I Saw Bob

So, there is a patron who has now come in the library three times who totally looks like "Bob" from the 1990s television series Twin Peaks. I'm not talking about Bobby Briggs, Shelly's smart-mouth boyfriend; I'm talking about Bob, Laura Palmer's supposed killer. Bob who was seen briefly hiding at the foot of Laura's bed. Bob who totally gave me nightmares for years after seeing that show.

[If you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, see here, here and especially here.]

Before I go further, I want to say that this fear-invoking library patron is soft-spoken, seems quite gentle, and is always appreciative about what he learns during his visit. There's nothing at all in his behavior that suggests he's anything like Bob.

But it doesn't matter. I was really into Twin Peaks and it definitely lives on in my memory. Every time I see this patron, I'm startled and it takes me a moment to recover and act normally. I'm usually in the stacks or have my back turned or something when he comes in. I turn around and there he is.

This poor guy... it's not his fault that David Lynch decided to hire actor Frank Silva after catching the lighting designer and prop master accidentally on camera in a mirror (see here). It's not the patron's fault he resembles Bob, I mean Frank, at all.

Interestingly (and sadly), Silva died in 1995. So, this library patron is undoubtedly not him. My subconscious imagines he's a visitor from the Black Lodge all the same. My practical side, however, says "conquer your fears" and give him a hug the next time he comes in.

Then we'll see who's scared of who.

Why do you even call?

Just when I was starting to feel appreciated, I had a couple of weeks of "interesting" research requests via the phone.

The first person called me and wanted to know the title of a painting that was in an "Impressionist show the museum had a couple of years ago." This caller was more prepared than most in that she had the name of the artist and could readily describe the painting for me.

Okay, so, I know sometimes a show five years ago can seem like "a couple" of years, so I start as far back as 2000 to see if I can locate the work. Since 2000, we've had several exhibitions on Impressionism specifically or on themes/collections that included late 19th century French painting. The painter in question was a minor Impressionist, and before I went through all of the exhibition checklists, I listed the shows for her and asked if any exhibition titles rang a bell. None of them did. She said I must be missing some. I ask her again if she was sure it was at our museum and that it was in the last couple of years. She got a bit snippy and said that yes it was - on both counts.

I tell her I'll need some more time to pursue this and that I'll have to call her back. She's not gracious nor appreciative. Maybe I'm a masochist, maybe I've got some sick sense of duty to answer a question - even for a rude patron. I spend about an hour and finally find the answer. The work was in a show in the early 1990s! More than 15 years ago...

There's a part of me that can't wait to call her back and tell her how off she was (I don't). I call and start to tell her the name of the work and when it was on view when she cuts me off: she already found the answer; she had the catalog from the show and simply turned to the page to find the answer. She doesn't even say thank you for trying or "silly me, I should have looked there in the first place," or "sorry to have bothered you." Whatever.

The next patron calls and wants to inquire about the value of a print by a Mexican artist. When someone says "print" (and I am convinced it's some sort of limited edition print, not a poster) and "value" in the same sentence, I immediately direct them to a large gallery in town that truly specializes in all sorts of old master and contemporary prints: lithographs, intaglios, woodblocks prints, literally everything. This is their primary business and they can tell someone right away about authorship, numbering, and ultimately, value. Additionally, they know about many, many artists, globally. A look at their list of artists reveals a number of nationalities, including Mexican.

So, the patron tells me flat out she just wants the number to a gallery or appraiser that will help her determine the rarity and value of this print. I proceed to give her the phone number of the aforementioned gallery. Then, she proceeds to tell me that she knows everyone that works there and "has been around [city name]'s art scene probably since before I was born." She knows that they specialize in prints; she also knows that they only know about European artists. I tell her that that isn't the case now and list for her the names of the non-European, mainly the Latin and South American, artists. She proceeds to tell me again that she already knows about this gallery. So do you want the number or not? No, she doesn't - she says she can look it up in the phone book herself. Goodbye.


If you already know the answer to something - and on top of it you like to flaunt your knowledge - please don't call me. You'd probably be better off writing for About.com or a similar answering service where you are labeled an "expert."

All the Way Through

This past week I had one of these moments where I had total success in answering a research request.

Our library is fairly small comparatively speaking. And, most of the time, there is some book or journal resource that I can' t access because we don't have the book or we don't have access to the database that can access it. Normally, there is one part of the puzzle missing and I have to make an educated assumption (and will always tell the person that). This week, however, no assumptions were necessary...

The question came to me from one of our docents (tour guides). She asked me about the meaning or symbolism of a horse reared up off its front legs in a John Trumbull painting of George Washington. I immediately went to the exhibition catalog in which I knew the painting was elaborated. [Have the catalog to the exhibition, check.] In it, it said that “Washington’s pose has much in common with the Apollo Belvedere, [a Greek sculpture, constructed in the 4th Century BC], but may derive more directly from a figure standing in relief against a horse in the Parthenon procession frieze.” A print of the Parthenon Frieze was available widely in Trumbull’s day through the book The Antiquities of Athens (London: 1762-1794).

The above information was attributed to a book called John Trumbull: The Hand and Spirit of a Painter (New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery, 1982). [I look in the OPAC and find we have this book too, check.] I learned through an essay that “the strong diagonals, the superimposition of forms upon one another in an almost cluttered fashion, the agitated horse and turbulent sky, all relate to [Benjamin] West’s proto-Romantic battle paintings of the 1780s.” From the same book, we have the relationship to the Parthenon Frieze confirmed: “Whether inspired by the Apollo Belvedere or by a more ordinary Roman statue of a worthy in the ad locution pose, [Washington’s] stance and gesture evoke the noble grandeur associated with classical sculpture in the late eighteenth century. It is also possible that the placement of Washington in relief against a horse viewed from the side was inspired by one of the marble groups in procession frieze of the Parthenon. The entire frieze was illustrated by [James] Stuart and [Nicholas] Revett in their Antiquities of Athens, with this particular plate published in June 1789, while Trumbull was still in London.”

I consulted with a curator for further information about this stance and she suggested a book published by the Smith College Museum of Art in the 1980s. I looked for the exhibition catalog Promoted to Glory: The Apotheosis of George Washington, (Northhampton, MA: Smith College Museum of Art, 1980) in our OPAC and find miraculously that it's there. [Find next exhibition catalog, check.]

In this catalog, I learned about the availability of George Richardson’ 1779 edition of Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia (London: 1779; originally, Rome: 1603), also available when Trumbull was in London. From here, we learn that shortly thereafter Trumbull painted “from memory an early portrait of Washington which closely resembles, in the figure’s stance and context, Ripa’s Patriotism.” I chance it and see if we actually own a copy of Ripa. Not only do we, but we own both the facsimile edition of the 1603 version and, more importantly for this request, a facsimile of the Richardson 1779 edition where Richardson re-did Ripa's woodcut prints in intaglio. [Find not one, but two editions of Ripa book, check.]

A look through the Richardson edition finds, not only the image of Patriotism, but also the image of War in which the soldier (a woman in this case) is mounted on a “fiery horse” with its front legs reared similar to the stance in the Trumbull painting of George Washington. Additionally, this image reveals military trophies, allegories of fame, and a shield inscribed "To arms! To arms!" ("Ad arma, ad arma").

In conclusion, the use of a horse rearing up was in line with the artistic traditions of the Trumbull's contemporaries – those practiced by Benjamin West and Sir Joshua Reynolds, among others – that were informed by iconography from the past: Greek sculpture, the Parthenon frieze and Ripa’s Iconologia. This gesture (the horse rearing up) was meant to suggest Washington’s heroic and noble traits as the father of the country, but more importantly, and as a decorated leader in war.

[Can confidently answer the question supported by several research sources, check!]

In Defence of Wikipedia

Some of my colleagues will likely be dismayed to know that I think Wikipedia has some credibility. If nothing else, it's a great place to start if you have no knowledge whatsoever of a topic and just need a place to begin your information quest.

I acknowledge that some entries have their issues, but those are usually quickly corrected. And, personally, I think the most beautiful thing about Wikipedia is that it allows for a number of voices and viewpoints - which are all valid. An article written about the issue of "social tagging," for example, will likely have very different, but valid, entries from a professor of information science, a marketing professional, a cataloging expert and a blogger. And, it's quite amazing that when people are allowed to edit the entries, those who really are the experts make sure that anything that defies the facts in their areas of expertise is removed.

Wikipedia explains the realization of articles this way:

Visitors do not need specialized qualifications to contribute. Wikipedia's intent is to have articles that cover existing knowledge, not create new knowledge (original research). This means that people of all ages and cultural and social backgrounds can write Wikipedia articles. Most of the articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet, simply by clicking the edit this page link. Anyone is welcome to add information, cross-references, or citations, as long as they do so within Wikipedia's editing policies and to an appropriate standard. Substandard or disputed information is subject to removal. Users need not worry about accidentally damaging Wikipedia when adding or improving information, as other editors are always around to advise or correct obvious errors, and Wikipedia's software is carefully designed to allow easy reversal of editorial mistakes. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About, accessed 5/17/09.)

As importantly, it clearly states on its research page that "You should not use only Wikipedia for primary research (unless you are writing a paper about Wikipedia)." In other words, it's not out there promoting itself as the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Speaking of Britannica, the journal Nature did a study in December 2005 comparing the accuracy of entries between Wikipedia and the online version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica for science entries. The result: they were about the same (see here for the full story). However, it did find that Wikipedia's writing style was more poorly structured. (That's been 3 1/2 years, so hopefully, it's improved a bit since then.) And, to be totally transparent, EB did come back and suggest the study was "fatally flawed,"' but they were rebuffed.

So why am I even going on about this?

This week we embarked on a project to gather information on some hard-to-find artists. This summer, the museum I work at is having a large contemporary art exhibition which features a number of artists who are less than canonical. Two of my volunteers have been working diligently trying to compile web resources for each of the fifty artists in the exhibition. Some are easy - Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, no problem; some are not so easy.

After spending much time trying to find information on these not-so-easy artists, we gave Wikipedia a chance. My volunteers and I even had a discussion about whether or not it was "okay" to use it as a resource. After some comparison on what was available (if anything), and noting the citations used by Wikipedia for the various articles in question, it was difficult for me to dissuade my volunteers from including them.

I'm in no way saying that Wikipedia is on par with peer-reviewed journals or dissertations. But, I often hear people discount it as being "ridiculous" or a "joke" in my field. I think they're wrong. I think it has merit. And, for our project at hand, it's been the saving grace for information on artists for whom we could find nothing more - online.

Thanks Wikipedia. I think you're okay.

Who Knew?

Sorry for the lack of entries this month... I had the flu and just have way to much going on.

One of the big ongoing projects we have is cataloging our artist files. These are clippings files on regional artists. Currently, we have about 7,000 of them.

This project is so huge that I currently have four volunteers (all stellar ones I might add) working on various aspects of the project: re-cataloging the current data for these files according to new MARC standards, documenting the contents of each artist's file, and making a determination as to whether or not the artist in question really is a regional artist.

Upon doing this work, one volunteer stumbled upon a couple of artists who weren't regional - they weren't even American - but, the articles in their folder shed light on an amazing, and somewhat hilarious, tale. Even though they don't fit the criteria for artists held in the artists files, I'm keeping them:

The articles tell a story from the 1940s about a Dutch couple* who came to America and had some serious misconceptions about Americans and their relationship with art.

They arrived in New York and proceeded to hitchhike to the West Coast. They had to leave the Netherlands without money, so they thought [the wife] would create art and trade it to people along the way to get food and lodging. They did eventually buy a truck, but they still needed to trade for gas.

I guess the local paper got wind of their journey and did several articles about their travels through letters submitted by the husband. Here is an excerpt from one of 1948:

We are happy to be able to write that we are still living. This is not because we have been able to sell [the wife]'s sketches to the public, as we intended to do, but because we seem to be tough, not easy to lick.

We started some months ago on a trip along the West Coast of American Continent. [The wife] wanted to sketch the landscapes, the people and their towns. Part of the sketches we would sell to pay our expenses.

Our expenses are gasoline and groceries. We knew that there are nearly no American families who have an original painting in their home and we reasoned: "art must have been a luxury for them, they never had a chance to buy it for a reasonable price. We will start to do that, we will ask the gasoline man and the grocer to do it for some food. Then we will have all we need and can make the trip."

We were fooled however! We did receive some food and gasoline but not in exchange for [the wife]'s work, but out of pity, and we are sure that those who did not say so and took the work, burned it. We stopped at hundreds of places but we can say that nobody showed any appreciation. "With two gallons of my gasoline, you can drive 40 miles. What can I do with a sketch?... if it was a nude, yes."

Then we told ourselves that advertising should do it. We used signs reading: "Buy a painting for Father's Day, and paintings for you. Peanuts will do." The people laughed at us, turned around in their cars, but nobody stopped and asked to see some work.

They somehow make it to Los Angeles. Along the way they met various people, bartered for food and shelter, and at one point, [the wife] even had a show of watercolors in a gallery. The last paragraph of the article tells us:

The couple went on to Los Angeles, where "we are sitting now in a home which looks like that of an aspiring movie star, more or less looking for the answer to our question: 'Has art still any use?'"

In another article in the same folder, we learn that [the wife] went on to advertise her left ear for $24,000. She would use the money to make her living as an artist. The paper reported "Apparently there is no buyers' market for ears, even pretty feminine Dutch ones."

Awesome.


*I removed the names as [the wife] is still living. I applaud her for her tenacity.

In a Downward Economy

Everyone I know is scared for their job. In the past few weeks, the institution I work at has had two rounds of layoffs. Several of these casualties involved positions that I would have considered untouchable: the person served a critical function and, without them, things will unavoidably fall apart. Miraculously, the librarian I supervise and myself (and the two separate libraries we run) were spared... for now!

With one exception, I have always worked in special libraries: in established corporate libraries, start-ups, and non-profit settings. In all of these environments, librarians always felt they lacked job security. Even during upward economies, my colleagues and I constantly strove to raise awareness about the work we did and the value we brought to the organization. This was the case at all of these places - even at the most profitable companies.

Why is this?

One attribute common to all of my librarian colleagues is a willingness to help. We join the profession because we enjoy doing research and we enjoy helping people find information (i.e. solve their problem). In most cases, this is done as a free service for internal customers and, in certain circumstances, external or public ones as well. In my particular situation, library services are free for everyone - it's part of the libraries' value as I see it.

Another part of the libraries' value is the public face we give to the institution. As with the admissions staff, receptionist and other front-line positions, library staff interface with the public on a number of levels: in-person, via email, via phone and through the mail. Every one of these interactions can have a positive or a negative effect which can impact the institution. If I tell someone to bugger off because their question is "stupid," they probably won't want to join the museum and may not patronize it in any other way. I'm instilling a sense that they don't belong here. However, if I listen, state the boundaries of what I can and can't do, truly try to help and then answer their question in a respectful way (whether delivering good or bad news), I hope I've established a sense of welcome-ness or acceptance that encourages them to return for a visit or become a member. I've hopefully helped diminish the museum and/or museum library as an ivory tower. (Heck, not to toot my own horn, but I've even had people make donations to the museum simply because of the good experience they've had in one of our libraries.)

Unfortunately, libraries are often seen by those who make decisions on cuts and layoffs that we are simply mini-organizations that cost the larger institution money, but don't directly make money.

After the last round of layoffs, I actually had a co-worker say to me that he was "surprised the libraries didn't get axed." I'll admit, it stung, but he was expressing a view common among those who don't use or aren't directly benefited by library services. The question is "how do we make ourselves valuable to those that don't use our services?" or maybe even a better question is "why is making money the only standard that matters?"

In a few weeks, I am sitting on a panel to talk about ways libraries are dealing with the bad economy. First off, I hope I still am employed as a librarian by the time the panel happens, and two, I hope I can figure out something to say besides "I just keep my fingers crossed."

Death and the Museum Library

Recently, we had a research request about a "death portrait" someone had of an ancestor. This one was described as a charcoal drawing of the deceased in his coffin. The same week, I watched a fascinating documentary on PBS about the plot to steal Abraham Lincoln's body after he was assassinated. An important thing that I learned from this program was that photography of President Lincoln in situ was strictly forbidden, but that one photographer was secretly able to do it from a distance and - even more amazingly - the photograph was able to survive. The photographer produced the incredible image you can see and read about here.

Another thing that interested me from this documentary was that one of the speakers was from the Museum of Funeral Customs (read more about this here). It interests me greatly that death and mourning are bona fide areas of research and study - it is a field I have a secondary interest in.

This all made me think about ways we support research in this field in our library.

Our museum has a number of objects related to death and mourning: African coffins, Australian Aboriginal Pukamani poles, paintings and works on paper depicting deaths or burials, Chinese death masks, Egyptian funerary portraits, depictions of "Death" (personified) in the works of Durer, Goya and others. Rites and practices undertaken around death and dying really are incredible insights into social aspects of a particular culture.

You're probably noticing that the way I'm speaking about this here sounds like I'm positioning artifacts or depictions of death rites in the museum context as something merely historical or of "other" cultures. Maybe it's because of my WASP-y upbringing, but I'm sure I saw death-rites-on-display as only artifacts of cultures other than my own until I reached college and began taking art history classes. I think others might think this way as well.

In addition to the types of objects mentioned above, the museum library has resources that enlighten and help us understand American practices. Reading these provided an incredible insight into the death customs of my own culture. Here are some examples*:

Library of Dust by photographer David Maisel (San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 2008)
Photographer David Maisel has created a somber and beautiful series of images depicting canisters containing the cremated remains of the unclaimed dead from an Oregon psychiatric hospital.

Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America (Altadena, CA: Twelvetrees Press, 1990) and
Sleeping Beauty II: Grief, Bereavement and the Family in Memorial Photography (New York: Burns Archive Press, 2002) by Stanley B. Burns
Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America is a selection of American postmortem memorial photography listed in chronological order from 1840 to 1930 from the Burns Archive. It includes essays on death in America, as well as a bibliography. It is a fascinating book for anyone interested in early photography, 19th century history or ever-changing American attitudes toward death and dying.

Puritan Gravestone Art (Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife; Boston: Boston University, 1977) and
Puritan Gravestone Art II (Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife; Boston: Boston University, 1978) by Peter Benes
These books, part of the Dublin Seminar on New England Folklife at Boston University, include essays on a wide variety of aspects of stone carving, stone carvers, iconography, traditions, and more.

From Slate to Marble: Gravestone Carving Traditions in Eastern Massachusetts, 1770-1870 (Evanston, IL: Graver Press, 2007) by James Blachowicz
From Slate to Marble is a definitive and exhaustive study of 55 gravestone carvers who worked in and around eastern Massachusetts. It is sumptuously illustrated in duotone and monochrome. It includes a CD containing over 750 images of gravestones with a list of 8000 gravestones and a catalog of 713 burial grounds.

Pioneer Cemeteries: Sculpture Gardens of the Old West (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2008) by Annette Stott
Stott shows how people from Asia, Europe, and the Americas contributed to the visual character of the [Rocky Mountain] cemeteries, and how the sepulchral garden functioned as an open-air gallery of public sculpture, at once a site for relaxation, learning, and social ritual. Here, widespread participation in a variety of ceremonies brought mountain communities together with a frequency almost unimaginable today.**

And, importantly, resources related to Native American death, dying, burial and remains (a very timely and critical topic; again, a sampling):

Repatriation Reader: Who Owns American Indian Remains? (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2000) by Devon Mihesuah

Implementing the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (Washington, DC: American Association of Museums, 2001) by Roxana Adams

To continue to promote scholarship and research, the Constructions of Death, Mourning, and Memory Conference was organized by the Women Art Patrons and Collectors Conferences organization. I believe this conference continues to this day.

(Addendum 5/03/09)
NPR just featured this book - Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930 - in one of their shows. See here for more details. Interesting!


*All abstract and review material taken from other sources (Amazon.com, Alibris, publishers, etc.)
** I had the extreme pleasure of being given cemetery tours of the Riverside Cemetery and the Fairmount Cemetery in Denver by Ms. Stott. The experiences were truly memorable.