Wild Flowers of North America: Botanical Illustrations by Mary Vaux Walcott features more than 250 exquisite reproductions of Walcott’s celebrated watercolors of wildflower life. Edited by Pamela Henson, this more »
Category: Art and Design
“It’s alive!” During the spooky season celebrated around Halloween, decorations and costumes of classic pop culture creatures abound, like Dracula, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein’s monster himself. Our modern conception of more »
In preparation for a Chinese Object Study Workshop hosted by the National Museum of Asian Art (NMAA) in late August, I selected a sutra in the Freer and Sackler Library more »
What does it take to paint a wildflower that blooms for a single day in a deep forest? For Mary Vaux Walcott, it involved spending up to seventeen hours a more »
Imagine a beautiful seaside town view, of foaming waves crashing against the coast as the sun shines brightly and sailboats can be seen far in the distance. Heat shines down more »
Recently, the American Art and Portrait Gallery Library received a generous donation of Arion Press books from the collection of Dr. Ronnyjane Goldsmith. The Arion Press, founded in 1963, blends literature and art in creative and unexpected ways.
This post was contributed by Isabella Buzynski, 2022 Summer Scholars intern with the American Art and Portrait Gallery (AA/PG) Library. Isabella is currently attending the University of Michigan School of Information for the Master of Science in Information program.
This summer, I had the great pleasure of interning under the mentorship of Alexandra Reigle at the American Art and Portrait Gallery Library. I have continued an ongoing project to process and integrate the Art Students League of New York papers into the library’s existing Art and Artist File collection, comprising over 150,000 files of ephemeral materials on art, artists, art institutions, collectors, and special subjects. Day-to-day, this consists of pulling batches of Artist Files, deciding what items should be added to each, removing dozens of staples, stamping the items, making a mess, and then putting them all back on the shelf for researchers to consult. I have learned first-hand how the decisions that archivists and librarians make shape the historical record and have gained an expedited education in American art through the exhibition materials, news articles, and letters that I encounter. I also encountered some incredible stories, including that of Atlanta C. Sampson’s ninety-year career as an artist.