Born in upstate New York, Thérèse Bonney(1897-1978), was a photojournalist whose work reflected a wide variety of interests and subjects. She studied at the University of California at Berkeley and Radcliffe College in the 1910s. Bonney immigrated to France in 1919 where she became one of the first ten women to graduate from the Sorbonne and founded the first American illustrated press service in Europe, the Bonney Service, in 1924.
March 17th is widely celebrated as St. Patrick’s Day but it also happens to be the birthday of notable childrens’ book illustrator Kate Greenaway. Born in London in 1846, she studied art at various schools, such as the Heatherley School of Fine Art, and began her career in watercolors and cards. She was a contemporary or Walter Crane and Randolph Caldecott and good friend to Victorian art critic John Ruskin.
Hello! My name is Julia Murphy and I am currently a contractor at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. My primary task is to ingest the Hirshhorn’s collection photos onto the DAMS, Smithsonian’s Digital Asset Management System, which acts as an online image database for long-term storage and access. In between contracts I found myself with a two-week break in January so I reached out to Anna Brooke, head librarian at the Hirshhorn Library, and asked if she needed any assistance. Although my volunteer time was short I tried to help in any way. As a volunteer in the library I re-shelved books, repaired torn covers, and answered reference questions. A major part of my volunteer time was devoted to scanning slides for a curator who needed them for a presentation about a future exhibit. These slides included images not found online and were from her personal collection so they were valuable and needed to be digitized. Of the 70 the curator asked for, I was able to scan, edit, and share 50 of them.
This post was written by Mae Colburn, a graduate student in the History of Decorative Arts and Design program at Parsons the New School for Design. Her focus is textiles. This post first appeared on the Cooper -Hewitt, National Design Museum’s Object of the Day blog.
Novelties in Laces for Furniture and Decoration is a set of one hundred and fifty color lithographic prints depicting over one hundred and ninety unique tassel and trim designs. The designs incorporate gimp, braid, galloon, bows, flies, and bobbles. Color reveals details of ply, twist, pile, and luster, and highlights and lowlights provide a sense of dimension. The prints are housed in a custom storage box bearing the date 1880. Also in the box is the leather-bound presentation folder, pictured above on the left. The folder describes the object’s place of origin, Vienna, and maker, Philip Schwarz, “Manufacturer of Laces.” Also on the presentation folder is Schwarz’s business address, “ZiegerGasse 11,” in what was then an important business district near the major shopping street, Mariahilfer Strasse.
Last year, the Smithsonian began a partnership with Gale, part of Cengage Learning, to digitize content, package it, and make it available through libraries around the world. Gale debuted the first of these products with digital versions of the Smithsonian magazine and Air & Space magazine’s archive. The Smithsonian Libraries is excited to be a part of the second group of products, Smithsonian Collections Online: World’s Fairs & Expositions: Visions Of Tomorrow and Smithsonian Collections Online: Trade Literature & The Merchandising of Industry. Assessment of the items and scanning is already well underway. Get an inside look at what goes on behind the scenes with William Bennett, contract conservator for the project!
Ever come across a Smithsonian Libraries image in our Galaxy that you wish you could frame? The Galaxy of Images contains thousands of beautiful images scanned from our collection. Now’s your chance to own and display a treasured piece of the Libraries in your home or office!
What makes pop-ups pop?
