Tag Archives: manuscripts

On Display @ Kunming City Museum: Barney Rosset, Publisher-Hero as Combat Photographer in China

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Columbia University Libraries/Information Services’ (CUL/IS) Rare Book & Manuscript Library (RBML) is pleased to announce the opening of Barney Rosset, Publisher-hero as Combat Photographer in China, an exhibition at Kunming City Museum, in Kunming City, Yunnan, China, which features a collection of RBML’s photographs of China from World War II by Grove Street Press publisher Barney Rosset.

Astrid Rosset at the opening of Barney Rosset, Publisher-Hero as Combat Photographer in China at Kunming City Museum (Photo: Arthur Bijur)

The exhibition, which opened on February 20, was co-curated by Bob Bergin, a former U.S. Foreign Service officer; Astrid Rosset, Barney Rosset’s widow, and Karla Nielsen, Curator of Literature at RBML. The curators chose approximately 100 images from the collection, which were then digitized by the RBML and printed by the Kunming City Museum.

The photographs in the exhibition were taken by Rosset during his time with the U.S. Army Signal Corps in China toward the end of World War II (1944-1945). In 1945, Rosset was tasked with documenting for the United States that Chinese soldiers were willing to fight. The photographs depict Chinese and American soldiers in training and combat, the devastation caused by the Ichi-Go operation (The Battle of Henan-Hunan-Guangxi), the largest Japanese land campaign of the war, the Japanese retreat, and the signing of the surrender in Nanking. Rosset joined the Chinese troops at Kweiyang, the deepest point of Japanese penetration before they began to retreat.

Little documentation from this period remains in China and the newly opened Kunming City Museum was eager to mount an exhibition of Rosset’s photographs. According to Bergin, Rosset (who passed away in 2012) wished that his photos of a difficult period in Chinese history could be shown to China’s new generations.  The exhibition includes digital prints of his photographs, copies of letters he wrote home during that period, and documents that demonstrate Rosset’s interest in China throughout his life and career.

Rosset bought the fledgeling Grove Press in 1951 and transformed it into the leading publisher of avant-garde literature and political writing. Grove published Che Guevara, Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, and Malcolm X.

Concurrent with the brick-and-mortar exhibition in China, the RBML has created an online exhibition containing many of these images, which can be viewed on the exhibition website.

Columbia University Libraries/Information Services (CUL/IS) is one of the top five academic research library systems in North America. The collections include over 12 million volumes, over 160,000 journals and serials, as well as extensive electronic resources, manuscripts, rare books, microforms, maps, and graphic and audio-visual materials. The services and collections are organized into 22 libraries and various academic technology centers, including affiliates. CUL/IS employs more than 450 professional and support staff. The website of the Libraries is the gateway to its services and resources: library.columbia.edu.

Rare Book & Manuscript Library Acquires Archive of Russian Émigré Poet Lev Loseff

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Columbia University Libraries/Information Services’ (CUL/IS) Rare Book & Manuscript Library (RBML) is pleased to announce the acquisition of the papers of Lev Loseff (1937-2009), noted Russian émigré poet, literary critic, professor of Russian Literature at Dartmouth College, and a lifelong friend and authoritative biographer of Nobel Prize Laureate Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996).

 

Brodsky & Loseff. (Photo: Loseff Family Collection)

Born Aleksei Lifshits, Loseff was the son of Vladimir Lifshits, a well-known Russian poet. He graduated from the Leningrad State University and soon after started writing poetry for Russian children’s magazines. In order not to be confused with his father, he changed his name to Lev Loseff.

The collection, which contains approximately 40 feet of linear material, is comprised of manuscripts, poems, correspondence, photographs, and autographed first editions of Loseff’s work, as well as a significant number of subject files on Joseph Brodsky. Brodsky’s correspondence, drawings, typed and holograph manuscripts, and books with inscriptions cover the period 1969 to 2001. Some of the photographs cover an even earlier period in Brodsky’s life in Soviet Russia. The collection also includes legal papers relating to Joseph Brodsky’s will.

“These papers represent an important addition to the already rich collection of Russian materials to the Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European History and Culture at RBML,” said Tanya Chebotarev, Curator of the Bakhmeteff Archive.  “His correspondence with well-known Russian émigré intellectuals including Sergei Dovlatov, Ivan Elagin, Konstantin Kuzminsky, Leonid Rzhevsky is complimented by his research materials on these significant representatives of Russian Diaspora.”

Loseff immigrated to the U.S. in 1976, and spent several years in Ann Arbor working for the Ardis Publishers while obtaining his American doctoral degree. In 1979, he accepted a position at Dartmouth College where he worked until his death. He published 14 well-received collections of verse, as well as numerous works of literary criticism.

The collection offers valuable research opportunities on Russian émigré literary circles and Twentieth-century Soviet literary culture. The collection will also enhance the research and outreach activities of both the Harriman Institute and the East European Studies Center, both recipients of recent NEH Summer Institute grants for the study of America’s Russophone and East Central European diasporic communities. The Loseff collection constitutes an important complement to Brodsky materials already held at the Beinecke Library, Yale University, The Russian National Library, St. Petersburg, and the Green Library, Stanford University.

Columbia University Libraries/Information Services (CUL/IS) is one of the top five academic research library systems in North America. The collections include over 12 million volumes, over 160,000 journals and serials, as well as extensive electronic resources, manuscripts, rare books, microforms, maps, and graphic and audio-visual materials. The services and collections are organized into 22 libraries and various academic technology centers, including affiliates. CUL/IS employs more than 450 professional and support staff. The website of the Libraries is the gateway to its services and resources: library.columbia.edu.

“Obscene” – Wednesday, February 19, 7:00 PM

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A screening of Obscene, a documentary about publisher Barney Rosset

Introduced by the film’s co-director, Daniel O’Connor

Chang Room, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University

 Followed by a reception at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library

 


RBML Acquires Kitchen Sink Press Archive

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Columbia University Libraries/Information Services’ Rare Book & Manuscript Library (RBML) is pleased to announce the acquisition of the Kitchen Sink Press (KSP) archive, publisher of underground comics between 1969 and 1999 under comics artist, historian and publisher Denis Kitchen.

KSP published many of the most important names in comics history, which are represented in the archive’s files, including Harvey Kurtzman and Will Eisner, two key figures of 20th century comic art.  Kurtzman (1924-1993) was the founding editor and creator of Mad magazine and later founded the satire publications Trump, Humbug, and Help!, and co-created Little Annie Fanny for Playboy.  Eisner (1917-2005) is recognized internationally in the field of sequential art, a term he coined, and created The Spirit in the 1940s and ‘50s. In part through his work with KSP, he became the acknowledged pioneer of the graphic novel; his collection of stories A Contract with God is widely credited with establishing the form as a unique and viable literary form.

“These archives do far more than simply document comics history; they are a chronicle of the cultural and social history of the twentieth century,” said Karen Green, librarian and developer of the CUL/IS comics and graphic novels collection.  “Kitchen Sink Press was so much more than merely an underground press, publishing everyone from giants of the early newspaper strip such as Al Capp and Ernie Bushmiller, to mid-century innovators Will Eisner and Harvey Kurtzman, to underground pioneers such as R. Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, and Art Spiegelman.  As a result, in both publications and correspondence, the archive captures the changing mores of a turbulent time.”

The KSP archive’s correspondence files are a time capsule of 20th century comic artists from the 1930s onward, with over 50,000 letters, many of which contain draft artwork and both published and unpublished story ideas. Notable contemporary creators represented in the files are Robert Crumb, Charles Burns, and Neil Gaiman.  A sizeable percentage of the files are hand-written, documenting the artists’ careful lettering and illustrations.

Kitchen date-stamped virtually every letter on receipt, kept its envelope and attached a copy of his own response, creating a carefully preserved and deeply comprehensive archive. Kitchen’s early correspondence with Art Spiegelman predates his Pulitzer Prize-winning Holocaust memoir Maus by several years, and Kitchen helped publish some of the early Maus strips more than six years before Spiegelman began to publish them in Raw, the magazine Spiegelman co-edited with his wife, Françoise Mouly.

“Apparently I am a natural-born archivist,” said Kitchen.  “I will miss the rows of file cabinets full of handwritten letters, illustrated letters, and even letters that came out of devices called typewriters, all created before the digital age made traditional correspondence all but obsolete, but I hope they provide scholars with insights into the development of underground comix and the work of the multiple generations of creators I had the distinct pleasure of working with.”

KSP began publishing underground comics in 1969 when Kitchen, a comic artist before he became a publisher, began self-publishing after encountering payment problems for his own commissioned artwork. It was an alternative, idealistic publishing model, more artist-friendly than the work-for-hire commercial model.  Artists could keep their own artwork, retained the copyright to it after publication, and were paid royalties instead of flat rates – a significant departure from the commercial norm at the time.

Early on, Kitchen received requests for publication of unsolicited artwork and stories.  He published artists both well-known and virtually unknown, commanding quality above all other factors.  A lifelong comics fan and collector, he also corresponded with artists of previous generations and would republish their sometimes long-forgotten works.  In this, KSP took a path different from the other major underground comics publishers, and brought all of 20th century comic art under its umbrella, documenting the progression of the field in a way no other publisher did at the time.

The archive, which contains over 200 linear feet of material, embodies three decades of innovation and transformation in the field of comic art and visual storytelling and includes a roster of the most important names in the industry.  Correspondence, publishing and editorial files, mechanicals, original art and mock-ups, business files and more comprise the meticulously preserved collection.

“One of Columbia’s great strengths is the history of American publishing in the 20th century,” said Michael Ryan, director of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library.  “Few libraries have archival holdings as deep and as rich in major commercial publishing as Columbia.  The acquisition of Denis Kitchen’s spectacular archive builds on and adds to this impressive array of material.  It would be hard to find someone more important than Kitchen in the business of comics in the later 20th century.  He helped launch the careers of many of the major comic artists of today.  His archive, when opened, will prove indispensable to researchers in the field.”

This acquisition supports a major collecting strength of the RBML, the history of publishing and related archives, with notable recent additions including the archives of Granary Books, the Dalkey Archive Press, Ballantine Books, and the papers of Barney Rosset, founder of Grove Press.  Additionally, it is the latest development in CUL/IS’s support for research, teaching, and learning with comics and graphic novels.  Since its beginning in 2005, a growing circulating collection of such graphic novels at CUL/IS has inspired scholarly inquiry, as well as academic writing and coursework, including The American Graphic Novel, a course co-taught by Columbia University Professor Jeremy Dauber and former DC Comics president Paul Levitz, and a long-running summer course on comics as literature.

Columbia University Libraries/Information Services (CUL/IS) is one of the top five academic research library systems in North America. The collections include over 12 million volumes, over 160,000 journals and serials, as well as extensive electronic resources, manuscripts, rare books, microforms, maps, and graphic and audio-visual materials. The services and collections are organized into 22 libraries and various academic technology centers, including affiliates. CUL/IS employs more than 450 professional and support staff. The website of the Libraries is the gateway to its services and resources: library.columbia.edu.

Rare Book & Manuscript Library Acquires Granary Books Archive

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Columbia University Libraries/Information Services’ Rare Book & Manuscript Library (RBML) is pleased to announce the acquisition of the archive of Granary Books, one of the country’s most significant artist book publishers operating today.

Founded in 1981 as a distributor, Granary Books began publishing under the direction of Steve Clay in 1985. Granary Books’ mission is to produce, promote, document, and theorize new works exploring the intersection of word, image, and page.

“It is a privilege and an honor to have the Granary Books Archive acquired by Columbia University and to be part of a growing number of independent small presses whose papers are held in its Rare Book and Manuscript Library,” said Clay.

The archive includes thirty-year’s worth of production files for limited edition books by renowned artists, graphic designers, printers, and poets, including Nods, a collaboration with John Cage, Barbara Fahrner, and Philip Gallo, and titles by Charles Bernstein, Cecilia Vicuna, Jen Bervin, Johanna Drucker, Emily McVarish, Anne Waldman, and Jerome Rothenberg.  Other notable artists include John Ashbery, Ted Berrigan, Joe Brainard, Francesco Clemente, Robert Creeley, John Yau, Leslie Scalapino, Kiki Smith, George Schneeman, Buzz Spector, and Ron Padgett.

Granary Books has also published trade editions of exhibit catalogs, out of print and first edition poetry, and books about books, particularly artist books – notably Johanna Drucker’s The Century of Artists’ Books.  The archive includes Steve Clay’s extensive correspondence with writers and printers, and other artist book press proprietors, as well as electronic records, including almost two decades of email.  Additionally, the archive includes primary source materials from several important New York School and LANGUAGE poets not otherwise well represented in the RBML collections.

The Granary Books archive complements the BOMB Magazine records and Kulchur Foundation records in the RBML, which include materials by many of the same artists and writers that Granary Books has published.  This collection connects many of the collecting strengths of the RBML: artists’ books, publishers’ archives, and the archives of significant twentieth-century book designers.

“For years, Granary Books has been assiduously mapping the rocky terrain of contemporary American poetry,” said Michael Golston, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University. “Columbia has scored a major coup in acquiring the archive – generations of scholars will work on these materials, shaping and reshaping the history of the art and of the discipline.”

Columbia University Libraries/Information Services (CUL/IS) is one of the top five academic research library systems in North America. The collections include over 12 million volumes, over 160,000 journals and serials, as well as extensive electronic resources, manuscripts, rare books, microforms, maps, and graphic and audio-visual materials. The services and collections are organized into 22 libraries and various academic technology centers, including affiliates. CUL/IS employs more than 450 professional and support staff. The Libraries’ website is the gateway to its services & resources: http://library.columbia.edu/.

Tues., Oct. 22nd, a Celebration Concert: “The Ulysses Kay Project” @ Columbia

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 Ulysses Kay

 

On Tuesday, October 22, 2013, at 6:00 pm Columbia University Columbia University Office of the Chaplain’s Concert Series will feature the Harlem Chamber Players at St. Paul’s Chapel at Columbia University 117th Street and Amsterdam (See, map @ no. 12).  This concert is part of what the Harlem Chamber Players have titled “The Ulysses Kay Project”.The concert will feature performers:

Tia Roper – Flute

Ashley Horne – Violin

Orlando Wells – Violin

Audrey Mitchell – Viola

Lawrence Zoernig – Cello.

They will perform Kay’s: Prelude for Unaccompanied Flute, Flute Quintet and Selected String Quartets

It is a salute to the completion of Columbia University Libraries, Rare Books & Manuscript Library s work archiving, as Jennifer Lee, Curator for Performing Arts noted, “a treasure trove of material relating to all aspects of the composer’s work, from manuscript sketches to finished scores, including correspondence, photographs, programs, and his professional files.”

Michael Ryan, Head of Columbia’s Rare Books & Manuscript Library, at the time the Columbia received these works, commented, that Kay was “[a] prolific and important composer of contemporary symphonic, chamber, and choral music, Kay also wrote five operas, the most substantial and last of which, Jubilee (1976) and Frederick Douglass (1991), were based on themes from African-American history.” Ryan also noted that, “Kay was a formidable and versatile composer.”  It is amazing that we are approaching the 70th Anniversary of the New York Philharmonic premiere of Ulysses Kay’s first major work Of New Horizons: Overture at what was then West Harlem’s stunning Lewisohn Stadium which is now the site of City College of New York’s North Academic building.

Kay’s connection with Columbia goes back to 1946 when he was awarded the Alice M. Ditson Fellowship in Composition and studied with Otto Leunig.  He also was the winner of the BMI Prize for his work Suite for Orchestra, which Dean Dixon and the American Youth Orchestra premiered in 1945 and A Short Overture, which received the George Gershwin Memorial Award in 1946.

The Rare Book & Manuscript Library (RBML) is Columbia’s principal repository for primary source collections.  The range of collections in RBML span more than 4,000 years and comprise rare printed works, cylinder seals, cuneiform tablets, papyri, and Coptic ostraca; medieval and renaissance manuscripts; as well as art and realia.  Some 500,000 printed books and 14 miles of manuscripts, personal papers, and records form the core of the RBML holdings.  One can find literary manuscripts from the 14th century to the papers of authors Herman Wouk and Erica Jong.  Archives as varied as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Random House, NGOs such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International-USA, and the archives of Columbia University are available for research.  The history of printing, graphic arts and the performing arts are strengths of RBML.

RBML Exhibition— “Ernst Reichl: Wide Awake Typographer”

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Kempner Gallery

July 8 – September 13, 2013

RBML Reichl Exhibition

The Rare Book and Manuscript Library is delighted to present a major exhibition of the work of Ernst Reichl (1900-1980), German-American book designer, active and prominent in New York/American publishing from the 1930s into the 1970s. A ‘whole book’ designer, Reichl believed in the harmonious totality of the package and the value of one design vision for all its parts, and became one of the top trade book designers, prolific and award-winning. He actively promoted the profession and high standards in book publishing, by example and through writing, teaching, and exhibitions. A serious reader (he read broadly and seldom designed without reading the manuscript), Reichl was also a scholar, and a fine writer. The latter activity was an unexpected discovery in his papers, given to Columbia by his widow, Miriam Reichl, and the catalyst for this exhibition.

Martha Scotford, exhibition curator, Professor Emeritus of Graphic Design, North Carolina State University (NCSU), assisted by Kezra Cornell; Master of Graphic Design candidate, NCSU. This exhibition has been supported by a Columbia Libraries Research Grant, and the Reese Fellowship for American Bibliography and the History of the Book in the Americas from the Bibliographical Society of America.

Note on exhibition title: from Reichl’s comment on the card for Joyce Carol Oates’ The Wheel of Love (Vanguard, 1970): “J.C.O. enjoys using typographic devices of all sorts to express herself… and many other oddities, which require a wide-awake typographer.”

For more information on the exhibition, please see: information.

For exhibition hours, please review: hours.

Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Butler Library, 6th floor East, 535 West 114th St., New York, NY 10027

Now Online: Jack Agüeros Papers, 1914-2012

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Agüeros pictured in 1967, far right, then the deputy director of the Puerto Rican Community Development Project–the nation’s first Puerto Rican anti-poverty organization

(Image credit: Agüeros Family)

The papers document the life of Jack Agüeros, a Puerto Rican-American poet, community activist, translator, playwright, educator and a former director of El Museo del Barrio.  The papers reach as far back as his high school yearbook and include his personal and professional correspondence over fifty-one years, drafts of published and unpublished work ranging from plays and novellas to a description of Agüeros’s experiences riding the New York City subway’s from 1987-1989.  Agüeros saved and documented his research (for poems translation work and lawsuits); he framed his hate mail and carefully stored his fan mail from students and fellow poets.  The Jack Agüeros Papers include artifacts from his collection of old tools and metal findings, detailed records of his submission rejections as well as copies of his accepted works, timelines and ephemera from his many readings, slides from gallery installations at El Museo del Barrio, and many of the articles that he wrote for New York newspapers.

See, “The Agüeros Archive: Preserving New York’s Latino Heritage” at Columbia E-News.

See also, “Columbia preservará historia de hispanos en NY” at El Diario.

Now Online: Joseph McCrindle Papers, 1895-2003

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Joseph McCrindle was a literary agent, art collector, and philanthropist. He founded the Transatlantic Review in 1959, and created the Henfield Foundation which awards grants to arts, music, and social justice organizations in 1977.

The collection contains both personal and professional papers of Joseph McCrindle. The professional papers are centered on the records of his literary agency, while the personal papers include photographs, correspondence, and ephemera related to McCrindle and his family. See, http://findingaids.cul.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_10299614/summary%3E

McCrindle was born in 1923 to Odette Feder and J. Ronald McCrindle and raised primarily by his grandparents on the Upper East Side of New York. He attended St. Paul’s School in Manhattan before attending Harvard University where he earned his BA. He served in World War II as a translator and, after his service, attended Yale Law School where he received his JD in 1948.

McCrindle worked briefly in publishing and on Wall Street starting his own literary agency where he worked with authors such as John Updike, Philip Roth, and L.P. Hartley. In 1959 he founded The Transatlantic Review, a literary journal dedicated to publishing both American and British writers. The journal ceased publishing in 1977, and McCrindle remained editor for the entire life of the magazine.

McCrindle was also an enthusiastic and discerning art collector. He began collecting art and antiquarian books at a young age; over the course of his life amassed a large and impressive art collection with a special focus on old master drawings.

McCrindle’s lifelong interest in the arts is reflected by his establishment of the Henfield Foundation, now known as the Joseph McCrindle Foundation, a philanthropy dedicated to promoting arts, music, and social justice.

Columbia to House El Diario Photo Archive

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Watch the video to learn more about the El Diario collection.

So much of New York’s history has been lived, sung and reported in Spanish.  With the great migration of the 1950s, what had long been a relatively small Latino community in New York became a thriving center of Puerto Rican life and culture.  But in the past half century, the community has grown and diversified. Today, Mexicans, Dominicans, Ecuadoreans, Colombians, Peruvians and Cubans have joined Puerto Ricans and comprise about 30 percent of the city’s population.

Columbia students and faculty, and others interested in the lives of New York’s Latinos, have a new resource to learn about that community. El Diario La Prensa, the nation’s oldest continuously publishing Spanish-language newspaper, has given the University some 5,000 photographs documenting the lives of New York’s Latinos, their struggles and their contributions to the city and its culture.

“I study New York, I teach New York and I’m seeing things I have never seen before,” said Frances Negrón-Muntaner, the collection’s co-curator, professor of English and comparative literature and director of Columbia’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, as she combed through 39 boxes of photos that will be housed in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library. “It’s the whole texture of Latino life, which is particularly relevant given Columbia’s location between Harlem and Washington Heights.”

As part of El Diario’s centennial celebration this year, some of those images will be exhibited this fall on the Columbia campus, at the Medical Center and elsewhere in the city, and some now appear on the newspaper’s website. “It’s a story we want to tell, the story of Latinos’ contributions to the city’s culture and politics, making New York a more inclusive and diverse place,” said Negrón-Muntaner.

The collection dates from the 1960s. Although earlier photos did not survive the newspaper’s move from Manhattan to Brooklyn several years ago, the collection includes photos of entertainers, politicians, community events, parades and sporting events: Mayor David Dinkins at the 1990 Puerto Rican Day parade, children at a Three Kings Day celebration in East Harlem, and a young Fernando Ferrer when he was running for Bronx borough president in 1986.  There is Tito Puente playing the timbales on Sesame Street with Elmo and photos of actors Raul Julia and Rita Moreno and singers Julio Iglesias and Ricky Martin, among many others.

There are images of tragedy, too—the funeral of a 6-year-old victim of child abuse and the 1990 fire at the Happy Land social club in the south Bronx that took 87 lives. Other photos illustrate community activism in the 1980s and ’90s. One shows a young man at a demonstration against police brutality holding a sign that reads, “I want to be a Puerto Rican leader, not a victim.”

“This is a unique and very important resource. It is a vivid chronicle of the social, political and cultural life of the diverse Latino population of New York that will be available not only to our faculty and students but will attract scholars from all over the world,” said University Librarian James G. Neal, vice president for information services. “Photographs have a very important place in how scholars do their research.”

Many photos will bring back memories for all New Yorkers: a flooded 14th Street subway station after a 1996 water main break near Times Square, the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and the Yankees winning the 1996 World Series.

The collection adds to photographic archives in the University libraries as well as to the documentation of the history of Latinos in New York gathered as part of an initiative with the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. Last summer the family of Puerto Rican poet Jack Agüeros donated a collection of his papers, videos and photographs. Neal said he hopes to add to the Latino archives as more individuals and organizations recognize Columbia as a repository for their collections.

“This means New Yorkers and beyond will have a better understanding of the Latino narrative,” said Erica Gonzalez (J’05), executive editor and managing editor of El Diario.  “That’s critical in a city that’s 30 percent Hispanic.”

El Diario, which merged with La Prensa in 1963 to form the largest Spanish-language daily in New York, has a long tradition of advocating for the city’s Hispanic population, as well as reporting local, national and international news. The photos are “a treasure of history,” said Javier E. Gomez, manager of El Diario’s centennial project. “To have the photos organized with the tender loving care they deserve and have them available to scholars and to the public is a thrill.”

—Story by Georgette Jasen

—Video by Columbia News Video Team