with lively interest in plaids and Persian frescoes, campaign bandwagons and beer-making. Mickey Mouse and the “forgotten man”, Radio City art and solar eclipses, the Victorian whatnot and the leg-of-mutton sleeve, stratosphere and marionette.
The Collection has the individuality and emphasis of the public it serves. Through the recorded everyday picture needs, numberless ideas, technics, attitudes, economic influence, stage conventions interweave to an extent that shows the live, contemporary character of the collection and its influence in the community. Rugs, stage-sets, murals, metalwork, and sculpture in the Radio City project, were designed with the aid of the Library’s picture files (both the bad and the better depending on that help), Exhibitions lent by the Collection enlivened lectures, store windows, theater lobbies, settlement houses, schools and homes. Because of the attractive style of mounting developed in the last two years, the public began to borrow prints for home decoration.
A cross-section of a day’s requests reveals the variety of needs answered pictorially: the American farmer’s beard, eye of a seahorse, lips, still life of a steak, modern clock numerals, windy day, moths working on fur, interplay of searchlights, lettering for street-naming plates, lying and liars, lovelocks, umbrellas and rain, park benches, position of a cock’s legs when crowing, peas in a pod, studios in Trilby’s time, Victorian baby carriages, factory roofs, ticket booths, and “whatever Arabs drink coffee from”.
This year the lack of a collection for school use culminated in a problem. The Collection has not fulfilled the double demands the public has made: that the Collection include pictures classified from the particular standpoint of teaching; and that, quite simply, it should become a general subject file. Within the limitations of inadequate funds, it has been impossible to do more that keep the file general in scope. Excepting that of the Queensboro Public Library, there is no other free, general picture collection in this locality. This turns some six hundred schools to the New York Public Library for pictures required in the syllabi. To handle the quantity of the requests and to avoid crowding out the general public, a restriction was imposed on the use of the files for school requests. They were all handled by a member of the staff scheduled and prepared for this work. She made the preliminary selection, choosing only such pictures as had been mounted to withstand the rigors of classroom use. Complaints were met with the explanation that this procedure prevented monopoly by first comers, since there were often as many as sixty requests in one afternoon for the “life history of the frog”, Silas Marner, or “Eli Whitney and the cotton gin”. The direct use of the files was closed to students and teachers in grade schools. Easier handling of crowds on Saturday afternoons, improved condition of pictures used in schools, and a fairer allotment of pictures to each request was gained.
The work of the year was much broadened by the aid of eight Emergency Relief Worker. Pictures in the original file (some 150,000) were stamped with an identifying possession mark, trimmed, and mended, saving much labor at the charging desk. The entire post card collection was reclassified. The collection of portraits was transferred to open type folders. Freed from the routine of filing returned and new pictures, the regular staff found time for more constructive work. The staff devoted the summer to renewed work on a list of subject heading. Constant inquiry from other collections in private and commercial libraries has brought to light the need for a printed list. The variety of professions this Collection serves makes it the logical source for such a guide list.
As a forerunner to the future printed description of the Collection and an answer to constant query and interest, an exhibit, or “ABC”, of the Picture Collection was hung around the room in alphabetic sequence. This exhibit chosen from the Collection’s own files showed the scope of subject and the types of pictures making up the Collection. Beginning at “A”, a nineteenth-century advertisement of suspenders was shown; next a color print of Aztec writing; nearby, a list of subject headings which included agricultural pests, anchors, attics, angels, apparitions, and auroras. From cheese, clowns, and crabs, the railroad signals, textures, umbrellas, weddings, and winter. Engravings, newspaper clippings, photographs, motion picture “stills”, museum color prints, and post cards joined to make an alphabetic holiday. The exhibit showed that the Picture Collection is primarily interested in the subject matter of the pictures and is equipped to give this interest a rich and varied expression.
Annual Report of the Picture Collection, 1934 (excerpted from Bulletin of the New York Public Library, Vol. 38 pp.373-375)
There is stimulation in the increasing use of the Picture Collection, despite three years of depression. In 1933, 467,897 pictures were borrowed. This was an increase of 14.7 per cent over the circulation of 1932. For three months no pictures were circulated though the branch libraries, a curtailment of service caused by insufficiency of staff to cope with increased work.
The collection continued to grow in size. During the past year 76.318 new pictures were added to the classified stock, bringing the total to 456,588 (total stock at the end of 1930 was 280,933). In addition to this file which forms the core of the collection, there is the reserve stock now consisting of approximately 21,000 clippings roughly classified, 1,000 volumes of bound magazines, and 3,000 illustrated books.
Funds for purchasing needed pictures was limited, and the collection depended almost entirely on gifts. The high percentage of useful material in the unsolicited gifts reflects the serious intent of the borrowers in building up the collection, on which they in turn depend. Gifts for the year include 200 volumes, 844 pamphlets, 3,061 magazines, 1,956 prints, 14,819 clippings, 4,735 photographs, 1,884 cards, 209 drawings, 13,167 moving picture “stills”, 67 photostat prints, and 992 posters. Principal donors were The Century of Progress Exposition, Mr. A.A. Hopkins, the Hurok Musical Bureau, Mrs. F. Luis Mora, the New York Times Sunday Department, Soviet Russia Today, the Van Buren Corporation, and Miss Frederica Warner. […]
The public took pleasure in the changing exhibits displayed during the year on wall space in the Picture Collection. Outstanding, was an exhibit of moving picture “stills”, selected and arranged to show cinema as an art form. This was a pioneer exhibit of its kind in this country, attracting much attention from public and press. It described the chronological development of the moving picture in Russia, Germany, and the United States, and the contributions of individual directors. Typical films from Sweden, France, Holland and Japan, were included. The exhibit was enlivened by posters, naïve advertisements of western thrillers and serials, delicate Japanese versions of American melodramas, and the bold, modernist interpretations of U.S.S.R. and Germany. Through the generosity of the firms exhibiting, enough material was left to form a permanent circulating exhibition the artistic development of the film here and abroad- an important addition, as it is the first public collection made from this point of view.
As in other years, requests kept pace with newspaper headlines. In the wake of Repeal came search for pictures of early whiskey flasks and Burgundy labels, King Gambrinus and juniper berries, treading grapes and British liquor advertisements. With unemployment were linked requests for pictures of slum clearance and the deterioration of buildings through disuse. Calls for Russian ornament, costume, and customs, swept in with Litvinoff’s arrival. Picture requests for pogroms, burning of books in other days, revolutions, the Century for Progress Exposition, Islamic art, NRA, and the “big bad wolf” cartoons, round out the year’s interests.
Although as usual the roots of the requests were in the news item and the current fad, an analysis of the year’s work with the public shoes a marked shift towards concentration on the American scene. In former years, designers asked for foreign sources and old period designs. To-day, the American artist finds his own background one of flowing richness hardly as yet tapped. Scenes of early American historical events, early views of American cities, the beginnings of the great industries, every graphic element of the natural resources. Ohio flatboats, Charleston balustrades, corn-cribs, cowboys, gold mining, cotton, the “Don’t tread on me” flag, filling stations, samplers, and silos- were used as a basis for fresh design.
Numerous public projects assigned to artists the problem of representing the American scene pictorially. In the research for factual bases for the mural, illustration, or miniature model, artists discovered the glamour and robust variety of American history. The privilege of borrowing pictures and taking them where the work was being done, brought the resources of the library into direct contact with the created design. A well-known American artist now painting a P.W.A. mural commented on the Picture Collection, stated that its development and growth were of importance to him because the form of his conceptions was often fixed by the kind of material available in its files.
Annual report of the Picture Collection, 1935 (excerpted from Bulletin of the New York Public Library, Vol. 39, pp. 284-285)
In 1934 a total of 667,967 pictures were lent. This represents a 42.7% increase over the 1933 circulation (467,897). The basic cause of this increase is apparent. The many artists hired under the Public Works Art Project to produce designs for the decoration of public buildings turned to the Library for the needed factual data. These murals demanded research, often requiring the assignment of a research worker for each dozen artists. This served to introduce the possibilities in the use of the Picture Collection to a large group of artists not previously familiar with its resources.
The registration records indicate an overwhelming change in the public. There is today a greater use of the Collection by free-lance designers and the “gallery” painter and sculptor than, as formerly, by the commercial art agencies. Artists of the caliber of Ruth Reeves, textile designer, Albert Johnson, scenic artist, Gaston Lachaise, sculptor, and Diego Rivera, fresco painter, regularly availed themselves of these library facilities.
In this connection it was most flattering to have the National Society of Mural Painters in April move that a vote of thanks be tendered to the New York Public Library for “such signal service to artists” as is offered them through the Picture Collection.
During the year 75,754 pictures were added to the classified stock. This brought the total to 530,509 pictures. As in previous years the generosity of the public response accounted for the large number of gifts. Included in the gifts were 157 volumes, 1,918 pamphlets, 988 copies of magazines, 6,207 prints, 25,727 clippings, 5,644 photographs, 1833 cards, 301 drawings, 10,452 moving picture “stills”, 31 photostats, 148 posters, 221 labels, 314 proofs of book illustrations. An important gift was that of the Public Works Art Project. The government gave as a permanent loan to the Library 91 fine prints and 20 paintings. This made a rich addition to the exhibits available for Branch Library use. An idea of how acute is the need for decoration and color enlivening in the Branch Libraries may be elicited from the fact that most of the pictures were immediately reserved for the next two years. Among the purchases made during the year, was a set of the color collotype prints published by the British Museum. With the Public Works Art Project paintings, these made the handsome beginning of a circuit collection of framed pictures for the use of the Branch Libraries. […]
Aside from requests that mirror the season and current fad, there is kaleidoscopic variety in a day’s inquiries: dead game being carried from the hunt; sports that might illustrate timing, saddle bags in 1812, the lighting of factories in 1900, unloading a circus, backstage in the Civil War period, straw hats in ancient times, pictures of forsythia as the basis of the color scheme of a projected New York Central streamliner car, industrial strikes, taxi dance halls, the vocal chords of a giraffe, designs for fabrics to be used for coffin linings, architecture in relation to stage design, history of bottling, drawings to show how cows convert food into milk, costume in relation to woman’s posture by decades (debutante slouch 1918, straight front 1900), typical newspaper headlines indicating crime waves, African signal drums, authentic turbulent skies, class struggle with mobs and soap box speakers, photographs of an automobile lying on its side.
Two incidents of the year epitomize the relation between the public and the Collection. A French designer felt it important to inform the staff that, although having worked in several capital cities here and abroad, he found this service unique. For the last three years, this designer who resides in Paris has spent part of his time in New York in order to have the use of this Collection for such of his work as required documentation. The second instance is that, at the opening of the first school window display in the city, the director thought it essential to include as preliminary training for entry into this field, a thorough familiarity with the picture files of the Library, which she considers indispensable.
Annual Report of the Picture Collection, 1936 (excerpted from Bulletin of the New York Public Library, Vol. 40, pp. 244-246)
That pictures as documents are an indispensable part of public library service is easily justified by the circulation statistics of this picture collection. During the past year, for use in studios, workshops, backstage and at home, 726,028 pictures were borrowed. This was an increase of 58,061 over the previous year, despite restrictions on school use and further restrictions on all material related to the subjects in demand for mural projects, e.g., the history of postal service. Born of the year’s news, fads, fashions, wars and discoveries were such picture requests as Van Gogh, Ethiopian flora and fauna, horrors of war, Quetta, helmets of the Bengal lancers, cattle dead in a drought, abstract paintings adaptable for embroidery designs, G-men, dude ranch clothes. Typical requests crop up each year: renderings of perfume bottles, a dowager type face, a chorine, the position of a goat asleep, the first roller coaster, a Roman emperor having his heels massaged by a slave, the advertising of soap between 1900-1920, and egg being fried on a sidewalk, a horse pistol, gastronomic maps, gardenias, Antichrist. Despite the variety of subjects presented the ends to which these pictures are used remain fundamentally the same.
Ninety-seven thousand six hundred and forty-six pictures were classified and the source of each indicated. With these added to the files, the classified stock totaled 625,668. In the four years since the Collection moved to its present quarters, the classified stock has increased ninety-seven per cent without increase in floor space or filing equipment.
In addition to the rich residue salvaged from discarded and duplicate material of other divisions, 50,994 items were received as gifts from the public. These included: 2,826 prints, 24,915 clippings, 3,047 magazines, 7,638 moving picture “stills”, 5,659 photographs, 191 labels, 389 samples of fabrics and papers, 116 posters, 782 proofs of book illustrations, 141 volumes. Through the generosity of Miss Susan Bliss, fifty engravings, mounted and framed, were presented for use in branch libraries. There are now available for circulation 104 framed prints.
Four exhibits were displayed in Picture Collection during the year. All of these exemplified possibilities in display emphasis on the subject matter of pictures. The first exhibit showed the development of the “Tree of Life” motif in ornament. Its significance was increased by the inclusion of ten facsimile color drawings made by artists on the Federal Art Project with detailed historical references and notes of origin and development.
The next exhibit “Announcements of Exhibits” aroused much comment in the trade journals interested in typography. More than 1,500 cards were received from which selection was made for the show. The changes in arrangement and choice of type, the more frequent modern use of color, excursions into stunt layout and surrealism made vivid the difference in fifty years of announcement cards. The earliest card on view (1870) looked excessively shy and discreet, delicate and completely unrelated in spirit to the exhibit it was announcing. Through the courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a selection of its announcements was displayed. It was interesting to overhear comment on how far this Museum excels commercial organizations in the use and arrangement of type. The cards, in recent years, have developed a style which instantly evokes the spirit of the exhibit advertised.
During the summer, pictures of “Peddlers and Vendors” were on view. The public found diversion in the lack of change between the eighteenth-century sausage vendor and the modern hot dog stand, between the seventeenth-century scissors grinder of Ostade and a modern New York scene. The three exhibits herein described are now part of the collection of 115 circulating sets of exhibits, which, when not on view in the Central Building, are sent to branch libraries.
Museums and art collections maintain collections of pictures selected as ends in themselves. It is only in a public library that pictures are organized as documents, not as good or bad art. Here the public come to make their own selection and find inspiration, stimulation, factual data, and opportunity for comparisons.
Annual Report of the Picture Collection (excerpted from Bulletin of the New York Public Library, Vol. 41, pp. 238-239)
Even a flat row of numbers discloses, though feebly, the enormous extent of the public use of the Library’s picture service. 824,443 pictures were borrowed for use as data, document or stimulation outside of the Library’s walls, an increase of thirteen and one-half per cent over the previous year.
Improvement in the picture stock, both in quantity and quality is marked. The stock now numbers 718,612 classified pictures; of these 94,170 were added during 1936. The greatest change has been in the rich addition of thousands of photographs. One well defined photograph will yield more information that three of four half-tone reproductions or artist’s renderings. Fewer pictures are needed for specific document because the quantity available is large enough to act as a comparative basis for selective elimination.
The gifts of the year (104,167 items) helped change the caliber of the picture stock. Especially welcome were photographs received from the Resettlement Administration and The New York Times. News-Week has cooperated to the extent of supplying us weekly with current news photographs. In addition to photographs coming to the collection by gift, some 10,000 photographs of paintings were purchased together with a hot-press machine for properly mounting them.
Picture Collection is never far from the newspaper headline and fashion fronts. The year brought picture requests for labor unions emblems, sharecroppers, cooperatives, surrealism, Mrs. Simpson, Goya’s war etchings, voting booths, royal plumes and regalia, inaugurations, coronations, treatment of incurables in other ages, potter’s fields, dish gardens, fatherly faces, opening oysters, brand marks on cattle, effects of hard labor on hands, front end of a parade, a rural store hot stove-league, latch strings, insect wings, frowsy violas, parlor in an old-ladies home, black widow spiders, potted palms, sides of houses, a New York street showing a variety of social classes, leopards in cartoon handling, spot treatment of polo, machine forms, rhythm as in cogwheel, wheat, ship propeller and fern leaf, birds alighting, broken backs, and cows lowing.
There is so exhilarating a community in the usefulness of this type of library service that both the organization of the material and its development is never static. It keeps both staff and public alert and arouses a lively stream of cooperative support from the public from whom we receive an amazing percentage of constructive and understanding suggestion, always in the spirit of keeping the collection one of live preservation and availability.
More and more there is an obvious need for lending collection of framed prints. The good taste of the general public as it is disclosed in the requests we receive would amaze the average museum staff which bemoans the lack of “art appreciation”. Every picture from our limited collection of color facsimiles of unfamiliar and often decidedly not “popular” art) primarily framed for use in the branches) has evoked many urgent requests for the privilege of temporary home use.
Several governmental projects involving the handling or organization of pictures as document, turned to the experience of this collection as basis for their own guidance. The staff of the Visual Education Project of the Board of Education studied our methods of selection, classification, storage, mounting, etc., before embarking on the organization of their own visual aid service. The photographic section of the Resettlement Administration took into consideration our experience with a general public’s picture needs when it attempted to set up criteria for documentary pictures. Likewise, the American Index of Design organized its files of pictorial data on precedents established within the collection.
Bi-monthly exhibits were held during the year in this room. The most interesting one devoted to graphic representations of Fabulous and Fictitious Beasts and Monsters. It included some twenty-five color facsimiles made for the exhibit by artists on the Federal Art Project. These were detailed close ups of monsters from Greek pottery and Chinese paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On view were man0made monsters, such as Frankenstein from a recent film, the harpies Ulysses may have seen, the Loch Ness sea serpent, the unicorn, and hundreds of fabulous forms man has imagined to add to the myriad beasts he found in the air, the sea and on earth – devils, gods, and angels. The original drawings of Boris Artzybasheff to illustrate The Circus of Dr. Lao presented monsters of modern imagination.
In May a repeat performance of the Picture Collection 1933 pioneer exhibit on the Moving Picture as an Art Form was arranged at the Hudson Park Branch. For this new display, new material was solicited and received on the history of projection machines, on use of sound and color, and on the animated cartoon. For the latter, the United Artists Corporation contributed, as a permanent part of the exhibit, some of the original drawings in color, characters in Walt Disney’s technicolor productions. Since this exhibit, we have received requests for it from many parts of the country. It was on view at the University of Chicago this winter.
Annual Report of the Picture Collection, 1938 (excerpted from Bulletin of the New York Public Library, Vol. 42, pp. 245-247)
Pix, picts, photos, prints, clips, illustrations, data, document, stats, scrap, swipes- by every other name 870,398 pictures were borrowed by the public in 1937, an increase of 45,955 over 1936.
On picture requests, current fad offsets recent horror; movie romance overshadows a kingly coronation; a ventriloquist’s dummy takes precedence over a mayor’s election, a Moorish fabric design overlaps the war in Spain. A spotlight chancing across the picture problems of the past year stops at such as these: pictures of Charlie McCarthy, of crispy heads of lettuce, of the Big Apple, of demi-tasse cups, of people sleeping fitfully because of noise. Others searched for pictures of the ancient Greek type of hot-water bottle used in healing, clenched boxing gloves, Japanese women shaving their eyebrows, extraction of a wild animal’s tooth, a party-line telephone, the safety device used in painting industrial smokestacks, a horseman picking up an object, the earliest advertisement of ready-made dresses, sausage casings, bananas in a bunch, the Marco Polo bridge in China, a skewer, a cartoonish cow, a school slate with felt edges, “silent life” for a restaurant signboard, the color of stripes in an Arab tent, nineteenth-century clothespins, a clothing store dummy, candy pulls, rats deserting a ship, soap-box derby, top hats, a human skeleton in repose, and again Charlie McCarthy.
More than 80,000 pictures were added during the year, bringing the total stock to 798,594 pictures classified for circulation and reference uses.
The first exhibit of the year was on “Soil and Land”, a collection of large photographs prepared by the Resettlement Administration, through the personal interest of Mr. Roy D. Stryker. This handsome series which graphically presented the struggle against erosion, the fight against wind and dust, was given for permanent exhibition use. The most important show was a loan for exhibition on the “Spot Use of Drawings”, a pioneer display on this subject. The use of drawings is new and has developed in the trail of the magazine era. Offsetting the photographic story-page and in advertisement, these drawings, of artistic merit in themselves, supply imagination, good design, and spontaneity of observation. The original drawings on view gave the Picture Collection public an important opportunity to study the variety of techniques and viewpoints. Many artists who are regular contributors to the The New Yorker, New Masses, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, and the art editors of these magazines, made possible the success of the showing.
In the spring the Federal Art Projects asked permission to exhibit in Picture Collection the work of its Poster Division. The artists on the project had expressed themselves strongly on the importance of their work being displayed here, at the place which has become the busy cross-roads of movements in contemporary art. The exhibition of posters proved enormously popular and resulted in much renewed interest in the silk-screen process by which they were made.
Throughout the summer, representative framed pictures selected from the exhibit collection were on view. Much interest was evinced in the simple methods of framing and the success with which inexpensive prints (often merely clippings from magazines) may be mounted for fuller enjoyment as wall decoration. A concise description of methods of color reproduction was included. The addition to the framed picture collection this year stressed early American paintings and Chinese art.
In March this division took over, on an experimental basis, the preparation of interchangeable display units for the sixteen spaces provided in the bulletin cases outside the Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street entrances to the Central Building. With little precedent to follow, the problem resolved itself into one of trial and error until reasonable permanent methods and usages of materials were established as practicable for display purposes where consideration must be given to weather, sunlight, taste, and timeliness. Experiences so far have been fruitful in establishing guidance for three-dimensional display within the narrow compass of this type of exhibit case.
A correspondent of a foreign newspaper, arriving at Picture Collection one day, apologized for suddenly covering his eyes. He said it was all too, too colossal and quite horrible to see such potential power, such organization of quantity. To him these pictures were like disease ready to go into the population and penetrate its life. He saw these files as germs of limitless ideas.
Annual Report of the Picture Collection, 1939 (excerpted from Bulletin of the New York Public Library, Vol. 43, pp. 259-261)
This Collection persists as the cross-roads of pictorial inquiry. It cannot hide its head in the sands of time. The rays of news, the light of invention, the beams of public attention and the glitter of current fashion penetrates its daily use. In 1938, picture seekers asked for jitterbugs, doves of peace, a hen sleep, a lion’s paw, a Victorian hand-clasp, a Chinese baby left alive after an air raid, bowing diplomatic personages. Chamberlain, old ghettos in Prague, bored faces, interior of a manhole, Wasserman’s tests, examination of a horse’s teeth, sparks, grave robbers, a woodchuck’s shadow, “gingerbread” facades, a raindrop, a peg-leg, a shoulder of beef, and ear trumpet, a garbage scow, old steam trains on the Sixth Avenue “El”, profile of Jefferson for the new coin, a portrait of anyone with the surname of McCoy, hatpins in 1880, the color of Lord Nelson’s eyes, dry brush drawings, Swedish modernist furniture, world’s fairs, labor in art, old-time spelling bees, the crutch in other ages, extravagance and squandering.
Ancient Egyptian daily life was the theme of the first exhibition of the year in the Picture Collection. The display was made up of colored engravings published in Paris in 1844 by Jean Francois Champollion and recent photographs made in Egypt and lent for this occasion by Donald Stern. The modernity of the daily activities, furniture making, the sports of wrestling and fishing, etc., the simplicity of the draughtsmanship and the beauty of texture were sources of ideas to the many artists who viewed the show.
From June through October a selection of three hundred pictures from the original drawings by William Steig, lent by The New Yorker, magazine, a candid comment on the “Greetings” of the native New Yorker in his daily “Hello” and “Goodbye”. The entire exhibition was a pictorial speculation on man’s history as a continuity of entrance and exit, on-going and coming. From coming to and fro, through real and imaginative dimensions of time and space, Birth and Death, were presented, leave-taking and welcoming, hail and farewell. A print after Masaccio showed the Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, a picture by wireless showed Hitler entering Vienna. “Arrivals and Departures” was widely reviewed with interest in local magazines and newspapers and brought many appreciative responses from the public.
Recent Accessions were displayed next. These included a group of provocative new British posters issued by the London Underground Railway. The American artists found a fresh approach in these designs.
In the last year 79,100 pictures were added to the classified stock which now consists of 877,405 pictures. Gifts during the reach reached a total of 79,642 items. 1,800 Resettlement Administration photographs have been classified and cross-indexed for circulation use.
Instead of being welcome, the increases in the use of the Picture Collection are met with apprehension. Despite a rigid plan of control, the circulation of pictures for home use in 1938 was 870,028. Such use represents the limit of the capacity of the present quarters. It is far too large for the present staff to cope with unless there are added many supplementary clerical workers. To keep the circulation within bounds, a restriction was introduced to curtail the number of pictures that may be borrowed at one time. Although this did not cripple the service, there was much protest and much ensuing inconvenience. The only gain was a little more time for attention to each individual. A further curtailment was the stoppage of messenger service to the branch libraries for school requests. On the face of it, this seems to indicate a failure on the part of the Library in its function of working with schools. But it is a patiently sensible attitude, for pictures as visual aids is a problem of the school system; as such it should be solved by the Board of Education libraries. For the public library to supply such pictures is like the supplying of textbooks; it would involve large quantities to fill mass requests. […]
The use of the Picture Collection has grown excessively, out speeding the numerical growth of staff, supplies, equipment and room. Reference use is increasing; the space at the tables is being used more extensively by persons sketching directly from the pictures. They prefer the simple availability of this Collection which obviates a long search through catalogues and volumes. If such reference use were discouraged it would be most unfortunate, as there is no other large, general, comprehensive picture collection in this city.
The Picture Collection has been growing, functioning, developing since its start in 1915. By now, surely it has established itself as a necessary part of library service. Makeshift furniture, lack of proper equipment and supplies have retarded the service to the public; it has become unnecessarily awkward and time-consuming. While it is true that the Collection is serving the public, it is doing so under overpowering difficulties for both the public and the staff. Natural development of the use is becoming stunted. Here is a spontaneous opportunity for influence and direction in the fields of adult and juvenile education, and the industrial and fine arts. A constructive, coordinated plan should be entered into for the reestablishment of this Collection on the basis of the extent to which the community depends upon it. An allowance for such a plan would be a productive investment in materials which play a permanent, creative part in our lives. The Picture Collection has reached an end stage in its present setup. It cannot keep on serving the community without a fresh start based on the validity of its function in the Library.
This is the decade of the candid camera, the moving picture film, picture magazines, picture newspapers; of color photographs, animated cartoons and an impending television. One regrets that the Library cannot keep up with these newly available resources of visual education and experience. In this section of library activity one may observe that pictures arouse the desire to read for further acquaintance through words with the subjects gleaned from pictures. Intellectually, aesthetically, for fact-finding and for recording, for teaching and for propaganda, pictures have become a stimulating part of our lives. The Library can further maintain its function of enlightenment in a deep and penetrating way by offering the public a free use of all kinds of pictures, especially pictorial records of the story of America and her peoples.