A Sampling of Special Collections in the Western RegionAuthor(s): Joan M. BenedettiSource: Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, Vol. 7,No. 3 (Fall 1988), pp. 94-95Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Art Libraries Society of NorthAmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27947912 .

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94 Art Documentation, Fall, 1988

A Sampling of Special Collections in the Western Region

One of the sessions at last year's ARLIS/NA Western Re gional Meeting in Santa Barbara, Calif., was entitled "A Sam pling of Special Collections in the Western Region." The session, organized and moderated by Joyce Pellerano Ludmer, head, UCLA Art Library, presented an overview of five art historical special collections in the Southern Califor nia area. It quickly became clear that these "regional" trea sures were all of national or international stature.

The Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana, housed in the UCLA Art Library, was described first by Max Marmor, a library assis tant who works with the collection. The Belt Library, one of the very few "A"-level Leonardo collections in the world, and the most complete, was the gift of physician Elmer Belt (1893-1980), a book collector and man of eclectic taste. Belt

was aided in building the library by Kate Steinitz, who served as Belt's personal librarian. The library, which draws scholars from all over the world, consists of the following: 1) a com plete collection, in facsimile, of all of Leonardo's published manuscripts and drawings; 2) nearly 1,000 monographs about Leonardo; 3) a collection of more than 60 incunabula, many of them books known to have been owned or studied by Leonardo, reflecting Belt's attempt at reconstructing "Leonardo's library"; 4) a support collection of scholarly liter ature on the history of science, Renaissance culture, and other topics pertaining to Leonardo studies; 5) a collection of prints and drawings (unfortunately, none are by Leonardo). The Belt Library also owns several important historical docu ments, among them a ricordo by Michelangelo, a notable document in the hand of Leonardo's father, and a letter at tributed to Raphael.

Next, Naomi Sawelson-Gorse, archivist of the Arensberg Archives at the Francis Bacon Library, located on the Clare mont Colleges campus, related the general history of Louise and Walter Arensberg's involvement with modern art as doc umented in the holdings of the archives. This collection of correspondence, photographs, and other materials, is a vir tual history of the struggle for acceptance of modern art in the United States during the first half of this century, begin ning with the 1913 Armory Show, which was visited by Louise Arensberg. After the Arensbergs moved from New York in the 1920s, they amassed the majority of their art collection, which included pre-Columbian, African, and mod ern works, which they displayed?frame to frame?in their Hollywood home. The Arensbergs especially championed the works of Marcel Duchamp, purchasing his oeuvre in such numbers that they had the largest collection of his works. The Arensbergs' Hollywood home was also a mecca for emi gres who fled from Europe during World War II, artists, intel lectuals, and literati. In the thirties, they attempted to establish a modern art museum in Los Angeles. Though these endeavors failed, they still determined to bequeath their collection to the city and signed an agreement with UCLA. When that agreement was annulled, the collection was eventually bequeathed to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Arensberg Archives contains over 100 linear feet of documents on the Los Angeles period, with about 8 linear feet on the Arensbergs' New York years. This includes corre spondence with over 1,000 individuals from the worlds of architecture, photography, painting, sculpture, and literature, among other interests.

The Southern California Research Center of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, is located on the grounds of the Huntington Library in San Marino. Stella Paul, area collector, talked a bit about the history of the archives as a whole before describing collecting activity in Southern Cal ifornia. The Archives of American Art began in Detroit in 1954, at a time when the discipline of American art history

was in its infancy. It became a bureau of the Smithsonian Institution in 1970. The collection, which includes approx imately 8,000,000 items, documents the history of art activity in this country. Everything that is collected is deposited at the headquarters in Washington, D.C. All items, however, are first microfilmed and the microfilms are then available at all six regional offices and internationally through interlibrary loan. The L.A. office opened in November of 1984. Since 1973, the San Francisco office had handled the collection of L.A. mate rial, so the L.A. office had a great deal of groundwork already in place when it opened. Regional offices do not always have a strictly regional focus. Much material that ended up in Southern California originated elsewhere?a reflection of the status of the population of this area of immigrants from "back East." Recent acquisitions include the papers of Toby Rosenthal, a 19th-century San Francisco artist. His 270 letters record the 1906 earthquake and efforts to save art works from quake and resulting fires. The L.A. office has some spe cial interests, not so prevalent in the other offices?architec ture is one. Esther McCoy has donated her papers, as has Charles Moore. In an attempt to document the history of the Chicano mural movement, oral histories have been taken of Judith Baca and Carlos Almaraz. Oral history is an important part of current archival practice as the telephone has re placed letterwriting in everyday correspondence. Similarly, videotapes have been made, including one of David Hockney being interviewed by Lawrence Wechsler. These media pres ent interpretive problems as oral histories are not as candid as letters or other contemporaneous writings. Recently, the papers of the feminist group, Double X, were given to the archive. These papers (1975-1985) include documentation of their 1981 protest of the L.A. County Museum of Art's show, "17 Artists from the 60's," which did not include any woman artists. An oral history program was developed to supple ment these papers gathered from members of the group.

Ray Reece, public services librarian at UCLA Art Library, talked about the development of their collection of artists' books. Although a collection did exist in the library before the acquisition of the Judith Hoffberg collection, it was Joyce Ludmer's vigorous, successful pursuit of the Hoffberg ac cumulation of over 2,200 artists' books that made the UCLA library a national center for the study of this idiosyncratic, ephemeral medium. Reese related the amount of research he has had to do to become knowledgeable about this medium. He first tried to locate other major collections. There are a few others in Southern California: the one built by Joan Hugo at Otis-Parsons; one at CalArts; five major collections at the Getty. Barbara Pascal has a personal collection of over 1,500. They are found in many different types of places in other parts of the country: in collections of fine printing, of concrete poetry, in personal as well as institutional collec tions. It was important to Judy Hoffberg that the books re main physically accessible. She considered it imperative that

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Art Documentation, Fail, 1988 95

students and others have the opportunity to discover "the glory between the covers" of this variegated art form. Some of the books, however, seem to be meant only for the plea sure of the first person to open them?e.g., those that come

apart upon opening, or are consumable. Such a collection

obviously needs more detailed bibliographic access than simply artist and title. The medium is extremely important. Reese is working on a computerized catalog to their collec tion and is building an informal network of librarians and collectors of these books to work on mutual problems of access and documentation.

Anne-Mieke Halbrook, librarian, Getty Center for the His tory of Art and Humanities, spoke of the process of building a library to support specialized research. She first outlined the place of the Getty Center within the structure of the Getty Trust. The center is one of several major programs supported by the trust: others are the museum, the Art History Informa tion Program, and the Conservation Institute. In July 1983, the library and the photo archive moved from the museum in

Malibu to their own temporary quarters in a high-rise in Santa Monica. This was the beginning of the Getty Center. Three floors were occupied initially, with the library taking one and one-half floors. Shortly thereafter, the Archives for the History of Art were added to the center, under the direc tion of Nicholas Olsberg. The mission of the center as a

whole is to further research for advanced scholars on an interdisciplinary basis. To that end, ten or eleven scholars

have been invited for the past three years to work on the intersection of their discipline with the history of art. The library's collection is being developed to serve the research needs of the trust's scholarly and professional community and its guests. It has grown rapidly from what was 40,000 at the Malibu museum to what is now over 500,000 volumes. There are approximately 100,000 journal volumes. About half of the collection is under bibliographic control. Use of RUN system has allowed for a more rapid record production than would have been possible without this bibliographic utility. And the use of UCLA's ORION system permits complete ac cess to UCLA's holdings. The archive also uses RLIN for bibli ographic description of its holdings. A recent archive project is the microfilming of all the Taliesin West papers. The photo archive is in the process of computerizing also, but has de veloped its own local system utilizing Cuadra's STAR soft ware. Originally a collection reflecting the interest of the Malibu museum, i.e., classical antiquities, old master paint ings, and 18th-century decorative arts, it has now added a

medieval section. The departments of the center will move to Brentwood in approximately 1993 and join the other entities of the trust and the trust office itself in the new Richard Meier-designed complex.

Joan M. Benedetti Craft and Folk Art Museum,

Los Angeles

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