Do Your Research, Featured, From Our Collections, Hartman Center, Students and Interns

Story+ Students Create “Race & Ethnicity in Advertising” Website

September 19, 2017 ebg17@duke.edu

Sheer Elegance pantyhose advertisement — Pantyhose advertisement from the Jean Kilbourne Papers.

Post contributed by Jessica Chen. Jessica is a Duke undergraduate and was a participant in the Story+ program during Summer 2017.

This summer marked the first incarnation of Story+, a program for humanities research and dynamic storytelling sponsored by Duke University’s Franklin Humanities Institute. Each project team consisted of a few Duke undergraduates, one graduate student mentor, and a “client” such as the NC Justice Center, the Duke Classics Lab, and the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History. As an art history major interested in archival work, I applied (and was hired) for a position with the Hartman Center’s “Race and Ethnicity in Advertising” project. The other students on the project included Lizzie Butcher, Cyan DeVeaux and our mentor, Meghan O’Neil.

Perfume advertisement from the Jean Kilbourne Papers.

Our assignment was to create a digital resource for students and researchers that would serve as a portal for the Hartman Center’s resources related to underrepresented racial and ethnic groups in the United States. At first I wasn’t sure what ‘humanities research’ really entailed. I also didn’t know what the Hartman Center was, and I was confused as to why the Rubenstein Library wasn’t a normal, circulating library. Luckily, Hartman Center staff gave us an overview of the Center’s collections and the process of requesting and reserving materials for research. In the reading room, we looked at collections that featured different perspectives in the advertising industry: personal and professional documents of people of color who worked in advertising, marketing research reports analyzing and interpreting minority groups as consumer segments, and depictions of race and ethnicity in print advertising. We met with Hartman Center staff to present both our research findings and our website design ideas. We also were trained in how to build a website using Omeka.

Besides links to the various pertinent collections and a gallery of images, our website includes exhibits that each of us created with material from the Hartman Center, allowing us to pursue our individual interests in more depth. Our exhibits varied widely in topic. Lizzie Butcher’s exhibit described the “Black is Beautiful” movement in the 1960s and its effect on print advertisements, while Cyan DeVeaux’s exhibit depicted the development of professionals of color working in advertising. My exhibit, which illustrated the evolution of marketing research focused on minorities, taught me how to piece a narrative together by showcasing items from the Hartman Center’s collections and incorporating secondary sources to provide the historical context.

Through the Story+ program and this project, I learned how to conduct archival research, work in a highly interdisciplinary team, and create a website with assorted features – skills I had always wanted to develop, but didn’t have the opportunity to do so before this summer. I look forward to doing more humanities research in the future and spending more time in the Rubenstein Library, as well!

Check out the Hartman Center’s new Race & Ethnicity in Advertising website!

Audiovisual Materials, Digital Collections, Events, Exhibits, Featured, Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections, Human Rights Archive, Manuscripts, Radio Haiti, Readings and Talks

Rubenstein Events: Music and the Movement and more…

September 18, 2017 mlp60@duke.edu

Please join us this week for three very exciting events:

The SNCC Digital Gateway Project presents “Music & the Movement,” Tuesday, September 19, 7:30-9:30 pm

Please join us for an exciting discussion with five veteran activists on Tuesday, September 19th at 7:30 p.m. at NCCU’s Alfonso Elder Student Union. Music & The Movement – During the Civil Rights Movement, mass meetings overflowed with people singing and clapping to freedom songs, demanding justice in the face of oppression and showing courage in the face of danger. Join us for a roundtable discussion with five veteran activists as they speak about the power of the music of the Movement. As song leaders, Bettie Mae Fikes, Charles Neblett, and Hollis Watkins carried the music in their own communities in the South or across the nation as part of the SNCC Freedom Singers. Meanwhile, Candie Carawan and Worth Long worked to document the music of the Movement, recording and preserving the songs that moved people to action. They experienced firsthand how music was a tool for liberation, not only bringing people together but holding them together. The conversation will be moderated by SNCC veteran Charles Cobb. Many thanks to our co-sponsors: SNCC Legacy Project, Duke University Libraries, The Center for Documentary Studies, North Carolina Central University, and SNCC Digital Gateway Project.

Event Speakers: Bettie Mae Fikes, Charles Neblett, Hollis Watkins, Candie Carawan, and Worth Long

Event Location: NCCU’s Alfonso Elder Student Union

Event Contact: CDS Front Desk

Event Contact Phone: 660-3663

Exhibit Tour and Reception: ‘I Sing the Body Electric’: Walt Whitman and the Body, Thursday, September 21, 11:45-1:30pm

Continue reading Rubenstein Events: Music and the Movement and more… →

Bingham Center, Featured, From Our Collections, Manuscripts

Breaking Every Taboo: A Remembrance of Kate Millett (1934-2017)

September 12, 2017 mlp60@duke.edu 1 Comment

Post contributed by Kelly Wooten, Laura Micham, and Laurin Penland.

Kate Millett at the Los Angeles Women’s Center, 1977, photographed by Michiko Matsumoto. Kate Millett papers

We were saddened to learn of Kate Millett’s passing on September 6, 2017. As many people have been writing and speaking about her legacy, we realized we are not alone in trying to grapple with the significance of her contributions to the feminist movement, to the creation of feminist theory, to the art world, to writing, to LGBTQ activism, to advocacy for mental health reform, and to many, many other realms. Here at the Rubenstein Library, her papers have been at the heart of the Bingham Center’s collections since 2000, and have inspired much scholarship, enhancing our understanding of the world.

The Kate Millett papers in the Sallie Bingham Center provide rich documentation of Millett’s activities as a feminist activist, artist, and author. These materials reflect the intensely personal nature of much of Millett’s work and the frequent fusion of her personal, political, and professional interests. Materials in the collection also cover feminism and the social conditions for women around the globe, especially in France, Italy, and the Middle East—most notably Iran, where Millett traveled in the seventies.

Brochure for Women’s Liberation Cinema Company film, Three Lives, directed by Kate Millett, 1971. Kate Millett papers

Many researchers have been moved by their encounters with the writings and artwork of Kate Millett in her papers. Dr. Michelle Moravec, Associate Professor of American History and Women & Gender Studies at Rosemont College, writes:

“Working in a person’s archived papers is always an intensely intimate experience, but in Millett’s case the resonances are amplified by the emotional reactions she left scrawled across her papers. ‘Ridiculous!’ she pronounced in a scrawling red hand, across a tedious letter regarding a speaking engagement. ‘That awful Barnard thing goes on’ she sniffed in response to a request to publish her presentation from the Scholar and the Feminist Conference IX: Towards a Politics of Sexuality. Interspersed are flashes of Millett’s intellectual process, dashed off notes for one of her many lectures proclaims ‘We now have to dare everything… Writing our lives… Break every taboo.’ Long handwritten letters attest to her poignant longing to create an artistic community at The Farm, an art colony she created, the economic struggles all too familiar to female artists and writers who did not become academics, and her engagement with deeply difficult material including sexual abuse and torture.”

Born in 1934 in St. Paul, Minnesota, Kate Millett was an internationally acclaimed artist, writer, and activist. A founding member of the Noho Gallery in New York City, Millet created the Women’s Art Colony Farm in Poughkeepsie, NY in 1978, and had shown her work internationally since 1963. She was known for her sculpture and installation works in addition to pen and ink drawings both abstract and figurative. Millet’s Columbia University Ph.D. dissertation, Sexual Politics (1970), placed her at the forefront of the women’s movement. Her other political works include The Prostitution Papers (1973), The Basement (1979), Going to Iran (1979) and The Politics of Cruelty: An Essay on the Literature of Political Imprisonment (1994). Millett also wrote a series of memoirs that combine deeply felt personal revelation with trenchant political analysis. These include Flying (1974) about her early years, Sita (1977) and Elegy for Sita (1979) the story of a tragic romantic relationship, The Loony Bin Trip (1990) Millett’s exposé of the mental health system, A.D., A Memoir (1995) in which she reflects on her early life, and Mother Millett (2002) a meditation on her upbringing in middle America and her experience as an activist and then outcast from the movements she helped to form and lead.

In these books Millett gave her readers the analytical tools and inspiration for making a revolution. Her words, such as these from Sexual Politics, will continue to resonate, “For to actually change the quality of life is to transform personality, and this cannot be done without freeing humanity from the tyranny of sexual-social category and conformity to sexual stereotype—as well as abolishing racial caste and economic class.”

Pen and ink drawing, ca. 1978. Kate Millett Papers

Many moving tributes have been published in newspapers, on websites, and on social media such as this one by Gloria Steinem on Facebook: “As Andrea Dworkin said, ‘The world was asleep, but Kate Millett woke it up.’ Sexual Politics—and all Kate’s work—will keep us Woke.” The impact of Kate Millett’s life and work cannot be overstated.

Events, Exhibits, Featured, University Archives

University Mace & Chain Now on Display in Perkins Library

August 29, 2017 Amy McDonald

Post contributed by Valerie Gillispie, University Archivist

Have you ever wondered about the fancy chain that the president wears during commencement? Or about that big scepter that the chair of Academic Council carries during convocation? For the next month, get an up close look at the official Duke University chain of office and mace, on display near the service desk in Perkins Library.

Created in 1970, the mace and chain of office were formally debuted at Terry Sanford’s presidential inauguration on October 18, 1970. Both items are traditional symbols of leadership, and Duke’s versions feature distinctly Duke and North Carolinian decorations: pinecones, tobacco leaves, the school motto “Eruditio et Religio,” and the Duke family coat of arms.

Photo of mace and chain at Terry Sanford's inauguration — The mace and chain in action at Terry Sanford’s inauguration, October 18, 1970

The chain of office and mace will be on display until October 5, when they will be used during the inauguration of President Vincent Price, the University’s tenth president.

Featured, From Our Collections, Human Rights Archive, New at the Rubenstein Library

New Acquisitions – “Los Mochileros”

August 22, 2017 John Gartrell

Post contributed by Patrick Stawski, curator, Human Rights Archive

The Human Rights Archive recently acquired a copy of Petra Barth’s photobook “Los Mochileros” which is on exhibit in the Mary Duke Biddle exhibit suite through October 2017.

Through a series of piercing black and white portraits, Barth tells an intimate, visual story of people moving across the US-Mexico border. As with much of Barth’s portrait work, her collaborators capture the gaze of the camera, rather than be caught by it. Their pride, their strength, and their history challenge the camera and seem to confront us who stand behind it.

Los Mochileros on display in the Rubenstein Library through October 2017

“Los Mochileros” (The Backpackers) has received critical praise in Lenscutlure.com and the Huffingtonpost.com. The photobook is part of larger project undertaken by Barth which includes a traveling exhibit of the prints featured in the book. “Los Mochileros” joins a large body of Barth’s prints currently part of the Human Rights Archive collections which documents her long relationship with Latin America and more generally her interest in the human condition. Eventually, the prints from “Los Mochileros” will be added to Petra’s collection at the Rubenstein.

I reached out to Petra to delve a little deeper into the origin of “Los Mochileros”.

Q: What was the history and motivation for “Los Mochileros”?

A: The ‘Mochileros” has been a ‘bi-product’ of The Americas. Traveling from South to North, it was natural to cross and stop at the border, being a point of discussion in politics on both sides of the border. Originally, I enrolled in a workshop in AZ, which did not happen after all. Nevertheless, I did go and decided to explore the region on my own. I did not know at the time that I would return and the impact the story would have on my work.

Q: Your work at the US/Mexican border has involved both portrait and landscape. How do you feel each of these contributes to the visual representation of the border? How do these add to the dialogue around immigration?

A: I feel that my work is quite different than most of the work done in that area, which was my original intention. Despite the fact that it had a more journalistic starting point, I see my work at the border as pure documentary, quiet and not involved in people’s daily life. I wanted to document the border strip as how I experienced it myself, pure in its identity, as a boundary dividing two countries with barriers, walls and sometimes only barbwire. The display in Venice ties both portraits and landscapes together, as all these people crossed the border somewhere.

Q: Who were some of the important partners that contributed to “Los Mochileros”, directly or indirectly?

A: The project was made possible with the help and support of the Juan Bosco Shelter in Nogales, FESAC Fundacion del Empresariado Sonorense, A.C., BCA Border Community Alliance and all the migrants, of course, who passed through the shelter.

Q: Is there one particular story or moment in the project that stands out in your mind?

A: There were two moments, which had an impact on the story. The first was during my second visit in the shelter when I realized that I wanted to change the focus of the story. Initially, I had planned to focus on the broader border issue. After meeting and talking to many of the migrants, I decided to make a portrait story and focus on their faces and memories. The second moment was when I edited the pictures for the book, realizing that the people were not only a part of the story. They were a story themselves.

Q: What are your hopes for “Los Mochileros”?

A: I hope that the exhibit which is currently shown in Venice can travel to the US and become a travel exhibit – especially under the current political circumstances and can evoke interest and discussion for the subject. Hopefully through a broader distribution of the book, attention can be brought upon this issue. I hope we can display/exhibit the project in Nogales, so the population living on both sides of the border as well as passing migrants can see it.

Featured, From Our Collections, Just for Fun

Eclipse Chasers of the Rubenstein

August 17, 2017 Noah Huffman

Post contributed by Noah Huffman, Archivist for Metadata, Systems, and Digital Records

Darkness is Coming. I don’t know about you, but on Monday, August 21, I’m heading to Greenville, S.C., inside the path of totality for the Great American Eclipse of 2017. It’s my first eclipse chase, but I was curious if there was evidence of any earlier eclipse chasers in our Rubenstein collections. Here’s what I found:

Eclipse of November 30, 1834 – Washington, D.C. – Charles Wilkes

In 1833, Lieutenant Charles Wilkes (1798-1877) assumed command of the Navy’s Depot of Charts and Instruments, what would later become the Naval Observatory. When a partial eclipse cast its shadow over D.C. the following year, Wilkes carried out a series of observations and measurements on a hill “directly north of the Capital, distant from it 1300 feet, and about 80 feet to the West of its center.” Wilkes relayed his observations (in excruciating detail) to Secretary of the Navy Mahlon Dickerson in a letter dated December 13, 1834, found in the Rubenstein’s Charles Wilkes Papers:

Portrait of Lieutenant Charles Wilkes (1840) by Thomas Sully, U.S. Naval Academy Museum

Sir, Agreeably to your desire, I have the honor to report the following results of the observations made at this Depot on the Eclipse… The instruments employed in the observation were a three foot reflecting telescope by Troughton, a 42 inch refraction by Harris, and a 30 inch refraction by Gilbert, the former with a magnifying power of 175, the two latter with ones of 40… The times of beginning (meantime) 0.49.40, ending 3.30.01 afternoon…

I’ll spare you the rest of the details, which include temperature measurements (it dropped 24 degrees during the eclipse), notes on how he synchronized three clocks (very carefully), and nearly two-pages on his method for determining the precise latitude of his observatory. Compared to modern eclipse chasers, Wilkes’ comments are strictly scientific. There is no self-reflection in his account, no mention of prostrating and weeping in ecstasy, only an apology for his tardiness in sending his observations: “…they would have been sent to you sooner but owing to a severe sickness I was unable to attend to them.”

Eclipse of July 18, 1860 – Cumberland House, Saskatchewan, Canada – William Ferrel

William Ferrel (1817-1891), the meteorologist not the comedian, spent most of his career studying “mid-latitude atmospheric circulation,” but as the total eclipse of 1860 approached he headed for more northern latitudes in the path of totality–all the way to Cumberland House, a remote outpost of the Hudson’s Bay Company in what is now Northern Saskatchewan.

Eclipse of July 18, 1860, Saskatchewan. William Ferrel Papers, Rubenstein Library.

Ferrel was dispatched from Boston north to Saskatchewan by Charles Henry Davis, the superintendent of the American Nautical Almanac Office. In a letter dated June 11, 1860, Davis wrote to Ferrel with instructions:

Eclipse, Cumberland House, Saskatchewan, July 18, 1860. William Ferrel Papers, Rubenstein Library.

I hereby instruct you to proceed to Cumberland House … for the purpose of making, in its vicinity and on the central line of shadow, observations upon the eclipse of the Sun of the 18th of July of this year…I have called your special attention, first, to the bulging protuberances, or rose colored prominences, seen at the time of total obscuration, in order that you may assist if possible in determining the question of their origin. Second, to the use of the polariscope, in the manner recommended by Arago; and, third, to the careful examination during the period of darkness, of the regions bordering on the Sun, for the possible discovery of inter-Mercurial planets…

While Ferrel’s papers don’t include any written record of his observations, we do have two photos he snapped during the period of totality. Don’t look directly at them, but if you squint you can maybe see some…bulging protuberances?

Eclipse of May 28, 1900 – North Carolina – Edward Featherston Small

Portrait of Edward Featherston Small, Rubenstein Library

Edward Featherston Small (1844-1924) was a photographer, salesman for the Duke tobacco company, owner of a popular roller-skating team in Durham (it’s true!), and, in 1900, an amateur astronomer. When the path of totality crossed through central North Carolina on May 28, 1900, Small aimed his (large) telescope and camera to the heavens to capture the event. We can only hope he was wearing proper eye protection.

Edward Featherston Small with telescope, May 28, 1900. Rubenstein Library

Eclipse, May 28, 1900, North Carolina. Edward Featherston Small Papers, Rubenstein Library

Do Your Research, Human Rights Archive, Manuscripts, Travel Grants

From the Far East to the East Side: Broadening Narratives of Immigration and Refugees in the Rubenstein Library’s Human Rights Archive

August 14, 2017 John Gartrell

Post contributed by Jonathan Johnson, Associate Professor in the Department of Art at Otterbein University, a recipient of a 2017 Marshall T. Meyer Research Travel Grant.

It was my pleasure to spend a week in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library this summer engaging with photographs, documents and videos from Duke’s Human Rights Archive. I am in the pre-production phase of an experimental documentary film project that centers around the informal storytelling sessions between recent Southeast Asian immigrants that took place in my mother’s beauty shop in the 80’s and 90’s in St. Paul, Minnesota.

International Monitor Institute records, 1990-2003. Volume/Box:PH3

I was particularly interested in photographic prints from the International Monitor Institute Records (IMI) that documented human rights abuses in Southeast Asia, particularly in Burma (Myanmar). Many of these photographs were taken near the Thai border in refugee camps and temporary outposts of various branches of the Karen National Union that oppose the Burmese government. I intend to use these materials as aids to oral history interviews that I am conducting with my mother and others in this community that formed around her beauty shop.

As an artist that uses archives and primary source material (and also creates them), I start with a concept but remain open to the labyrinth experience that often occurs in the archive. For instance, when the random sequencing of photographic prints in an archival folder creates an unintended narrative through formal relationships (color, line, texture) and metaphor. In one case, the grid-like charred remains from a recently torched resistance army camp follows a wide landscape photo shot from a helicopter. The sense of scale and context meld into one another, the vast beautiful jungle landscape absorbing the physical and psychological terror of this conflict. As I storyboard my documentary, I am now thinking about how competing senses of scale and vantage point might stand in as visual representations of the fragmented reflections and narratives that are contained in the oral history interviews that I’m making.

This is just one of many examples of when creative research, chance and intuition intersected during my time in the Rubenstein Library. For an artist, this is the most rewarding experience of working in the archive.

Featured, Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections, Hartman Center, New at the Rubenstein Library

New Acquisitions – African American history marketing and promotional posters, 1967-1984.

August 11, 2017 John Gartrell

Post contributed by Jacqueline Reid Wachholz, Director, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History

In response to the Civil Rights movement of the mid-20^th century, many advertisers began to see the African American market in a new, and profitable, light. Advertising campaigns were developed over the next few decades celebrating African and African American heritage as a method of advertising products to this demographic. The Rubenstein Library’s Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History and John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture jointly acquired this collection of 48 items showcasing black Americans through advertisements and political campaigns aimed at African Americans from the 1970s through the 1990s. Collected by a former public relations associated with the NAACP, this collection represents some NAACP marketing work and advertising images depicting notable African Americans and significant moments in African American history. These posters include biographical sketches of African American writers, scientists, professional athletes, soldiers, civil rights workers, entertainers, and other historical figures. Included are also a number of posters produced by and for the NAACP that the organization’s campaigns to reduce poverty and school dropout rates and increase voter registration and membership in the NAACP. Notable advertising campaigns include Budweiser’s “Great Kings of Africa” Series, Pepsi Cola’s “The Black Presence” Series, and the CIBA-GEIGY Corporation’s “Exceptional Black Scientists” Series.

Great Kings of Africa. A marketing campaign started in 1975 by the Anheuser-Busch Corporation designed to appeal to an African American audience while at the same time promoting African History. During its over 25-year campaign and with a total of 30 different images, it has been either celebrated as a means of showcasing and promoting African history or criticized for, as Rev Michael Pfleger of South Side Chicago’s St. Sabina Catholic Church puts it “one more attempt by the alcohol and tobacco industries to buy a reputation in the African-American community.” The campaign consisted of a series of paintings done by African-American artists commissioned by Anheuser-Busch that were accompanied by a short history of the subject being portrayed

Exceptional Black Scientists, CIBA-GEIGY, 1980-1984: These posters are meant to celebrate current scientific leaders of African American descent and inspire minority students to pursue careers in science. Each individual selected had recently made a substantial scientific discovery in their respective field. The posters are derived from portraits done by noted black artist and illustrator Ernest Chrichlow. This series was advertised directly to teachers, and was meant to be placed in the classroom, science fairs, or community centers.

Black Presences, PepsiCo, circa 1980s: A series of posters, that celebrated the African American ‘presence’ in America’s history and culture. Each poster features a portrait of the individual selected, a short biography, and is entitled by the category of culture (arts, sports, history, etc.) that the individual belongs to.

These posters are available to researchers in the Rubenstein Library.

Do Your Research, Economists' Papers Archive, Featured, News and Features, RL Scholars

Young Researcher Prefers Game Theory to Video Games

August 8, 2017 Amy McDonald 1 Comment

Post contributed by Elizabeth Dunn, Research Services Librarian

The Rubenstein Library’s Economists’ Papers Archive attracts numerous scholars from around the globe. This summer, it has also attracted one very special scholar: rising eighth grader Benjamin Knight. Nearly every day, he has been a quiet presence in our reading room, working his way diligently through boxes of our Oskar Morgenstern Papers.

Although we often welcome even very small children whose families make a pilgrimage to see our first edition Book of Mormon, Benjamin is the youngest serious researcher anyone can remember. Those of us on the Research Services staff found his interest in this important Austrian American economist intriguing. He was kind enough to take time out of his work to grant me an interview.

Photo of Benjamin Knight working with a box from the Oscar Morgenstern papers in the Rubenstein Library reading room. — Benjamin Knight in the Rubenstein Library reading room.
Photo by Elizabeth Dunn.

Asked how he became interested in Morgenstern, Benjamin replied that he had read an article about Von Neumann and Morgenstern. (The two economists overlapped at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from 1938 until 1954. Morgenstern, an economist trained at the University of Vienna and influenced by Carl Menger, was grappling with the challenges of economic prediction. He knew John Von Neumann’s 1928 paper on the theory of games and the two collaborated on their influential 1944 book, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior.¹) Benjamin was pleased to discover that we hold the Morgenstern Papers, and is using them to tease out the sources of Morgenstern’s key ideas: the University of Vienna or Princeton. More generally, he is interested in the application of game theory to the analysis of social interactions and political decision-making. Some of the Morgenstern documents are hand-written in German. Asked whether those were challenging, Benjamin replied that the handwriting is a little problematic, but translating the German, which he has never studied, is more difficult.

Benjamin has many other interests besides game theory. He represented Brazil (and, with partner Claire Thananopavarn, won Best Delegation) in the Eighth Annual Chapel Hill-Carrboro Middle School Model United Nations Conference in April. He was part of the Smith team at this year’s Middle School National Academic Quiz Championship Tournament and placed among the top twenty-five competitors in the 2017 Wake Technical Community College Regional State Math Contest. When not competing, Benjamin enjoys reading fiction, history, and politics.

Benjamin comes by his interest in social and political analysis naturally. His mother, cultural anthropologist Margaret “Lou” Brown, is Senior Research Scholar and Director of Programs at Duke University’s Forum for Scholars and Publics. His father Jack Knight is Frederic Cleaveland Professor of Law and Political Science and holds a joint appointment in Duke’s School of Law and Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. Benjamin has not yet decided on a particular career path, but all of us in the Rubenstein are happy that he found us and look forward to following his continued successes.

Notes:

New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics

From Our Collections, History of Medicine, New at the Rubenstein Library

New Acquisitions – Wonderful Wunderkammer

August 4, 2017 John Gartrell

Post contributed by Rachel Ingold, Curator, History of Medicine Collections

In the sixteenth century, printed works depicting early museums and personal collections of physical objects began to emerge. Such collections were curated overwhelmingly by men of a certain standing in society, including a number of physicians. Personal collections included items such as shells, gems and minerals, coins, sculptures, fossils and animals, and more. Rooms showcasing such objects were stuffed with as much as could be displayed, including mounting crocodiles on ceilings and finding a place for the unicorn horn (or rather, the tooth of the narwhal, an arctic whale).

These cabinets of curiosities, or wunderkammer, provided a space for visitors to see objects from the world within one room – objects that were both natural as well as man-made. In many ways, these cabinets of curiosities were precursors to modern day museums, and printed works from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries provide text as well as stunning images of the legacy of wunderkammer.

The History of Medicine Collections has recently acquired a magnificent work of wunderkammer, a work by German physician Michael Bernhard Valentini (1657-1729), titled Museum Museorum, printed in 1714. This three volume set, printed in two volumes, includes catalogs from other such curiosity collections as well as a list of all known museums at the time (of which he notes are around 159). Numerous copper engravings are found throughout the text, including six extra-illustrated engravings printed on blue paper. Along with providing a survey of museums and details on collecting, Valentini also covers topics including animals, plants, minerals, and their medicinal use, along with shells, fossils, physics, and natural philosophy.

These volumes and other printed books related to cabinets of curiosities are available for researchers in the Rubenstein Library.