Author Archives: Ted

Wisdom of the East Exhibition

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Yellow Tara (Vajra Tara), Tibet, late 17th to 18th century, gilded copper-zinc alloy (brass) with traces of polychromy, semiprecious stones, and silk
H. 7 3/16 x W. 6 3/8 x D. 3 1/2 in., Art Properties, Avery Library, Columbia University, Gift of J. G. Phelps Stokes (C00.1603.25).

Now on view in Avery Library’s Wallach Study Center for Art and Architecture is an exhibition of Buddhist art from Art Properties. Entitled Wisdom of the East: Buddhist Art from the J. G. Phelps Stokes Collection, the exhibition showcases a selection of works of art from Tibet, Nepal, China, and Japan dating from the 12th to 19th centuries.

This collection of over fifty sculptures and decorative objects was donated to Columbia in 1959 by James Graham Phelps Stokes (1872-1960), an alum of the College of Physicians & Surgeons and a New York City politician. His brother Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes was an architect whose projects included St. Paul’s Chapel on the Morningside campus. J. G. Phelps Stokes seems to have acquired his art collection during his travels abroad, his brother and he having visited Asia for the first time in 1892-93. Most of the art Stokes donated to Columbia represents the rich visual cultures of Mahayana (“Greater Vehicle”) and Vajrayana (“Diamond” or “Thunderbolt”) Buddhism.

In addition to this collection of art, Stokes’s papers and correspondence are deposited in Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The I. N. Phelps Stokes papers and architectural drawings collection is held in Avery Library Department of Drawings & Archives. The exhibition, curated by Roberto C. Ferrari in Art Properties, is open Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and will remain on view until September 14, 2018.

 

Avery Classics New Acquisitions 2017-2018 exhibition

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Monoprint by Christopher Stern from Something lived, something dreamed: urban design and the American West by William McDonough, 2004. (AA9105 M138)

New Acquisitions 2017-2018

Curator: Teresa Harris

June 4 – September 28, 2018
Monday – Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Avery Classics Reading Room, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library

A selection of new acquisitions from the past academic year is currently on display in Avery Classics. Materials range from Soviet photo journals to a hand-drawn copy of Vignola’s seminal treatise on the architectural orders to documents of The Architects’ Resistance (TAR), an activist movement formed by students from Columbia, MIT, and Yale in 1968.

Avery Classics trade catalogs in BTHL

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Chas. A. Millen & Co. Mouldings and building trimmings, stair rails, balusters, posts, stationary wash stands, wood mantels, etc., 1889. (AT4808 C38 1889)

Avery Classics has partnered with the Association for Preservation Technology to digitize 500 trade catalogs and make them available to the public through the Building Technology Heritage Library (BTHL) on the Internet Archive. Trade catalogs are an invaluable source of information on building materials, supplies and decoration. Avery Classics has one of the largest collections of architectural trade catalogs in the United States, and its collection is regularly consulted by historic preservationists. This is the first phase of a multi-year project to add Avery’s unique material to the BTHL, which already includes materials from the Canadian Centre for Architecture. The first phase of digitization focused on late-nineteenth century catalogs, along with later catalogs dealing with masonry, metal and paint.

Art in Life Exhibition: Art Properties & the MA in Art History Program

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Robert Nanteuil, Portrait of Louis XIV, King of France (1638-1715), 1666, probably third state of seven, engraving on paper, 15 3/8 x 12 1/16 in. (39.1 x 30.6 cm), Art Properties, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, Gift of Mrs. Frederick Paul Keppel  (C00.802.116)

Currently on view in Avery Library’s Wallach Study Center for Art & Architecture is an exhibition entitled Art in Life: Engravings by Robert Nanteuil (c. 1623-1678) from the Frederick Paul Keppel Collection at Columbia University. This exhibition is the result of a new curricular collaboration between Art Properties and the Department of Art History and Archaeology, in which candidates in the MA in Art History program conceive and implement an exhibition utilizing historic art work from the University’s permanent collection. During the 2016 spring semester, under the guidance of program director Frédérique Baumgartner and curator of Art Properties Roberto C. Ferrari, the students worked with a collection of 184 Nanteuil engravings that were a gift to Avery Library in 1947 by the widow of Frederick Paul Keppel (1875-1943), Dean of Columbia College from 1910 to 1918. The students also worked with the Conservation Lab in Butler Library to conserve one of the prints for this exhibition.

Robert Nanteuil trained as an engraver in his hometown of Reims, settled in Paris in 1646-47, and established himself as a portraitist to the court of the Sun King, Louis XIV, eventually becoming Designer and Engraver to the King. Over the course of his brilliant career, Nanteuil produced more than 230 engravings, the majority of which were portraits of contemporary French dignitaries, including the Queen of France, Anne of Austria, and her son Louis XIV. Most of the portraits that Nanteuil created were originally commissioned by wealthy students to decorate their theses. Today, no longer tied to the books and theses they once illustrated, Nanteuil’s engravings now primarily exist as art objects: the material traces of a master engraver and his practice. Sixteen of the prints in Columbia’s permanent collection have been brought together in this exhibition, both to illuminate Nanteuil’s career and shine a light on the nature of Keppel’s print collecting practice.

The exhibition is available for viewing Monday-Friday 9am-5pm until May 18, 2018, and is accompanied by an online exhibition at http://projects.mcah.columbia.edu/ma/2017/.

Please join us for a special Evening at Avery

Art in Life: Engravings by Robert Nanteuil (c. 1623-1678) from The Frederick Paul Keppel Collection at Columbia University
Lecture & Exhibition reception

Frédérique Baumgartner
Department of Art History and Archaeology
Columbia University
April 25, 2018
6:30 – 8:30 PM

Miriam & Ira D. Wallach Center for the Study of Art and Architecture
Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library


REGISTRATION REQUIRED
Sponsored by Avery Library and Avery Friends 

Avery Library remembers Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer (1930-2017)

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Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, architectural historian and Frank Lloyd Wright archivist, passed away December 31, 2017 at the age of 87.

A widely recognized expert on Wright, Pfeiffer authored more than 50 publications on Wright’s life and architecture. He was an apprentice to Wright at the Taliesin Fellowship from 1949 to 1956, and then studied architecture at the École Nationale Superiéure de Beaux Arts. From the time of Wright’s death in 1959 through 2012, he served as director of the Wright archives, curating and organizing the vast and incomparable visual and textual legacy of Wright’s life and works.

We, together with the community of Wright scholars and admirers, are thankful for Bruce’s lifelong dedication and his contributions to architectural history and Wright scholarship.

In 2012, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archive was jointly acquired by the Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library at Columbia and The Museum of Modern Art. As joint stewards, Avery and MoMA honor Pfeiffer’s archival stewardship with the Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer lecture series.

Additional notices:

The Chicago Tribune

AZ Central

Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation on Facebook

 

 

Panoramas

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PANORAMAS

Curator: Teresa Harris

December 18, 2017 – April 4, 2018
Monday – Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Avery Classics Reading Room, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library

Panorama is derived from the Greek words meaning ‘all’ and ‘view.’ For centuries, popular entertainment has utilized panoramic composition to transport viewers to far-away places like Athens or Versailles or to the midst of important historical events such as the Battle of Gettysburg. Panoramas have taken many forms from large cylindrical paintings to dioramas to photographic and filmic representations. The items on display in the Avery Classics reading room range in time from approximately 1825 to 1966 demonstrating sustained artistic interest in the genre. Most document urban centers and take the form of long prints that follow streets through cities as various as Tokyo, Leipzig, Paris, London and New York. They capture the built environment at a specific moment in time and record other important elements of society such as modes of transportation and contemporary fashion.

Avery Classics Viewbooks exhibit online

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New York : the empire city; fifty colored views. [New York: A. C. Bosselman], 1910.  AA735 N4 N477

Avery Classics is pleased to announce its newest online exhibit, Viewbooks : Window into America. Drawing on last year’s reading room display, Viewbooks : Window into America features a selection of 50 viewbooks from Avery’s extensive  holdings — more than 4,000 titles representing hundreds of American cities and towns. This online exhibit approaches the viewbook genre from two directions – geographic and topical. Subcategories include night views, disaster views and views of the developing West.  Through this exhibit  we hope to highlight our viewbook collection as an important source of documentation of the built environment in America in the late-19th and early-20th centuries and, as such, an important resource for our patrons.

CLIO record

 

Dealer’s Choice: The Samuel Kootz Gallery 1945-1966

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Adolph Gottlieb, The Sorceress, 1947, oil on canvas, 48 1/16 x 36 in. (122.1 x 91.2 cm), Art Properties, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel M. Kootz (C00.406).

Art Properties has loaned a painting to the exhibition Dealer’s Choice: The Samuel Kootz Gallery 1945-1966, now open at the Fralin Museum of Art, University of Virginia in Charlottesville. This exhibition focuses on gallery owner Samuel Kootz (1898-1982), who was instrumental in showcasing some of the biggest names in mid-century European and American modernism, including the Abstract Expressionists. He had galleries on East 57th St. and Madison Ave. for more than twenty years, and he authored two books on modern American art: Modern American Painters  and New Frontiers in American Painting.

The painting on loan from the Columbia University art collection is The Sorceress by Adolph Gottlieb, painted in 1947 and exhibited that same year in Kootz’s landmark exhibition Women, which also included work by William Baziotes, Robert Motherwell, Pablo Picasso, and others. Gottlieb’s painting was donated to Columbia by Kootz and his wife in 1960.

The exhibition at the Fralin runs from August 25-December 17, 2017, and then travels to the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York from January 21-May 20, 2018.

CLASSIC WRIGHT: Frank Lloyd Wright in Print

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Image credit: Frank Lloyd Wright, The disappearing city, New York [1932]. detail. AA9040 W93

CLASSIC WRIGHT: Frank Lloyd Wright in Print

Curator: Teresa Harris

June 26 – November 3, 2017
Monday – Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Avery Classics Reading Room, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library

In celebration of the 150th anniversary of Frank Lloyd Wright’s birth on June 8th, 1867, Avery Classics has staged an exhibition focusing on publications produced by and devoted to the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. The exhibition incorporates books from Wright’s own library alongside volumes already owned by Avery Classics. Thematically it explores Wright’s ideas concerning book design and the Japanese print, along with the reception of his work in Europe, mediated by publications such as Ausgeführte Bauten – in all its numerous iterations – and the Dutch periodical Wendingen. Finally, it allows the viewer a window into Wright’s creative process, following the evolution of a single manuscript from handwritten first draft through to publication.

 

Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library Remembers Hilary Ballon

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Image credit: NYU/Abu Dhabi

Image credit: NYU/Abu Dhabi

Hilary Ballon, former professor at Columbia University’s Department of Art & Archaeology, passed away on June 16, 2017 at age 61.

She spent 22 years at Columbia University, where she won the University’s three awards for outstanding teaching and chaired the Department of Art History and Archaeology.

After leaving Columbia she was Senior Advisor to the Mellon Foundation, University Professor at NYU, and Deputy Vice Chancellor of NYU Abu Dhabi.

Avery Library was privileged to work with Dr. Ballon throughout her career including two major exhibitions: Robert Moses and the Modern City (2007) and The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011 (2011).

All staff at Avery will miss working with her and with the entire community mourns her loss.

New York Times obituary