An epilogue for a prologue

This post is an epilogue of sorts. The project to process, describe, and make accessible the Meyer Schapiro Collection at Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library is now complete. This post is also a prologue. Now that the collection will soon be available to the public, I can only imagine that new scholarly and historical […]

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Archival archeology: a working definition

As the project for processing and describing the Meyer Schapiro Collection comes to a close, I’ve come to realize how, like an archeological dig, I sifted through strata of documents, papers, images, photographs, and countless other mediums, to make an intellectual framework for Schapiro’s records. I first came across the linking of the term "archeology" […]

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Borrowing privileges: Leon Trotsky, André Breton, and Meyer Schapiro’s books

Once in a while, as an archivist, you come across records that are so extraordinary that you simply stop and stare: partly in awe and partly in puzzlement. This happened to me as I was processing Meyer Schapiro’s correspondence files several months back. I came across a letter from the well-known political thinker Leon Trotsky. […]

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Picasso, the FBI, and why he became a Communist

 I came across this clipping, Pablo Picasso’s "Why I became a communist," from Meyer Schapiro’s research files on Communism and art. Written in 1945 and sent by cable to the publication The New Masses (of which Schapiro was a contributor), Picasso wrote: "My joining the Communist Party is a logical step in my life, my work […]

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Illustrating The Raw and the Cooked: Lévi-Strauss and Schapiro

Last year saw the passing of Claude Lévi-Strauss, an innovator of anthropological studies and an expert on non-western myth and culture. His work has had lasting effects in cultural and anthropological studies and his legacy is as controversial as it is influential. Lévi-Strauss’ life also intersected that of Meyer Schapiro’s. In 1941, Lévi-Strauss was invited […]

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Winter cheer : the archival edition

Now that the first major snow storm of the season has descended, perhaps a little winter cheer is in order. But how do you convey that through an archive? Here’s a thought…featuring visually stunning archival exhibition announcements that Meyer Schapiro collected and that are now rehoused, processed, and described. Leave it to an archivist to […]

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Meyer Schapiro’s exhibition and studio visits

Meyer Schapiro, known as a prominent art historian, was also an artist. In a previous post, I wrote about Schapiro’s own art work housed in his archive and about the publication, Meyer Schapiro: His Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture, which illustrates a range of his artistic endeavors. Given his fondness for art practice, it is no […]

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Provenance and primary sources : an adventure

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, one component of the Meyer Schapiro Collection includes a comprehensive series of exhibition announcements he collected spanning from the 1920 through the 1990s. Being ephemeral in nature, exhibition announcements tend to be dispersed across collections or discarded. When they are in fact retained, they are treated as miscellaneous […]

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