125 years and still waiting: a museum library history

125 Years and Still Waiting: A Museum Library HistoryAuthor(s): Allen TownsendSource: Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, Vol. 20,No. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 4-7Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Art Libraries Society of NorthAmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27949116 .

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FEATURE

125 Years and Still Waiting: A Museum Library History by Allen Townsend, Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Philadelphia Museum of Art, one of the great American "big city" museums, will celebrate its 125th anniver

sary in the spring of 2001. The Museum Library was also founded in 1876, with its own beginnings in Fairmount Park's

Memorial Hall, the site of the famous Centennial Exhibition of 1876 and the Museum's home until 1928. The Library's 125-year history is one of steady collection building, primarily through gifts and exchanges, resulting in the accumulation of an aston

ishingly rich collection with major strengths in auction, exhibition, and museum collections catalogs, as well as several

important special collections.

Figure 1. Drawing by Ludwig Babr?l, Pennsylvania Museum Bulletin 30, no. 166 (March 1935).

The lack of adequate space for the Library, however, has haunted its librarians and museum administrators for many years. The Library was part of two major space planning initia tives launched by the Museum during the twentieth century, neither of which was fully implemented. The earlier plan was considered during the Great Depression (Figures 1, 2 and 3). Another library plan was proposed by Venturi, Rauch, Scott

Brown, the Philadelphia architectural firm, which oversaw the Museum's renovations during the 1980s. Both plans were ulti

mately postponed.

The Late Nineteenth Century The earliest records of the Library are found in the published

annual reports of the Museum. As early as 1879, a trustee "Committee on the Art Library"1 was formed to support the new research library. A map of Memorial Hall shows the Library's location on the first floor near the entry hall. The Library was to serve the research needs of the staff and faculty of the institution then known as the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art. The founders of the Museum used the Victoria and Albert Museum as a model and emphasized the educational value of the collections and the library to the public and to local "Art industries."2

Five years later the Museum Library and the Library of the School of Industrial Art became two separate entities. The School was moved to 1709 Chestnut Street, and the books, "...which

[were] of most direct help in [the students'] studies [were]

brought in from the museum."3 This early teaching collection continued to grow and today is part of the Albert M. Greenfield

Library at the University of the Arts. The Museum's Library grew much more slowly through the next decade, becoming primarily a collection of pictorial works related to the decorative arts..


4 Art Documentation ? Volume 20, Number 1 ? 2001




The First of Several Special Collections A turning point in the early history of the Museum and the

Library came in 1892, when the library and paintings collection of W.R Wilstach was bequeathed to the City of Philadelphia. The Wilstach library included many nineteenth-century illus trated works as well as an important collection of early auction

catalogs and art historical references. This donation formed the core of the Museum Library's fine arts reference collection. Income from the Wilstach Endowment Fund eventually would

provide support for library purchases through the darkest days of the Great Depression in the 1930s.

By 1903, when the first Pennsylvania Museum Bulletin was

published, the Library already had forged publications exchange agreements with other museums in Europe and America. The Bulletin would become integral to the exchange program, administered by the Library from its inception. The

exchange program was also to become a major tool in the

development of the scholarly collections of the Library. The Museum hired its first full-time Librarian, Anita Rinehard, in 1917 to oversee its collection of more than 15,000 items.

Fiske Kimball's Librarian Fiske Kimball was a pivotal figure in the history of the

Museum and brought a wealth of knowledge and experience as well as a powerful vision to the position of Museum Director between 1925 and 1955. Paul Vanderbilt was hired by Kimball to build collections and to raise the profile of the Museum's

Library. Vanderbilt held the position of Librarian between 1928 and 1942, and was responsible for moving the library into its current quarters in 1939. He was also able to accomplish a great deal in the areas of collection development and organization.

Vanderbilt's efforts were somewhat thwarted by the unfor tunate timing of his tenure, coinciding with the Great

Depression and early years of World War II. However, he was still able to make several trips to Europe to acquire books for the Library. He was also allowed funding to send an agent to China on a similar buying trip to acquire Asian imprints. Ironically, Library annual reports on acquisitions from the early 1930s reflect the highest ratio of purchases to gifts (nearly 1:1) of any period in the Library's history to date, in spite of the

Depression. As mentioned previously, the Wilstach Fund along with modest financial support of several patrons during this

period made those purchases possible.

Kimball was very supportive of Vanderbilt's efforts, even

sharing the Museum's allotment of workers from the Works

Progress Administration for Library projects. Vanderbilt's WPA

support staff assisted with several important cataloging and

organizational programs during the Great Depression, includ

ing the creation of a union card catalog documenting major art and architectural sources in other libraries in the region.

Vanderbilt also published Library newsletters that he dis tributed in the Museum galleries and public areas. These "newsletters" were actually annotated, scholarly subject bibli

ographies eloquently describing new Library acquisitions and their relationship to the art exhibited in the galleries. The newsletters helped to make Museum visitors more aware of the

Library and its purpose within the institution. But the publica tion of an entire Pennsylvania Museum Bulletin on the subject of the Library in 1935 was Kimball's and Vanderbilt's most fer vent attempt to communicate the importance of the Library to the Museum's constituency (Figure 4). That issue of the Bulletin also included reproductions of architectural renderings of beautiful and spacious interiors of a Museum Library space that never was realized. (Figures 1, 2 and 3). The drawings of the proposed interiors were prepared by Ludwig Babr?l, a Civil

Works Administration Project architect employed by the Museum during the mid-1930s. Kimball hoped that the draw

ings might inspire a donor to help create these magnificent spaces.

All the while, Vanderbilt seems to have been keenly aware of the limitations of the Library's small research collection,

working tirelessly through the late 1930s and early 1940s to

help create one of the earlier examples of a library cooperative in the form of a Philadelphia-area libraries union catalog. His

work on this project is commended in the preface of Philadelphia Libraries: a Survey of Facilities, Needs and Opportunities: a Report of the Special Libraries Association and the Carnegie-funded Bibliographical Planning Committee of Philadelphia*

Additional Scholarly Donations It was also during Vanderbilt's tenure that the first install

ment of the John G. Johnson collection came to the Museum. In

1933, Vanderbilt oversaw the move and installation of

Johnson's outstanding art library into the Johnson Collection curatorial offices.5 Combined with the Wilstach library, the

Johnson materials gave the Museum Library excellent coverage

Volume 20, Number 1 ? 2001 ? Art Documentation 5



of art historical imprints through the early twentieth century. The Johnson library is particularly strong in its early auction

catalog holdings, which date back to 1741, and in Old Masters artists' monographs.

Vanderbilt's Assistant Librarian, Marjorie Lyons, became Librarian in 1942. Lyons oversaw an exceptionally rich period of donations to the Library between 1942 and 1968. Her annual

reports ?st gifts from many distinguished scholars and collec

tors, including A.E. Gallatin, Carl Zigrosser, Stella Kramrisch, Jules Mastbaum, and Lessing J. Rosenwald, to name but a few.

Lyons' auction catalog exchange program with several

European museum libraries was a particularly innovative

approach to the disposition of duplicate catalogues, and helped to greatly enrich the European auction catalog holdings of the

Library. She also received a choice group of auction catalogs from the Rosenbach brothers in the early 1950s. However, the

gift of the library and archives of Louise and Walter Arensberg in 1954 would transform the Museum's research collections, and chart the course for future collection development in the

Library for many years to come. By 1960 the Library numbered more than 50,000 items.

Sevy's Legacy Barbara Sevy began work as Lyons' Assistant Librarian in

1964 and was appointed to the position of Librarian in 1968. She oversaw a major project to re-classify the Library's hold

ings to the Library of Congress standard, as well as the donation of several endowment funds supporting library acquisitions. She was an active participant in the early years of

ARLIS/NA, which enhanced her knowledge of other art

library collections practices and burgeoning technologies in academic libraries during the 1970s. As a result, in 1981 Sevy was able to secure foundation funding for the library to join the Research Libraries Group (RLG), becoming one of the first spe cial library members of RLG's online consortium, the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN).

Sevy was also heavily involved in the inauguration of the Museum's Archives program, and the addition of the Slide

Library and the Archives in 1982 to the Department's responsi bilities. The Library continues to reap the benefits of her

development efforts today through the five endowed book funds established during her tenure as well as through an

ongoing relationship with a local group of art enthusiasts and

Library "friends" known as Faith and Fine Arts. This group has

provided generous annual donations for Library acquisitions since the mid-1960s. Other major donations to the Library dur

ing Sevy's tenure included the entire auction catalog collection of the Free Library of Philadelphia's Art Department in 1969. This extensive collection enabled the Museum to create one of the largest collections of auction catalogs in North America.

Arms and Armor

In the late 1970s the Museum received another collection which would add a new dimension to its holdings. The arms and armor collection of Carl Otto von Kienbusch was acces sioned in 1977. Fortunately the collection came with an

outstanding specialized research library which included a number of rare and unique items. Sevy oversaw the processing

and cataloging of this special collection in the Department of

European Decorative Arts and Sculpture before 1700.

By the early 1980s, the Library had grown to more than

120,000 items, and the space that was deemed inadequate even

by Librarian Paul Vanderbilt in 1939 was far beyond capacity. The Museum was also experiencing unparalleled growth on several fronts which greatly affected the Library, most notably the expansion of its scholarly publication program, as well as the ever increasing research needs of its Conservation

Department. These factors combined to create a much greater demand for ongoing access to more sophisticated collections and online information. The Library struggled to provide these services as space for collections, staff, and computer terminals became more and more difficult to configure.

During this period the Museum sought the services of the

distinguished Philadelphia-based architectural firm of

Venturi, Rauch, Scott Brown to assist with space planning.

Figure 4. Cover art for Pennsylvania Museum Bulletin 30, no. 166

(March 1935).

Unfortunately, as was the case in the 1930s, the firm's proposed Museum Library expansion was once again postponed due to unforeseen complications with other major projects under way at that time.

6 Art Documentation ? Volume 20, Number 1 ? 2001



Famine, Then Feast

The 1990s period was one of extremes for the Library. During the early part of the decade, the Library was to encounter its more difficult trials. In 1991, the Museum's bud

get shortfall forced the lay-off of seven full-time staff members,

including the Archivist position. As the hope for an expedient solution to the ongoing space problems faded, the Library con tracted offsite storage and retrieval services. Anita Gilden Carrico led the Library through these less than ideal circum

stances, still managing to advance collection documentation and automation objectives, expanding online search programs, and automating serials collection management.

The End of the Century Since the mid-1990s, the Library's fortune has definitely

turned for the better. In 1996 the Museum was invited to join the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (PACSCL), a membership that has helped greatly in

raising the community profile of the Library and the Museum's rare book and manuscript collections. With the assistance of a PACSCL grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Museum

Library was also able to implement its first online public access

catalog, offering Web-based access to approximately twenty per cent of its collections. A Trustee Committee was reorga nized in 1997 to support the activities of the Library and Archives. An anonymous gift from a Museum Trustee fol

lowed, allowing for the re-opening of the Archives in 1998. In

1999, the Library and Archives department head position was endowed in perpetuity by the Arcadia Foundation. In June 2000, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded the Archives major funding for processing and cataloging of sever al of its most important record groups. Most importantly, the

Museum's acquisition of an additional building in June 2000 offers solutions to some of its most pressing space problems, including space for the Library and Archives.

The Museum Library collection now numbers more than

145,000 items, about twenty-five per cent of which are depart mental holdings with approximately ten per cent located in off-site storage. While only twenty per cent of the collection is

represented in RLIN, the Library has made great strides in cat

aloging rare and unique items during the past five years. The

Library also has begun to contribute its current auction catalog records to RLIN's SCIPIO database and has converted more than 1000 historical auction catalog records (1756-1905) during the past two years.

The Museum's most recent space planning venture with The Vitetta Group was begun late in 1999. While it is still unclear exactly where within the new Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building the Library, Slide Library, and Archives will

ultimately be located, this librarian remains very hopeful as the

process continues.

Notes

1. Annual Report of the Pennsylvania Museum and School.

(Philadelphia, PA: The Museum, 1876): 5.





4. Philadelphia Libraries: A Survey of Facilities, Needs and

Opportunities: A Report to the Carnegie Corporation of New York by the Bibliographical Planning Committee of Philadelphia. (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1942).

Preface.

5. PMA Archives. FKR - Series 3 - Library -

Griffith/Kimball/Vanderbilt correspondence. 1933.

Volume 20, Number 1 ? 2001 ? Art Documentation 7



125 years and still waiting: a museum library history

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