Fifty years of the Fine Arts Library

The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters

Citation Freitag, Wolfgang. 2013. Fifty years of the Fine Arts Library. Harvard Library Bulletin 23 (3), Fall 2012: 3-4.

Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:42669038

Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Fify Years of the Fine Arts Library

Wolfgang Freitag

Wolfgang Freitag in his ofce, 1981. Reproduction. Harvard Art Museums Archives, HC.22.41.

t was during a beautiful night and a California spring when at Nash Avenue, Menlo Park, suddenly the telephone rang and disturbed my Ipeacefully sleeping family. Te voice on the other end of the line belonged to Douglas W. Bryant, the librarian of Harvard College and Associate University Librarian under Paul Buck, the director. Doug, a loyal Stanford alumnus, had “loaned” me to his alma mater, where I was engaged in building the collection of an undergraduate library that was modeled on Harvard’s Lamont and the University of Michigan’s undergraduate library. Doug felt that this immigrant would enjoy and beneft from experience on the West Coast. “But, I want you back,” he had said, “in about fve years, and, by the way, when you come back is there anything specifc you would like to do?” “Yes,” I replied, “I would like to be in charge of one of the humanities libraries, preferably music or art.” Now, during that night in May when he had slightly misjudged the time diference between the two coasts, he ofered me the librarianship of the Fine Arts Library.

Wolfgang Freitag 3 It would be an act of gross impiety if this introduction to the history of the frst ffy years of the Fine Arts Library did not also pay homage to the person who directed, over a period of slightly more than twenty-seven years, the frst and earliest of the two components from which arose the Fine Arts Library of the Harvard College Library: Edna Louise Lucas, librarian of the Fogg Museum Library from 1927 to 1963. Miss Lucas was a pioneer in the then emerging profession of art librarianship, a subject on which she had many publications to her name. She combined the administration of the Fogg Art Museum Library with the function of chief acquisitions and book selection ofcer for fne arts in Widener Library. But her capacity as consultant extended even those two roles by also working closely with the librarians of the Peabody Museum Library, which at that time included not only non-European “ethnographic” arts such as the arts of Oceanic and African tribal societies, but also a large collection of classical, Greco-Roman, and prehistoric art. In the brief, two-page introduction in which Miss Lucas welcomed new students to her realm, she made it clear that the heart of the enterprise was not the verbal but the visual section, especially the photograph collection which had grown to more than 25,000 items and a substantial collection of large-format lantern slides, the latter meticulously cataloged on large-format index cards that, in addition to location and provenance of the work of art also featured a black and white contact print. Tis collection formed the virtual “Museum Without Walls” (as Malraux would have called it). As such, it was recognized not only by art historians, but also by scholars from the felds of theology, literature, musicology, and anthropology, to but name a few. Te printed resources in this library consisted of course reserves, many in multiple copies, monographs on single works of art owned by the museum, and a large collection of museum and gallery catalogs that was international in its depth and scope; furthermore, there were books on museum administration, conservation, and restoration, the last two being felds in which the Fogg was the recognized leader among academic libraries. Its journal Technical Studies in the Field of the Fine Arts ranked with only a handful of similar publications worldwide. So it came to pass that when Miss Lucas suddenly announced her immediate retirement less than one year afer the two collections of art history books—the one at the Fogg and the one at Widener—had been ofcially consolidated to form the new Fine Arts Library of the Harvard College Library, I became her successor.

———————

Dr. Freitag passed away on November 14, 2012. All of us who had the opportunity to work with him mourn his passing. Te library’s collections and services celebrated in this issue of the Harvard Library Bulletin were shaped in large part during the twenty- seven years of his tenure as Librarian.

4 Te Fine Arts Library at 50 Contributors

James S. Ackerman is Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Fine Arts Emeritus, Harvard University.

Glaire D. Anderson is Associate Professor of Art History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Susan Anderson is Curatorial Research Associate for Dutch and Flemish Drawings, Harvard Art Museums.

Persis Berlekamp, PhD 2003, is Associate Professor of Art History, University of Chicago.

Francesca Bewer is Research Curator in the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, Harvard Art Museums.

Kathryn Brush is Professor of Art History, Department of Visual Arts, University of Western Ontario, Canada.

Ellen P. Conant is an independent scholar.

Harry Cooper, PhD 1997, is Curator of Modern Art, National Gallery of Art.

James Cuno, PhD 1985, is President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust.

Walter B. Denny, PhD 1971, is Professor of Art History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Emine Fetvaci, PhD 2005, is Assistant Professor, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, Boston University.

Shirin Fozi, PhD 2010, is Assistant Professor, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh.

Wolfgang Freitag was Librarian of the Fine Arts Library from 1962 to 1989.

Jeffrey L. Horrell was Librarian of the Fine Arts Library from 1992 to 1998 and currently is Dean of Libraries at Dartmouth College.

Harvard Library Bulletin 65 Aden Kumler, PhD 2007, is Assistant Professor, Department Art History, University of Chicago.

Melissa Beck Lemke is Image Specialist for Italian Art, Department of Image Collections, National Gallery of Art.

Megan R. Luke, PhD 2009, is Assistant Professor, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, University of Southern California.

Katharine Martinez was the Librarian of the Fine Arts Library from 1998 to 2010 and currently is Director of the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona.

Christine Mehring, PhD 2001, is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History, University of Chicago.

John E. Moore, PhD 1992, is Professor of Art, Smith College.

Alexander Nagel, PhD 1993, is Professor of Fine Arts, New York University.

Peter Nisbet is Chief Curator at the Ackland Art Museum, Te University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Lisa Pon, PhD 1999, is Associate Professor, Department of Art History, Southern Methodist University.

Scott Redford, PhD 1989, is Professor in the Department of Archaeology and History of Art, Koç University, Istanbul.

Melissa Renn is Senior Curatorial Research Associate, Harvard Art Museums.

Claire Roberts is Senior Lecturer in Art History, University of Adelaide.

William W. Robinson, PhD 1996, is Maida and George Abrams Curator of Drawings, Harvard Art Museums.

Eric M. Rosenberg, PhD 1992, is Associate Professor of Art History, Tufs University.

John M. Rosenfield, PhD 1959, is Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of East Asian Art Emeritus, Harvard University.

Hao Sheng is Wu Tung Curator of Chinese Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Seymour Slive is Gleason Professor of Fine Arts Emeritus, Harvard University.

66 Te Fine Arts Library at 50 Miriam Stewart is Curator of the Collection, Division of European and American Art, Harvard Art Museums.

Deniz Türker is a PhD candidate in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University.

Michelle C. Wang, PhD 2008, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Art History, Georgetown University.

Henri Zerner is Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University.

Harvard Library Bulletin 67