Yet More NYPL News

It seems that the New York Public Library has been in the news quite a lot of late. Directly concerning the Library for the Performing Arts is the recent announcement that Jan Schmidt has been appointed officially as the new curator of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division. Congratulations from Ephemeral Archives and all the best of luck!

Also sure to be of interest is the upcoming exhibition of the fabulous photographs of Kenn Duncan, which is scheduled to open in the LPA’s Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery on 30 July. A small, but intriguing selection of images from the vast Kenn Duncan photograph archive already have been digitized for the NYPL Digital Gallery.

I opted for the portrait of Jerry Herman for two reasons. It seemed an apt moment to salute Mr. Herman, without whose music, current release, Wall-E, would be, well, two-dimensional. It also had been pointed out to me that somehow this blog has been singularly lacking in cat pictures to date–an omission we hope to continue to address in the coming months.

Image credit: Jerry Herman holding a cat. NYPL Digital Gallery ID #1752271

 

More Acquisitions (New and Newish) and Limitations of RSS Feeds

Today’s New York Times reports on the acquisition of the Savada Collection by the Syracuse University Library’s Belfer Audio Laboratory and Archive. This enormous and important collection, which was compiled by the late Morton J. Savada (former owner of the Records Revisited store in New York City), contains over 200,000 thousand rare 78-rpm recordings of popular music, as well as related printed materials. A more official press release with fuller details regarding this excellent resource (and its future availability to the public) can be found on the SUL Web site.

I scarcely had time to begin musing about what criteria may make a new archival acquisition “newsworthy” enough to rate a mention in the Times when I (suddenly) recalled one of the more curious comments I overheard at the recent ALA conference. At a discussion group meeting someone remarked that her institution had “dodged a bullet” by not having acquired the Grateful Dead Archive, indicating that it had gone instead to the University of California, Santa Cruz Library’s Special Collections and Archives. Leaving aside, for the time being, the entire question of the kind of attitude that comment reveals, I wondered inwardly, “Why didn’t I hear about it? Has it happened already? Was it in the Times?”

Well, yes, Virginia, it turns out that the NYT did run a story way back in late April (!) when the announcement of the new acquisition was first made. But it was included in the U.S. news section, which, sad to say, I rarely find the time to read these days when all the news I supposedly am interested in, “comes to me” directly via RSS feeds from the Arts section. There also was a very nice piece that came out in the San Francisco Chronicle at around the same time. So, belated props to UCSC for so cheerfully taking on the very special challenges of this unique gift. They’ve even recently started up their own blog about it.

Image credits:

(Top) Photo of Morton J. Savada in 1988 by Elias Savada. From New York Times obituary.

(Bottom) UCSC press conference photo by r.r. jones; Pictured (l-r): Nion McEvoy, Virginia Steel, George Blumenthal, Bob Weir, and Mickey Hart. From UCSC News.

 

Archives as Assets

Today’s New York Times features a story on how Sony BMG Music Entertainment is generating revenue by marketing high quality reproductions of publicity (and other) photographs held in its archives (particularly material from Columbia Records). Other record labels are likely to follow suit as sales of CDs continue to fall.

 

Library of Congress Celebrates Charles Strouse

Yesterday the Library of Congress officially received personal papers from musical theater composer, Charles Strouse, and the man himself also was interviewed and honored at a special performance at the Kennedy Center during the evening. Strouse, who will be turning eighty on June 7, will publish his memoirs, Put on a Happy Face, on the first of June. The LC acquisition complements another collection held by the Music Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Many happy returns!

Image credit: All American / Fay Gage; Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog #2007683580

 

Harold Pinter Papers Acquired by British Library

This morning brings news reports of another important performing arts archival acquisition. The British Library has purchased the complete archive of playwright Harold Pinter for £1.1 million. The complete text of the BL press release may be read here.

It is instructive to note the different manner in which the story has been covered in Great Britain and the United States respectively, with the Guardian being representative of the former and the New York Times of the latter. The Guardian emphasizes the heroic efforts that went into “saving” the collection for a (presumably grateful) nation, while the NYT blandly, but decisively, eliminates any such display of emotion and only includes the story in its “Arts, Briefly” section.

 

From “Buried” to Broadway?

Now that the Broadway stagehands’ strike is history, another feel good archives story has emerged just in time for the holidays. Or is it really a feel good story for archives, after all?

Yesterday saw the Broadway premiere of an adaptation of a previously unperformed and unpublished play by Mark Twain, Is He Dead? (circa 1898). As widely reported, the manuscript was “rediscovered” by scholar, Shelly Fisher Fishkin at the University of California, Berkeley’s Bancroft Library several years ago. An illustrated edition of the Twain text was published by the University of California Press in 2003 as part of its Jumping Frog series. Now, a new version of the play, adapted by that resurrection specialist, David Ives, of Encores! fame (many of you may have heard him as a panelist at the Theatre Library Association’s Performance Reclamation symposium last February), has opened to largely positive reviews at New York’s Lyceum Theatre.

While the resultant good publicity may generate a few more sales of the book and perhaps some additional donations to the Bancroft’s worthy Mark Twain Papers and Project and Mark Twain Project Online, so far, no one has bothered to thank the archivists for preserving and providing access to the original material.

Image credit: John McMartin and Norbert Leo Butz in Is He Dead?; photograph by Joan Marcus (from the show’s official Web site).

 

Archives Inform Radio City Anniversary Show

Interesting piece in today’s New York Times about the way in which archival materials have played a role in the development of the 75th edition of the “Radio City Christmas Spectacular.” Most excitingly, the article mentions the efforts of the Radio City Music Hall archivist, Diane Jaust, to promote the use of the organization’s archives. While the usual stereotypes prevail to a certain degree (Ms. Jaust is described variously as “archivist,” “historian,” and “librarian”–her formal title may, in fact, be Archivist and Corporate Librarian for Radio City Entertainment), the overall tone of the article is upbeat about archives.

Also, from this recent Daily News review, it sounds as if Jaust also makes an appearance in the television documentary, Diamond at the Rock: 75 Years at Radio City Music Hall, which is scheduled to air in the New York city area on WNBC (Channel 4) at 7:00 PM this Saturday evening and on Sunday night at 9:00 PM on MSG.

Hint: Our friends at the Archivists Roundtable of Metropolitan New York should book Ms. Jaust for a program pronto!

 

Katharine Hepburn Papers at NYPL

Today’s New York Times contains a substantial story promoting the New York Public Library’s recent acquisition of papers relating to the theatrical career of actress Katharine Hepburn. Also included on the Times site is an extensive selection of photographs and documents from the collection available as a slide show.

The Hepburn papers will be available to researchers at the Billy Rose Theatre Collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts by February 2008, with a full slate of public programs scheduled to coincide with the opening of the papers. The complete NYPL press release can be found here.

 

Critic Gives Props to Archives

In today’s New York Sun, dance critic Joel Lobenthal concludes his review of the restored Balanchine Don Quixote film at the New York Public Library by singing the library’s praises (the only critic whom I’ve come across — so far– to explicitly do so):

The Performing Arts library’s restoration of the Balanchine-Farrell “Don Quixote” confirms its status as one of the world’s most important archives of the arts. The library is to be commended for restoring and making available this fascinating and slightly disturbing artifact.

You’ll get no argument here. Check out the rest of the piece in the Sun here (possibly the only time you may ever read that advice in this space) for some other interesting insights.

 

Catching Up

I know I promised some reports on activities at the SAA 2007 Annual Conference in Chicago, but that will have to wait at least one more day. I barely had time to glance at either the copies of the New York Times (and sometimes Chicago Tribune as well) that were deposited daily outside of my hotel room door or at my own copy of the Sunday Times at home, but going through my also-neglected Google Reader this morning, I eyeballed the following items, published over the last several days, which can give us all much to brood about. While Sweden takes decisive measures to preserve the works of Ingmar Bergman, private interests in the United States litigate over an equally vital piece of American dance history (i.e. the New Dance Group). In happier news on the dance front, it appears as if the Dance Notation Bureau has regrouped successfully. See if you agree or not with a notator’s contention that dance is not an ephemeral art. Meanwhile, in a not very provocative think piece, Jason Zinoman quavers inconclusively (in typical Times fashion) over the previously discussed Vanity Fair article’s impact upon Arthur Miller’s reputation. Finally, in Sunday’s Arts & Leisure section, there was a more informative piece on the creative reuse of material in the Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives that manages not to mention the work of the archivists themselves at all.