Blog Posts by Subject: Prints

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi's "The Death of Murata Sansuke" and John Trumbull's "Battle at Bunker's Hill" share striking similarities.

Interested in learning more about New York's role, and the early battles of the American Revolution? Inspired by Hamilton?

What's that ruckus we've been hearing in the Children's Room lately? A herd of elephants doing yoga?!

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

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.

For Preservation Week 2015, the Preservation Division will be giving lectures on caring for your personal collections. I am composing a talk entitled Be An Informed Consumer of Custom Picture Framing.

My devotion to Kermit has led to a love for frogs in print as well, from Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad books to Ken Kimura's 999 Frogs. And whenever I examine illustrated natural histories in the Rare Book Division where I work, I'm always on the lookout for Kermit's amphibious ancestors.

The Jerome Robbins Dance Division just completed a two year project to catalog our backlog of dance related artwork. We are thrilled to announce that a total of 4,349 objects were cataloged and are now available to the public for research. Retired staff member Susan Au was hired for this project and she researched, cataloged, and rehoused these materials. This blog post is taken from her final report on the project. This project was made possible through funds generously donated from the Friends of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, which is co-chaired by Anne Bass and Caroline Cronson.

Revolt at the Salad BarHave you seen the Library's long-running exhibition "Lunch Hour" yet? If not, this is your last chance, for it closes on Sunday, February 17. To whet your appetite, I'd like to present a delightful volume that was recently added to the Spencer Collection.

The work is Drôleries végétales (Vegetable Drolleries), also known as L'Empire des 

Recent Acquisitions: Prints and Photographs is on view in the Print and Stokes Galleries at The New York Public Library's Stephen A Schwarzman Building through June 30, 2011.

Presented in honor of the 100th birthday of NYPL's landmark building on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, Recent Acquisitions: Prints and Photographs features an exceptional collection of print and photographic works by contemporary artists acquired by the Library within the last decade.

The 

Did you know that The New York Public Library has an official color? I didn't either, and I've worked here since the Dark Ages (before the Internet). But we do, as I found out when I ordered new business cards recently. The color is red.

That's fine with me—I've always liked red (political considerations aside), and besides it gives me an excuse to select as the Spencer Collection Book of the Month for April a small volume containing two illustrations in vivid red. It is appropriate also because Easter falls in April this year.

The work is

Maura and I are thrilled that artist and seamstress Abby Glassenberg will be our special guest at March 5th's Handmade Crafternoon.  She has stopped by Hand-Made to answer a few questions about the books and people who inspire and inform her work.

There's a rich, centuries-long tradition of bird images in art and 

Katarina Bishop grew up all over Europe, but she isn’t an heiress. She has a Faberge egg, but she isn’t a Romanov. Kat is used to looking at a room and seeing all the angles, but that was before she stole a whole other life at the Colgan School only to walk away from it months later without a trace.

That was before everything went sideways.

While Kat was busy trying to steal a new, legit, life the family business prospered. When a powerful mobster’s priceless art collection goes missing it isn’t all that surprising that 

Here is my coworker Jen's report on the 2010 Teen Art Gallery.

Saturday August 28th was New Dorp Library’s second Art Gallery that I’ve been allowed to host in the branch… Each year has been a wonderful ball full of stress and excitement! I was constantly worried about having enough finished pieces to fill the room with color and give people a chance to see inside each artist's mind.

Each month we had 3 dates for teens to join us for our

When librarians at the New York Public Library assembled a vast portrait image collection in the early part of the 20th century, they incorporated some 1,358 images of or closely related to the French emperor, military and political ruler Napoleon Bonaparte, known as Napoleon I (1769-1821). The portrait collection they amassed, Historical and Public Figures: A General Portrait File to the 1920s, or simply the “Portrait File,” is part of the Prints Collection of the Miriam and Ira D. 

Books with movable flaps, pop-up pages, and other "interactive" features are known to librarians as "Toy and movable books" and more than a thousand examples can be found in the Library's catalog. Most are modern children's books, but the genre has a surprisingly long history, pre-dating even the dawn of printing, and most early examples were 

"A collection ... of the finest illustrated books that can be procured, of any country and in any language ... bound in handsome bindings representing the work of the most noted book-binders of all countries..."

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The Titanic disaster portrayed on a contemporary songsheet coverSometime in 1910, according to an often-repeated story that has acquired the status of legend, William Augustus Spencer visited the new central building of the New York Public Library, still

Mahlon Blaine illustration for 'Candide', 1930 (click for larger view)Our interactive reading of Candide continues with chapters 7-12. Here's a roundup of recent discussions...

"The diligence with which these gentlemen strip people!" American illustrator Mahlon Blaine chose the old woman's story as one of the full-page drawings for his 1930 edition of Candide. The exotic nude woman