Le Chic Magazine January 1908
Eight Le Chic fashion magazines are currently patients in the Book Conservation Lab. The magazines came to us from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Library. They date from the early 20th century and were published in Vienna, Austria. The fashions are reminiscent of the costumes seen in Downton Abbey or Mr. Selfridge! Continue reading
Cover of Sue Coe’s “X”.
This post was contributed by Anna Brooke, librarian at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Library.
One of the Hirshhorn Museum Library’s artists’ books with a political message is X by Sue Coe. Coe is a British artist-journalist born Tamworth (Staffordshire), England in 1951. She attended the Royal College of Art, London. In 1972 she moved to New York City where she lives and works. Art and politics will be the theme for the Art Libraries Society (Arlis) conference which will be held in Washington, D. C. in the spring of 2014. Continue reading
When I moved into my apartment many years ago, I got rid of the old fashioned, worn out linoleum that reminded me of the floors of my childhood, but I was intrigued by the walls in the living room.
Artist Christo at the Hirshhorn. Image courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Gallery.
This post was contributed by Rita O’Hara, library technician at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Library.
At the March 27th public program “Meet the Artist” at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Christo engaged a full house in the Ring Auditorium with discussions of two current projects: Over the River, a 5.9 mile expanse of fabric panels which will be temporarily suspended over 42 miles of the Arkansas River in Colorado, and The Mastaba, a new permanent sculpture reportedly the largest in the world to be situated near Abu Dhabi. After showing images of his projects, Christo was very entertaining and gracious in answering any question from the audience. Continue reading
Andy Warhol’s Index Book
April 21-27 is Preservation Week! Preservation Week was created by the American Libraries Association to bring attention to preservation matters in libraries and to help the public maintain their own collections. In honor of this event, we will be featuring preservation-related content on the Smithsonian Libraries’ blog as well as our other social media outlets, like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. We encourage you to join the conversation! And if you’re in the DC area, check out our free event on Wednesday, April 24th!
The Conservation Lab received a very interesting patient from the American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery Library recently. The book is “Andy Warhol’s Index Book” designed by the artist in the 1960′s experimenting with the idea of the book as a work of art. Continue reading