Watson Library Staff Picks

Along with The Met's 150th celebrations, Watson Library has a series of blog posts and vitrine displays celebrating our hallmark year including staff picks—a selection of favorite books chosen by library staff from our encyclopedic collection which spans the entire history of art. Below you will find selections from our extensive holdings, chosen by myself and my colleagues, all of which can be requested through Watsonline for consultation in the library once we reopen.

For Robyn Fleming, self-proclaimed amateur Met history buff and Associate Museum Librarian responsible for Watson Library's extensive collection of digitized Museum publications, several early historical documents came to mind for this project. Among them are the Museum's original handwritten charter, its first exhibition catalogue, and the first published history of the Museum—all of which are available through our digital collections.

Robyn's pick is the minutes of a meeting held in November of 1869 at the Union League Club in New York City. The purpose of the meeting (which was followed by a most sumptuous fete, see above right image) was to discuss the particulars of a new art museum for the city. The meeting featured impassioned speeches by notable figures such as William Cullen Bryant, George Comfort, and Richard Morris Hunt, among others.

While William Huffin, who was working at the New York Historical Society proclaimed, "should we not be ashamed of ourselves. We the inhabitants of the Third City in the world. That we are well-known entirely without an institution such as almost every town in Europe of the three thousand inhabitants possesses." Henry Bellows delivered these encouraging words, "no matter whether we blunder at the beginning or not; two or three blunders oftentimes in the end often make a great success. And those who are not willing to blunder, never succeed. Let us begin when we can, and do the thing in the way that we can. Not asking ourselves whether it is the best way or not. The thing is to have a mind to do it." This document, too, is in Watson Library's Digital Collections and is freely available for you to peruse any time, which Robyn highly recommends.

An interest in book design and Asian history led Yukari Hayashida to her selection: Poetical Greetings from the Far East: Japanese Poems. Its distinctive feature is having paper which feels like a textile called chirimen or crepe—with a fine, wrinkled texture used for fairy tale children's books visible in the above left photo. The pages are soft and flexible, yet sturdy.

The publisher, Hasegawa Takejirō, selected fairy tale stories to be published in the English language to educate Japanese children. The series ultimately became popular as a souvenir, so much so that Hasegawa exported them in French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. Watson Library has over fourteen crepe paper books in its special collections holdings which Yukari encourages visitors to see when the library reopens.

My selection is a rare—and hefty—trade catalogue comprised entirely of twelve colored glass product samples manufactured by Saint-Gobain. What is remarkable is that all of the samples are intact. Thanks to the ingenuity of our Book Conservation staff, the handmade box enclosure, which includes padded sides, will ensure that the glass plates remain intact into the future.

Saint-Gobain was founded in 1665 under a letter patent signed by Louis XIV and as part of an attempt to undermine the Venetian monopoly over European glassmaking. Its first notable commission supplied 357 mirrors for the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles in 1684. Over time, the company provided glass for numerous noteworthy projects, including London's Crystal Palace and Les Halles market in Paris. Now a multinational corporation, Saint-Gobain's expanded offerings range from shatterproof automobile glass to a variety of construction materials. This unique catalogue features examples of color-tinted and patterned glass designs and is accompanied by a descriptive pamphlet. Watson has six other trade catalogues by Saint-Gobain with plates of halftones of decorated patterns of sheet glass.

Mindell Dubansky, Museum librarian for preservation, selected a manuscript written by the Museum's first bookbinding specialist, Alfred Launder. Launder arrived at The Met in 1929 at the request of William Ivins, the Print Department's first curator who was looking for a binder to conserve rare books. Launder was sixty-two at the time. Formerly, he worked for a bookbinder, Brandstreet's, in downtown New York on Elm Street. Ivins tasked Launder with creating a new binding structure, as books of that time were bound so tightly that they did not open well. Launder succeeded developing a new strong binding style that opened beautifully so that readers would have full access to the text. Mindy first found Launder's manuscript in the late 1990s. She transcribed, illustrated and published it in 2000 for the Guild of Book Workers. The original is now available online.

Jessica Ranne-Cardona, assistant Museum librarian, learned about her selection from a colleague on her first trip to Venice, as part of the ARLIS/NA Librarian Study Tour in 2019. This essential travel guide, Venice and its Lagoon, was published in many editions between 1960 and 2007. The Met libraries have four copies of the 1961 edition. The middle picture shows the Longhera Library at Fondazione Giorgio Cini on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, which was completed in 1671 with elaborate bookcases carved by Franz Pauc. The third picture is of the same library that Jessica photographed when she was In Venice.

The author, Giulio Lorenzetti, was the director of the Civic Museum of Venice and a prolific author. Watson has twenty-one of his books on Venetian art. His guidebook includes an index of artists and "important and historic buildings." It is considered by many to be the go-to guide for Venice, from which all other guides are born. Jessica looks forward to returning to Venice to use this historical-artistic guide on her next adventure.

Tony White, Florence and Herbert Irving associate chief librarian, notes that Watson Library is lucky to have both the 1990 and 2001 editions of his selection, Jan Voss's artist book, Frischer Wind. Voss is an illustrator and printmaker who studied with the German artist Dieter Roth and founded a bookshop in Amsterdam called Boekie Woekie in 1986 with two of his friends. Tony picked this book because, in its own whimsical and playful way, it is an iconic artist book epitomizing the haptic nature of artist books. In this case, Jan has used the stop motion effect of a flip book to great effect. As you flip the book pages you "see" the illusion of fan blades spinning, and at the same time the movement of the pages "fan" your face with a fresh breeze.

One of senior book conservation coordinator Andrijana Sajic's many favorite books in Watson's collection is Ettore Spalletti's red artist book, which she first came across while working on a joint exhibition with the Italian Cultural Institute. This vibrant book is among the thousands of artists' books generously donated by Liliana Dematteis in 2018. Published in association with the Musée d'art moderne et contemporain de Strasbourg, it accompanies the catalogue to the exhibition which is depicted above.

Spalletti was an Italian artist best known for his minimalist paintings and sculptures characterized by geometry, precision, color, and soft surfaces. Andrijana notes, "I cannot tell if I admire it more closed where it is solid, sculptural and flawless; or when the book is open and melts in your hands." The covers, she describes, are very soft, made of velvety cloth. The text block, made of very thin soft tissue, allows the book to open beautifully and securely. And, when opened, it produces that beautiful open line book curve. Andrijana explains, "I was very moved with visual experience of this book. Having blank pages, it also offers room for contemplation about the content while being a product of minimalism."

Museum librarian Min Xu's selection is highlighted in her blog post for Met 150 "Asian Art Books at The Met." The title, Cai Guo-Qiang: Ladder to the Sky, accompanied an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 2012. A survey of Cai's own artistic journey and personal cosmology, it features a rich selection of his diverse works, including explosion events, gunpowder drawings, and installations. It also contains essays and a conversation with the artist, as well as his unpublished new works.

The artist, Cai Guoqiang, is well-known internationally for his elaborate sculpture installations and gunpowder projects. In 2006, his exhibition on The Met's Roof Garden was the first solo exhibition by a contemporary Chinese artist to be held at the Museum. Some may remember his "Clear Sky Black Cloud" that consisted of an actual black cloud appearing above the Museum's Roof Garden.

Min selected this book as a representative of Watson's vast holdings on contemporary and current art. The library has been actively collecting contemporary art books since the early 2000s, acquiring over 21,000 exhibition and gallery catalogues, assembling one of the best collections on contemporary art.

William Blueher picked two books by the artist Hai Hsin Huang as his favorites. They are jointly published by nos books, a Taiwanese art book publisher. Huang is an artist based in New York City. Like many artists based in New York, Huang is heavily influenced by The Met.

The quarto-sized book, Now Is the Past, illustrates various galleries at The Met depicting visitors inside the Museum. The photo above (at right) is Huang's illustration of the Great Hall with hundreds of people milling around, as we all remember. The miniature book, There Is No Future, consists entirely of the 443 faces of each of the people depicted in the larger book. The miniature book was printed with a traditional letterpress machine, which really makes these tiny portraits pop. The two books, big and small, capture the artist's macro and micro view of The Met, looking at both the institution as a whole and the individuals who populate it.

Angela Washington, associate manager for finance and administration, chose as her selection a recent exhibition catalogue from the British Museum titled Manga. Manga are Japanese comics and graphic novels that have devoted fans all around the world. Angela has been a manga fan for over twenty years, so she was especially glad to see this exhibition catalogue in the library's collection. What drew her to this book is that it is the largest exhibit of manga outside of Japan held at one of the oldest, largest, and most historic museums in the world. The catalogue provides an excellent introduction to manga, as well as interviews with editors, publishers, people in the industry, and fans. The catalogue also includes excerpts from various manga series.

The image on the cover is from the recent popular series, Golden Kamuy, illustrated by Satoru Noda, featuring indigenous Ainu culture. "It's an exciting thing to have that kind of cross cultural interaction between artists and pop artists," Angela notes, "and for a culture considered a fan-ish pursuit to be celebrated and exhibited in a venerable institution like the British Museum." We have a total of seventy-five manga holdings, including thirty-seven manga graphic novels in Nolen Library and twenty-eight monographs in Watson Library.

What is your favorite book in Watson Library? We would love to know. Please let us know in the comments below!