Category Archives: New at the Rubenstein Library

Archive of Documentary Arts, Digital Collections, Manuscripts, New at the Rubenstein Library, New Finding Aids, Technical Stuff

Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel

A monthly series highlighting the Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel Collection Project and the woman behind the documents.

Diamonstein-Spielvogel

Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel is an advocate for art in fashion, design and architecture and a leading voice on some of the defining urban issues of our time, including preservation of the historic built environment of the United States. The impact of her work is all around us.  Have you been inside re-adapted buildings?  Diamonstein-Spielvogel was one of the pioneers of adaptive reuse of buildings throughout the country.  Have you seen “Historic neighborhood” medallions on street signs in numerous major cities?  She pushed for those (and still does).  As we start the New Year, we are excited to announce the Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel Collection, a new addition to the Rubenstein’s Archive for Documentary Arts.

Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel helps to commemorate the inventor of Scrabble with an historic street sign.

Diamonstein-Spielvogel’s interest in the relationship among the arts, public policy, community and politics has charted the course of her career, fostered her involvement in national and local institutions and organizations, and earned her many awards and honors. As the first Director of Cultural Affairs for New York City, she brought the first public art to Bryant Park in 1987 and the first public performance by the Metropolitan Opera to Central Park. Diamonstein-Spielvogel was appointed by President Reagan to the board of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and by President Clinton to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, where she was elected its first woman vice chair in 2002. In 2010, Barack Obama appointed her as a commissioner of the American Battle Monuments Commission. She has written 20 books and dozens of magazine and newspaper articles and has served as interviewer/producer of nine television series for the Arts and Entertainment Network plus several programs for other national networks, many of which Duke has made available in the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Video Archive.

Diamonstein-Spielvogel’s latest book, Landmarks of New York: An Illustrated Record of the City’s Historic Buildings

As part of the two-year Diamonstein-Spielvogel Collection Project, we will be processing the 200-plus boxes of manuscripts pertaining to her life and career.  The project will culminate in an exciting exhibit in 2013. In our next post, look for information on Diamonstein-Spielvogel’s work with famous designers and artists including Calvin Klein, Adolfo, Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Nevelson, Jeanne-Claude and Christo, Roy Lichtenstein, and Sam Maloof.

Post contributed by Ruth Cody and Caroline Muglia, Graduate Interns for the Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel Collection Project.

Archive of Documentary Arts, Bingham Center, Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections, Hartman Center, History of Medicine, New at the Rubenstein Library

New Year, New Acquisitions

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What better way to ring in the new year (okay, we’re a couple of weeks late) than with a roundup of exciting new acquisitions from the second half of 2011?   All of these amazing resources will be available for researchers in the Rubenstein Library in 2012 and for years to come!

  • Stereograph of John Wesley Powell with a Native American. From the Powell Expedition Photograph Album.

    Powell Expedition Photograph Album: A remarkable album of 539 photographs taken during John Wesley Powell’s Second Expedition along the Colorado River in 1871-75 by John K. Hillers, E. O. Beaman, and James Fennemore.  The photographs include landscapes of the Western states and documentary photographs of Native Americans, especially the Paiute tribe.  Part of the Archive of Documentary Arts.  Look for more information on this album in the Biblio-file column in the January-February 2012 Duke Magazine.

  • Case book of Dr. Philip Turner. From the Philip Turner Papers.

    Philip Turner Papers: Documents from the life and career of Dr. Philip Turner (1740-1815), Surgeon General for the Eastern Department of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.  The manuscript collection contains correspondence, medical returns, printed materials, records from northeastern field and city hospitals, and ledgers documenting Turner’s career as a surgeon in private practice, in the Continental Army, and in the United States Army. Part of the History of Medicine Collections.  More information about this important collection of early American medical history is coming soon!

  • The Door in the Wall, And Other Stories, by H. G. Wells: This 1911 limited edition of Wells’s science fiction and fantasy stories features stunning photogravure illustrations by the vorticist photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn.

 

 

 

My Rubenstein Library, New at the Rubenstein Library, News and Features

My Rubenstein Library: A Newly Acquired Greek Manuscript

In this post Professor Lucas Van Rompay, Chair of the Duke University Department of Religion, explains an exciting new addition to the Rubenstein’s early manuscript collections.  Thanks, Professor Van Rompay!

Recently acquired Greek “Menologion” manuscript, ca. 11th century, Constantinople. Image courtesy Lucas Van Rompay.

The Rubenstein Library recently acquired a fascinating 11th-century Greek manuscript.

With some colleagues and students of the Graduate Program in Religion, we went to see the manuscript on Thursday, October 6, and were greeted by Naomi Nelson, Director of the Rubenstein Library, and J. Andrew Armacost, Head of Collection Development and Curator of Collections.

The new manuscript contains a collection of the lives of saints celebrated in the Greek Orthodox Church during the month of September. It is the first volume of what once must have been a ten-volume set, known as the ‘Menologion’ and covering the entire liturgical year (which begins in September). This particular collection is associated with the name of Symeon Metaphrastes, who in the late 10th century rewrote and collected much of the ancient Greek hagiographical tradition.

While Symeon’s collection became authoritative in the Greek Orthodox Church and is preserved in a great number of manuscripts, the new Duke manuscript stands out for its early date and for the exceptionally fine quality of its script and its lavish execution. It may safely be dated to the middle of the 11th century and must have been produced in Constantinople, from where in the 11th century a number of copies of Symeon’s Menologion were sent to churches and monasteries all over the Byzantine Empire.

Students and faculty view the new manuscript with Curator of Collections Andy Armacost. Image courtesy Lucas Van Rompay.

Until 1960 the manuscript belonged to the library of the Dionysiou Monastery on Mount Athos, from which it was sold, and later sold at auction to the Schoyen Collection, which recently deaccessioned it. It will be part of the Kenneth Willis Clark Collection at Duke, which already contains a great number of very fine Byzantine manuscripts.

Thanks to Andy Armacost, Curator of Collections, for coordinating this post.

Archive of Documentary Arts, Events, Exhibits, From Our Collections, New at the Rubenstein Library

“Iraq | Perspectives: Photographs by Benjamin Lowy”

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Date: October 24-December 11, 2011
Location and Time: Rubenstein Library Gallery during library hours
Contact Information: Karen Glynn, 919-660-5968 or karen.glynn(at)duke.edu

Benjamin Lowy’s powerful and arresting color photographs, taken through Humvee windows and military-issue night vision goggles, capture the desolation of a war-ravaged Iraq, as well as the tension and anxiety of both U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians.

To photograph on the streets unprotected was impossible for Lowy, so he came up with the brilliant approach of making images that illuminate this difficulty by shooting through the windows and goggles meant to help him, and soldiers, to see. In doing so he provides us with a new way of looking at the war—an entirely different framework for regarding and thinking about the everyday activities of Iraqis in a devastated landscape and the movements of soldiers on patrol, as well as the alarm and apprehension of nighttime raids.


Lowy’s work was selected from over two hundred entries in the fifth biennial Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography competition, judged by William Eggleston. Lowy will speak about his work during the exhibit’s opening reception on Thursday, November 10th at 5:30 PM in the Rare Book Room.

An online exhibit is available on the Libraries’ website as well.

Lowy received a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis in 2002 and began his career in 2003 when he joined Corbis and embedded with the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division to cover the Iraq War. In 2005 Photo District News chose Lowy’s Iraq images as some of the most iconic of the start of the 21st century. Lowy’s photographs appear regularly in national and international such publications as the New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Fortune, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Stern, and Rolling Stone. His work has been exhibited at San Francisco MOMA, Tate Modern, Open Society Institute’s Moving Walls, Noorderlicht Photofestival, Battlespace, and the Houston Center for Photography, among others.

The Archive of Documentary Arts at the Rubenstein Library acquired the exhibit photographs through the generosity of the Honickman Foundation established by Lynne Honickman.  Harold Honickman sits on the board of the Honickman Foundation and is a member of the Duke University Library Advisory Board. The gift of Benjamin Lowy’s photographs supports the Rubenstein Library’s commitment to acquiring photographic collections that have artistic merit and that reflect the visionary purposes and documentary impulses of their creators.

Post contributed by Karen Glynn, Photography Archivist for the Archive of Documentary Arts.

From Our Collections, Manuscripts, New at the Rubenstein Library, New Finding Aids, News and Features, Technical Stuff

One for the Refrigerator Door

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Painting by Doris Duke, 1924

Doris Duke—the only daughter of Duke University benefactor James Buchanan Duke and noted philanthropist and patron of the arts—painted this lovely scene in 1924 at the age of eleven. It is part of the Doris Duke Papers, donated to the Rubenstein Library in 2009 by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and now open for public research.

Further details about the extraordinary collection may be found in the official press release, or by reviewing the collection’s finding aid.

Events, From Our Collections, Manuscripts, New at the Rubenstein Library, Readings and Talks

Ariel Dorfman: Feeding on Dreams

Date: Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Time: 4:00 PM
Location: Gothic Reading Room, Perkins Library
Contact Information: Aaron Welborn, 919-660-5816 or aaron.welborn@duke.edu, or Will Hansen, 919-660-5958 or william.hansen@duke.edu

Draft of Feeding on Dreams in English, annotated by Dorfman and editor Deanne Urmy. From the Ariel Dorfman Papers.

What better way to celebrate the arrival of an acclaimed author’s papers than by having him read from his newly-published work?  On Wednesday, Ariel Dorfman will read from his new memoir, Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile. The reading is free and open to the public.

Dorfman placed his papers with the Rubenstein Library earlier this month, and we are just starting to inventory the many fascinating materials therein.  Drafts of Feeding on Dreams in both English and Spanish are included in the papers, revealing the process by which Dorfman crafted the language and themes of his memoir out of the “earthquake of language” of bilingualism.  Indeed, the papers are a rich trove of information for students and scholars of translation, containing Dorfman’s own translations of his works as well as his notes, suggestions, and corrections for translations by others.  Here are a few additional previews of the papers’ contents:

  • An astounding collection of ephemeral and clandestine Chilean resistance literature from the era of Pinochet’s regime
  • Scripts and notes for Dorfman’s innovative plays, including Widows, Speak Truth to Power, and Purgatorio
  • Annotated books from Dorfman’s personal library, and books inscribed to him by many notables (including Nelson Mandela!)

We look forward to seeing you in the Gothic Reading Room on October 5!

Post contributed by Will Hansen, Assistant Curator of Collections.

Do Your Research, From Our Collections, Manuscripts, New at the Rubenstein Library, New Finding Aids, Technical Stuff

All in a Day’s Processing

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As the archivist that handles accessioning, I receive collections into the RBMSCL’s Technical Services department that range in condition from “perfectly arranged upon arrival” to “dumped in a box and shaken up a bit in transit.” The Hypes Family Papers, an expansion upon a small collection of World War I photographs by Samuel Loomis Hypes, came to us in envelopes and a box that had seen better days.

To begin processing the collection, I first had to find out what it contained. Each envelope revealed another surprise—various family photographs, including a daguerreotype; tickets from the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893; postcards the family collected from their trips around the world; family history research; and a lot of Y.M.C.A. materials (at least two generations of Hypes men worked for the organization). By the time I had spread it all out to sort it, my table was looking particularly messy.

I decided to arrange the collection by family member, which allowed me to keep it in basic chronological order while still grouping each person’s activities together within the collection. Photographs and tickets were sleeved, clippings were photocopied, and the daguerreotype was housed in its own envelope for protection. Things were looking much better on my processing table.


Next, I created a finding aid for the collection, folding in the original collection of World War I photographs. Using the collection’s family history materials, I was able to loosely reconstruct the family tree. An updated catalog record finished up the collection. Now ready to use, the Hypes Family Papers offer a fascinating glimpse into one family’s activities around the world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Post contributed by Meghan Lyon, Accessioning Associate.

From Our Collections, New at the Rubenstein Library, Rare Books

10 Days, 10 New Acquisitions: Day Ten

Today, we’re wrapping up our celebration of the beginning of a new fiscal year with our last feature on one of the notable items that arrived here at the RBMSCL in the past year. Get ready for announcements of many more exciting acquisitions in 2011-2012! We’d like to thank Mark Zupan, the Libraries’ graphic designer, and everyone in the Digital Production Center for their help with the images for these posts.

Le Premier [Second] Volume des Plus Excellents Bastiments de France by Jacques Androuet du Cerceau, 1576 and 1579.

A major document of Renaissance Europe, Androuet du Cerceau’s survey of French buildings includes nearly 150 engraved plates.  In two volumes, 36 palaces, castles, and other major buildings are beautifully illustrated by detailed plans and views.  In some cases, the buildings no longer stand or are now vastly different than they appeared in 16th-century France.

For more photos of our new acquisitions (and other materials from the RBMSCL’s collections), check out the “From the RBMSCL’s Collections” set on the Duke University Libraries’ Flickr photostream.

Post contributed by Will Hansen, Assistant Curator of Collections.

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Archive of Documentary Arts, From Our Collections, New at the Rubenstein Library, Rare Books

10 Days, 10 New Acquisitions: Day Nine

We’re celebrating the beginning of a new fiscal year by reviewing some notable items and collections that arrived here at the RBMSCL in the past year. Get ready for announcements of many more exciting acquisitions in 2011-2012!

Photo of Gaza from Photographs of the Holy Land

Photographs of the Holy Land: Sinai and Palestine; Lower Egypt, Thebes, and the Pyramids; Upper Egypt and Ethiopia by Francis Frith, 1863.

In 1856-57, when the science and art of photography were still young and developing (pun intended), the Englishman Francis Frith traveled to the Middle East to photograph the great sites of antiquity.  A work of monumental proportions and importance to the early history of documentary photography, Francis Frith’s Photographs of the Holy Land includes some of the earliest published photographic images of Jerusalem, as well as iconic views of Egypt’s monuments and ruins, some now lost or much more decayed. The 111 albumen photographs are mounted in three folio volumes, and the set acquired by Duke this year is notable for the fine condition of the photographs.

From the Archive of Documentary Arts.

For more photos of our new acquisitions (and other materials from the RBMSCL’s collections), check out the “From the RBMSCL’s Collections” set on the Duke University Libraries’ Flickr photostream.

Post contributed by Will Hansen, Assistant Curator of Collections.

Previous posts:

Bingham Center, From Our Collections, Manuscripts, New at the Rubenstein Library, New Finding Aids

10 Days, 10 New Acquisitions: Day Eight

We’re celebrating the beginning of a new fiscal year by reviewing some notable items and collections that arrived here at the RBMSCL in the past year. Get ready for announcements of many more exciting acquisitions in 2011-2012!

Annotations and Manuscript by Brigid Brophy
Brigid Brophy Collection, 1937-1953

Brigid Antonia Brophy, Lady Levey (1929-1995), was an English writer of novels, biographies, essays, and other works, and a major feminist and pacifist voice of the 1960s and beyond.  She was greatly influenced by Freudian psychoanalytic theory, and this collection shows her engaging with Sigmund Freud’s texts: marking passages of interest to return to, jotting notes to capture moments of inspiration.  In one volume she laid in an untitled manuscript on telepathy.

From the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture.

For more photos of our new acquisitions (and other materials from the RBMSCL’s collections), check out the “From the RBMSCL’s Collections” set on the Duke University Libraries’ Flickr photostream.

Post contributed by Will Hansen, Assistant Curator of Collections.

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