Blog Posts by Subject: Art History

Our Digital Collections are rich with subway material including a collection of photographs by Alen MacWeeney that capture the quirkiness, diversity, and grittiness of late 1970s New York.

In honor of International Women's Day, we honor former Schomburg Center Photographs and Prints Division curator, Dr. Deborah Willis. In this interview, Dr. Willis discusses the BLACK PORTRAITURE[S] III: Reinventions: Strains of Histories and Cultures conference, her photography work, and her pioneering work at The Schomburg Center.

Any good youth services librarian will tell you creativity is a huge part of the day-to-day routine.

Exploring the works of Henri-Charles Guérard and his contribution to the history of art.

Little Artists encourages kids to be inspired by the work and life stories of master artists, and then create their own process-based art projects.

Today’s letter features correspondence between Arturo Alfonso Schomburg and Langston Hughes. In the excerpt below, Schomburg speaks with Hughes regarding acquisitions for The Division of Negro Literature, History and Prints—the forerunner to today’s Schomburg Center.

Treating and re-housing Coronation of the Virgin by the Trinity.

Please click the image to view Ambreen Butt's blog about '(Untitled) Dragon Woman' and the importance of giving "a face to the female in the black veil." The exhibition, 'Printing Women' focuses on Henrietta Louisa Koenen’s (1830–1881) collection and signals women’s continuing participation in printmaking as well as the Library’s longstanding commitment to acquiring and exhibiting prints made by women from around the world.

Culinary tours…global entrepreneurs…dangerous political weapons in America…Nazi art theft and the quest for justice…forensic DNA…the Tappan Zee Mega Project…the Gowanus Canal…. If any of these topics have piqued your interest, then please join us for an Author @ the Library program in October at the Mid-Manhattan Library.

From the sixteenth century on, men -- rather than women -- developed pattern books on which women based their needlepoint work. This blog explores the works of two late sixteenth and seventeenth-century women, Isabella Parasole and Maria Sibylla Merian, who overthrew these conventions, first by creating textile patterns for women and then by branching out into the study of natural history, a field that was dominated by male explorers and discoverers.

As a Paper Conservator, most of the objects that I treat are flat paper items, such as documents, maps, and prints. Recently, I worked on a more unusual project: an engraving on silk that came to conservation to be removed from its old mount and get better, updated housing.

On October 5, 1744, the city of Strasbourg threw a party that would last through the five following days. There were processions, ceremonies, arches of triumph, costumed children, music, dancing, banquets, fireworks, jousting, water games, allegorical figures, decorated barges, and pageantry of all sorts. It was a most splendid party.

“In plain sight, but overlooked, the gas station excites interest in Ruscha” (p. 21), but also serves as a document of the everyday world that co-exists with our routine and triggers our nostalgia as we see it change over time.

In “In Praise of Art Forgeries” Blake Gopnik argues that muddying the ability to authenticate art works, as Warhol’s Factory artists did (sometimes attributed to him, sometimes not) can help to bring positive attention to works themselves, rather than their purely monetary value. As many letters to the editor in response suggested, this article may well have been mostly tongue-in-cheek. I suspect that he is questioning the role of the authenticator. This questioning of the role of art authentication is in some ways similar to the artists' questioning of the role of the Academy in "The 

Other recommended works:

The Girl Who Loved Camellias by Julie Kavanagh The fascinating history of Marie DuPlessis chronicles the life of the courtesan who inspired Alexandre Dumas fils’s novel and play La dame aux camélias, Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La Traviata, George Cukor’s film Camille, and Frederick Ashton’s ballet Marguerite and Armand. Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, Greta Garbo, 

Welcome back to the Reader's Den! This month we'll be looking at The Judgment of Paris by Ross King, about a turbulent era in art history.

Although we may not know for sure that a certain artist consulted a certain manual, they provide important clues. In a way, these books tell a story about the history of art from the point of view of the practitioners.

Chi 709.4 Yi Ben Shu 一本书读懂西方艺术史 == Yi ben shu dong xi fang yi shu shi

In my efforts to rebel against the paper plate and crayon phenomena I created the kids art program "Creation Station". Every other Tuesday I pick a modern/contemporary visual artist and order some of the library's extensive monographs on that particular artist.