Online Resources

New Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives Collections

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives has announced that three recently processed collections relating to the institution are now open for scholarly research. The papers of Met founder John Taylor Johnston, New York art collectors Louisine Waldron Elder and Henry (Harry) Osborne Havemeyer, and long time Met staff member Richard F. Bach have all been made available (with online finding aids).

John Taylor Johnston Collection, 1832-1981: John Taylor Johnston was a founder of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and was elected its first President in 1870. He held this position until he retired in 1889- the institution’s Trustees subsequently voted him Honorary President for Life. The collection consists of travel journals, visitor books, correspondence, family histories, and other unpublished and published documents relating to the life, travels and family history of John Taylor Johnston. The bulk of this material relates to Johnston’s personal affairs and is not concerned with The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Finding aid.

The Havemeyer Family Papers relating to Art Collecting, 1901-1922: The New York art collectors Louisine Waldron Elder (1855-1929) and Henry (Harry) Osborne Havemeyer (1847-1907) assembled a large and diverse collection of paintings, sculpture and decorative art between 1876 and 1924. It was known for being one of the first American art collections to include Spanish and Impressionist paintings. The papers include correspondence, writings, notes, and ephemera that document the Havemeyers’ art collecting activities between 1901 and 1922. The majority of the collection consists of correspondence with art dealers and agents, such as Mary Cassatt, Theodore Duret, Albert E. Harnisch and Ricardo de Madrazo, who worked on behalf of the Havemeyers to build their renowned art collection. Finding aid.

Richard F. Bach Records, 1913-1953: During his tenure at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Richard F. Bach served as Associate in Industrial Arts (1918-1929), Director of Industrial Relations (1929-1941), Dean of Education and Extension (1941-1949), and Consultant in Industrial Arts (1949-1952). Bach championed the collaboration of museums and the industrial arts, working extensively with manufacturers, industrial designers, and educational institutions. In addition to his work at the Museum, Bach was a member and leader of a number of arts and education organizations as well as a prolific writer and lecturer. The Richard F. Bach Records primarily contain correspondence, meeting minutes, and pamphlets related to Bach’s activities as Director of Industrial Relations, Dean of Education and Extension, and Consultant in Industrial Arts. The majority of the correspondence is professional in nature and concerns Bach’s role as liaison between The Metropolitan Museum of Art and industrial designers, manufacturers, educators, and arts organizations. Finding aid.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives The objective of The Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives is to collect, organize, and preserve in perpetuity the corporate records and official correspondence of the Museum, to make the collection accessible and provide research support, and to further an informed and enduring understanding of the Museum’s history. Archives holdings include Board of Trustees records, legal documents, Museum publications, office files of selected Museum staff, architectural drawings, press clippings, and ephemera. The Archives is accessible to Museum staff and to qualified scholarly researchers at the graduate level and above. Requests for access should be sent via email, and should include a brief summary of the research project, an outline of sources already consulted and a curriculum vitae or resume.

Access is granted at the discretion of Archives staff, and certain materials may be restricted. Email: [email protected].

150 Thomas Cole Images Now Online

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The Thomas Cole Historic Site is substantially increasing its online presence with the launch of a new interactive website where visitors can see Thomas Cole’s paintings in a new way, enabling a greatly enhanced understanding of the artist and his work.

The most ambitious feature of the new website is the learning portal. Five years in the making, it offers 150 of Thomas Cole’s best-known artworks all in one place. Written by some of the top scholars in the field of American art, it gives you the experience of seeing Cole’s artwork with a team of experts by your side.

High-resolution digital technology reveals details that are not evident in printed reproductions, and the visitor can zoom in closer to the painted surface than would be permissible in a museum. The database of images will continue to grow, eventually becoming as complete a resource as possible for Cole’s artistic output.

Photo: Autumn in the Catskills by Thomas Cole. Oil on wood, 1827.

Revisiting Great Literature With Penguin Classics on Air

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“Penguin Classics On Air” is an online radio series devoted to the discussion and exploration of some of Penguin Classics’ more than 1400 titles from many eras, cultures and regions of the world. The program is hosted by Penguin Classics Editorial Director Elda Rotor and features in-depth conversations on new, timely and rediscovered classics between Elda Rotor or Classics editor John Siciliano and scholars, translators, or experts of a specific Penguin Classic.

The show wraps up with Associate Publisher Stephen Morrison offering a sampling of the Classic by reading the first pages from one of the works discussed. In addition, each episode of “Penguin Classics On Air” features a review by Alan Walker, Senior Director of Academic Marketing, on one of the Classics he’s recently read, as he fulfills his mission to read one Penguin Classic by an author per letter of the alphabet from A to Z.

As a sample of the goods, take a look at The Birth of Knickerbocker: Washington Irving’s A History of New York. Elda Rotor interviews Betsy Bradley, the introducer and editor of Washington Irving’s A History of New York , Irving’s popular first book is an early nineteenth century satirical novel of colonial New Amsterdam. It follows the fictional historian Diedrich Knickerbocker as he narrates the development of New York cultural life—from the creation of the doughnut to the creation of Wall Street. Alan Walker introduces listeners to The Emigrants by Gilbert Imlay and Stephen Morrison offers up the opening to Washington Irving’s beloved story “Rip Van Winkle.” in his segment, “First Pages.”

New York Heritage Adds 16 More Collections

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The New York 3Rs Association has added sixteen more online collections to its collective digital heritage web site, www.NewYorkHeritage.org. The site now connects more than 200 digital collections from around the state, contributed by libraries, archives, museums and other cultural institutions, and builds on existing digital repository services administered by each of the nine reference and research library resources councils.

New materials include the Historical Portraits Collection from Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Elmira College’s Mark Twain Archive, the New York Historical Association’s Murder Pamphlet Collection Exhibit , early Robert Montgomery materials housed at the Trinity-Pawling School Collection, Alfred University’s Image Archives, Rochester Medical Museum and Archives, NYU’s Abraham Lincoln Brigade Collection, images from the Onondaga Nation at the Liverpool Public Library, folk art collections at the Crandall Public Library Folklife Center, the Steinmetz Collection of Schenectady, the Almquist Green Lakes Collection housed at the Fayetteville Public Library, and many others from around the state. For an up-to-date list of collections and contributors visit www.NewYorkHeritage.org

Additionally, The Tools of History regional digitization site, created by the South Central Regional Library Council, has been added, as have been the Rochester Regional Library Council’s Finger Lakes-Genesee Valley Heritage and the Capital District Library Council Digital Collections regional sites.

A variety of materials can be found among the New York Heritage Digital Collections, including photographs, postcards, correspondence, manuscripts, oral histories, yearbooks and newspapers. Many kinds of institutions from New York State have partnered to make this project possible, including public, academic and school libraries, museums, archives and historical societies. The power of collaboration is what makes this new service possible.

Participants to New York Heritage Digital Collections are committed to enhancing the site by adding both content and contributing institutions on a regular basis. The goal of the project is to eventually connect one thousand collections and one million items from throughout New York State. All institutions interested in participating in the project are encouraged to contact the 3Rs organization that serves their region.

The New York 3Rs Association is a partnership among New York’s nine reference and research resource systems. The New York 3Rs was incorporated in 2003 to further the ability of those systems to provide statewide services. The members of the New York 3Rs Association are: the Capital District Library Council, Central New York Library Resources Council, Long Island Library Resources Council, Metropolitan New York Library Council, Northern New York Library Network, Rochester Regional Library Council, Southeastern New York Library Resources Council, South Central Regional Library Council, and Western New York Library Resources Council.

New York State Archives Launches RSS Feed

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The New York State Archives has launched a news feed using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) technology. Subscribers will be among the first to find out about Archives events, new records brought into the Archives, press releases, resources for state agencies and local governments, and any major changes to the website &#8211 such as new guides to records, new educational sites for teachers and students, and award and grant opportunities.

RSS technology enables users to view updates from organizations through an RSS Reader such as an Internet Browser, e-mail, or a third-party reader. RSS Readers provide a brief summary of news updates from an organization and then link to the full article on the organization’s website. Users will be able to stay up-to-date with news from the State Archives once they have subscribed to the RSS feed. To sign up for the
RSS feed, go to http://www.archives.nysed.gov/rss/news.xml.

The New York State Archives, a part of the State Education Department, preserves and makes accessible the essential recorded evidence &#8211 past and present &#8211 of New York’s governments, organizations, peoples, and events. At its Albany facility, the State Archives cares for more than 200 million archival records of New York State government dating from the 1630s to the present. The State Archives also offers technical assistance, financial support, and other services to local governments and community organizations in every region of the state.

New Widget Spreads Word of The 400th Through New Media

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A new online effort from the Royal Netherlands Embassy (part of the 400th celebration) will help promote interesting events in New York City throughout 2009. The Embassy and their partners are celebrating 400 years of shared history between the US and the Netherlands with a new widget that keeps users updated on local events and online content and helps tell the story of our shared cultures. The widget displays a game where users can match up symbols and Dutch/English words to reveal content related to that subject. For example, the History match reveals information about the New Amsterdam walking tour of Manhattan that you can download to your mobile phone for free.

There are over 50 partners in this effort including New York City, New Netherland Project, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. You can check out the Royal Netherlands Embassy across social media: there is a blog with contributors ranging from Dutch artists to Muslim activist Eboo Patel (http://www.ny400.org/blog), a video gallery of performances/ interviews/events (http://www.ny400.org/video.php) and plenty of event photos (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ny400/).

Jeff Siemers: New York Indian Removal History Series

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Jeff Siemers over at Algonkian Church History has finished his outstanding series of (nineteen!) posts on New York Indian Removal and written a summary post to put them all in perspective and to serve as an access to allow for reading the posts in the order they were written. Jeff is a Reference Librarian at Moraine Park Technical College (Fond du Lac Campus), he normally writes about nineteenth-century Wisconsin Native history so his series about New York is quite a treat and highly recommended reading.

Here is an excerpt from Jeff’s summary describing each of the parts:

Part I: The Stockbridges Attempt a Move to Indiana. A letter from Thomas Jefferson is not honored by officials of later administrations.

Part II: Eleazar Williams. A missionary among the Oneidas (see photo above), of mixed race (part Mohawk), is hungry for power, and envisions being the leader of a grand confederacy in the west.

Part III: Why did They Leave? (The answer, of course, has a lot more to do with the intentions of white Americans than with the Indians themselves.)

Part IV: Conspiracy of Interests. A book by Professor Laurence Hauptman describes the factors that led to the removal of New York Indians &#8211 he doesn’t, however, have a lot to say about the Algonkians.

Part V: Jedidiah Morse. A Congregational minster has some influence in Washington D.C.

Part VI: Negotiations and Arrivals. Good historians have gotten some of this wrong. If you need to know what-happened-when vis-a-vis the negitiations and arrivals of the New York Indians in Wisconsin, this is an important post.

Part VII: Metoxen Takes Center Stage. The New York Indians were set up against the Wisconsin Natives. This post includes a link to a remarkable speech John Metoxen made at the Council of 1830.

Part VIII: The Disaffected Party. Are the New York Indians going to be pushed further west? This question and other issues arouse tribal factionalism.

Part IX: Ellis Describes More Negotiations. If Andrew Jackson (pictured above riding a horse) wanted the Stockbridge, Munsee, and Brothertown Indians to move to some swampy land, how did they wind up on the good farmland east of Lake Winnebago?

Part X: The Need for a Constitution. Seeing how the U.S. government handles other tribes appears to have motivated John W. Quinney to write a tribal constitution for the Stockbridge Mohicans.

Part XI: Munsee Removal and the Quinney’s Perspective. The arrival of roughly 200 Munsees prompt John W. and Austin E. Quinney to write a letter to the U.S. Secretary of War.

Part XII: The First Permanent Split in the Stockbridge Tribal Church. The Disaffected Party beaks away from Calvinist missionary Cutting Marsh’s church. They hold their own Baptist services.

Part XIII: More About the Munsees. The &#8220partnership&#8221 between the Stockbridges and the Munsees is an on-again-off-again kind of thing.

Part XIV: The Treaty of 1839. Half the Stockbridge reservation in Calumet County is sold to the federal government. Members of the Disaffected party and the Munsees head to what is now Kansas.

Part XV: They Left on the Sabbath. Puritan author Electa Jones describes the emmigration to Kansas.

Part XVI: On to Minnesota? The treaty of 1848 was supposed to provide a new reservation to a faction of the Stockbridge Indians &#8211 but details were never agreed upon.

Part XVII: Jotham Meeker and the Two Minute Books. We find members of the Disaffected Party and Munsees continuing on in the Baptist faith west of the Missouri River.

Part XVIII: Establishment of the Shawano County Reservation. The treaty of 1856 established a new reservation &#8211 but the land is not good for farming.

Part XIX: The Munseees: According to an Indian Party Brief. Munsee Indians came and went. How many Munsees were with the Stockbridge Indians in the late 1800&#8242-s? (hint: count them on your fingers).