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June is National Pollinator Month, brining attention to the importance of relationship between pollinators and plants, and our dependency on plants for oxygen and as primary food source.

This engraving was created by the artist Paul Revere in 1774. Revere was a silversmith, engraving artist, and prosperous Bostonian who was also a military officer and industrialist. He became famous for his role in a midnight ride in 1775 to alert nearby minutemen of the approach of British troops at the beginning of the American Revolutionary War in Massachusetts.

Bees [from Royal American Magazine, Vol. I, No. XVIII] Revere, Paul, 1735-1818, American [artist] engraving 6 7/8 x 4 3/8" 1774 HOLLIS number: olvwork169866

This image is part of FAL’s Digital and Slides Collection (DISC), a collection of images digitized from secondary sources for use in teaching and learning. FAL does not own the original artworks represented in this collection, but you can find more information at HOLLIS Images.

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Happy Birthday to Anni Albers who was born on this day in 1899!

Wall hanging Albers, Anni, 1899-1994, German [artist] silk, cotton, and acetate 145 x 92 cm. 1925 Repository: Neue Sammlung, Staatliches Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Munich, Bavaria, Germany HOLLIS number: olvwork719794

Anni Albers, Dessau Umbo, 1902-1980, German [photographer] German Albers, Anni, 1899-1994, German [subject] ca.1929 HOLLIS number: olvwork427327

This image is part of FAL’s Digital Images and Slides Collection (DISC), a collection of images digitized from secondary sources for use in teaching and learning. FAL does not own the original artworks represented in this collection, but you can find more information at HOLLIS Images.

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“No one was going to put me on the cover of a Paris fashion magazine, so I thought, I’m gonna make my own.”- Martine Gutierrez

“Indigenous Woman began in 2014 when artist Martine Gutierrez (American/Mayan, b. 1989) served as art director, photographer, and model to create an entire world of high fashion in a 146-page glossy magazine. Among the fashion spreads are carefully constructed portraits of Indigenous deities from Mesoamerican and West African religious traditions. The artist printed large-scale photographs of these self-portraits, mounting them in elaborately hand-painted frames. Each deity, many of whom embody male and female characteristics, has a distinct identity depicted in their elaborate hair sculptures, dramatic make-up, and extravagant accessories. Gutierrez, who is Latinx and transgender, drew inspiration from both the beauty of the divine and the ugliness of colonial oppression to create images that invite questions about the rigid binaries of male / female, sacred / profane, and Indigenous / colonizer.”-  (From Philbrook website)

Indigenous woman editor-in-chief and creative director, Martine Gutierrez. Gutierrez, Martine, 1989- [artist, photographer] [New York, New York] : Ryan Lee Gallery & Martine Gutierrez, September 2018. 95 pages, 29 unnumbered pages : chiefly illustrations (some color) ; 42 cm English September 2018 HOLLIS number: 99158079645303941

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Happy Pride Month!

Queer masses is a suite of five volumes celebrating queer joy and the transformative power of LGBTQIA2S resistance. The title references critical masses in community solidarity rather than religious masses. These letterpress and risograph printed zines feature original artwork by Jade Juno as well as writing by Sarah Evenson. Each volume uses a different binding structure that thematically dovetails with the focus of that particular issue"--Publisher's correspondence.

Queer masses by RumTum (Artist collective) [author] [Minneapolis, Minnesota] : RumTum, 2020-2021. 5 issues (some folded) : color illustrations ; 13 cm English "RumTum is a collaborative team of two people who love each other. In this issue, words are by Sarah and pictures are by Jade. Concepts and bindings are by both of us." 2020-2021 HOLLIS number: 99155912183503941

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Today is National Hug Your Cat Day, but your cat would say everyday should be! Meow.

Girl and Cat Katsushika Hokusai, 1760-1849, Japanese [artist] Ink on paper H: 11.4 cm, W.15.9 cm. Japanese Edo Period Repository: Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia, United States HOLLIS number: olvwork251930

This image is part of FAL’s Digital Images and Slides Collection (DISC), a collection of images digitized from secondary sources for use in teaching and learning. FAL does not own the original artworks represented in this collection, but you can find more information at HOLLIS Images.

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Dinh Q. Lê (1968-2024) was a Vietnamese American multimedia artist, best known for his photography work and photo-weaving technique.

Growing up in Vietnam near the Cambodia border, Lê had traumatic memories of the Khmer Rouge Invasion. He and his family fled Vietnam in 1978 by boat, first spending a year in Thailand, then moving to the United States.

Many of his works consider the Vietnam War, known as the American War in his native country, as well as methods of memory and how it connects to the present. (Source: Wikipedia)

Vietnam: Destination for the new millennium: The art of Dinh Q. Lê

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The Great South End Grounds Fire of May 15, 1894

The Boston Beaneaters were playing the Baltimore Orioles at the South End Grounds when the fire began and quickly spread to engulf the park and nearby neighborhoods. The baseball game was stopped in the 3rd inning due to the fire.

Built in Boston’s Roxbury section in 1888, the South End Grounds was considered one of the most beautiful ballparks of the time. The fire burned “more than 12 acres, destroying about 200 buildings valued at more than $300,000. A total of 1,900 people were left homeless.”

“The Boston Globe initially blamed the fire on two young fans who it was said had set fire to an empty peanut bag and then dropped it underneath the bleachers. But Fire Marshal Edward J. Flynn, citing the eyewitness account of 14-year-old Jimmy Lasky, who had sneaked into the bleachers to avoid paying the 25-cent admission, said an adult fan had carelessly tossed away a cigarette that had set fire to trash underneath the bleachers.” (Source: Society for American Baseball Research)

Boston South End Grounds fire print 19 x 24 cm, mount 26 x 31 cm May 15, 1894 HOLLIS number: 8001343860

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Anni Albers (born Annelise Elsa Frieda Fleischmann, June 12, 1899 – May 9, 1994) was born in Berlin. She enrolled at the Bauhaus in 1922 where she ended up studying weaving after finding out that other disciplines were not an option due to gender biases at the institution.

Fleischmann found her passion in weaving, however, under the guidance of Gunta Stölzl, one of a small number of female teachers on the Bauhaus' staff and the first to hold the title of "Master." Fleischmann married fellow Bauhaus artist Josef Albers in 1926, taking on her husband’s last name. They were eventually forced to emigrate from Nazi Germany and relocate to the United States in 1933. Albers received her U.S. citizenship in 1937.

Anni and Joseph Albers both taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina until 1949. In 1949, Anni Albers became the first textile designer to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She worked in weaving, textile, and printmaking, and was a pioneer in the midcentury textile design movement in the United States.

Anni Albers filled a graph-paper notebook regularly from 1970 until 1980. This facsimile publication of the notebook illustrates her working process and contains intricate drawings for her large body of graphic work, as well as studies for her late knot drawings.

Anni Albers : Notebook 1970-1980 Editors, Lucas Zwirner ; afterword, Brenda Danilowitz. New York, NY : David Zwirner Books, [2017] 152 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 26 cm HOLLIS number: 990152251350203941

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This anthology gathers writings, documentation and ephemera from Godzilla: Asian American Arts Network, a collective based in New York from 1990 to 2001, which was formed to provide a support structure for Asian American artists, writers and curators to stimulate visibility and critical discourse for their work. The book gathers archival material from the group's wide-ranging activities, which included producing exhibitions and forums to social change advocacy surrounding institutional racism, the politics of representation, Western imperialism, the AIDS crisis and violence against Asian Americans. Godzilla created a social space for diasporic Asian artists and art professionals, including members such as Tomie Arai, Karin Higa, Byron Kim, Paul Pfeiffer, Eugenie Tsai, Lynne Yamamoto and Alice Yang, among others.

Founded by artists Ken Chu, Bing Lee and Margo Machida in New York and eventually expanding into a national network, Godzilla's aim was to function as a support group interested in social change through art, bringing together art and advocacy, and to contribute to changing the limited ways Asian Pacific Americans participate and are represented in broad social context in the artworld and beyond. (Publisher’s notes)

Godzilla : Asian American Arts Network Edited by Howie Chen. Brooklyn, NY : Primary Information, [2021] 550 pages, 1 unnumbered leaf : illustrations, portraits, facsimiles ; 31 cm English HOLLIS number: 99156386327603941

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This cyanotype taken by John Henry Haynes in 1888-1900 documents excavations at Nippur (modern day Iraq).  The process involves exposing light-sensitive paper or fabric to light, typically sunlight, after it has been coated with a solution of iron salts, producing monochromatic cyan-blue prints. 

Nippur, Iraq, workers on site, scattered pottery and sarcophagi. Haynes, John Henry, 1849-1910, American [photographer] 18.6 x 23.1 cm

Biography History: John Henry Haynes was an American professor at Robert College in Istanbul from 1881-1884 and Central Turkey College in Gaziantep from 1884-1888. He was trained by renowned journalist and pioneer archaeological photographer William James Stillman. Haynes photographed archaeological expeditions at Assos (1881-1882) and Nippur (1888-1900), becoming the first American to systematically document an archaeological dig. He also served as U.S. consul to Bagdad from 1888-1892.

cyanotypes 1888-1900 HOLLIS number: 8001701638

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The tintype was an early photographic process that produces a direct positive image on a thin sheet of lacquered iron (not tin). These are unique images produced without the need for a negative. Tintypes were extremely popular from the 1850s through the early 1910s. 

Hand-colored tintype of unidentified sitter by unidentified photographer.

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In honor of National Photography Month, we are highlighting the Portrait Collection of the Fine Arts Library, which includes over 30,000 historical portraits from the 19th and early 20th centuries in both print and photographic form. The collection includes 10,000 cartes-de-visite, 6,000 cabinet cards, 200 Imperial-size portraits by Mathew Brady, and 16,000 tintypes. Here are just a few examples of tintypes from the collection. Stay tuned for more examples from our Photography Collections this month.

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For the last day of National Poetry Month, we present you “There is an Ocean” by Joshua Beckman.

“The book is a combination of six prose poem/narratives about young men’s encounters with bodies of water. At different intervals, these narratives are obscured by shifting swathes of blue thread sewn into the pages of the book, bringing to mind sensations of covering and uncovering, freedom, and constraint, of voices appearing and disappearing, and of the shifting concepts of time lived in an age where the risks of intimacy seem to have dangerously moved out of control. In the words of the artist, this book portrays the high stakes of letting oneself go, of the inherent tension and displaced youth of the young, especially young gay men. (From the publisher’s note)

There is an ocean Beckman, Joshua, 1971- Rosendale, New York : Women's Studio Workshop, [1997] 1 sheet (42 unnumbered pages) : illustration ; 18 x 25 cm English HOLLIS number: 990152988470203941

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We continue to celebrate National Poetry Month by sharing some of the artists’ books that incorporate found poetry. It’s been a lot of fun to find interesting artists’ books!

Found poetry is a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them by making changes in spacing and lines, or by adding or deleting text, thus imparting new meaning.

This artist’s book entitled Tick Tiger Trout uses the New York City phone book as its source material. Artist Eva Mantell extracted the last names of people in New York that refer to nature, such as sun, moon, planet, star…

Tick, tiger, trout Eva Mantell. [Rosendale, N.Y.] : Published by Women's Studio Workshop, ©1996. 20 unnumbered pages : illustrations ; 23 cm English Cover title. "Being a partial reading of the New York City phone book” HOLLIS number: 990152987920203941

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In searching for some images for National Coin Week, we came across with this photograph by Josephine Powell (1919-2007) in our Special Collections. She was an American photographer, ethnographic collector, and traveler.

Born in New York City, she earned a BA from Cornell University in 1941 and received an MA in social work from Columbia University in 1945. After teaching herself how to use a camera, she moved to Rome in 1953 and began working as a freelance photographer specializing in art, architecture, and ethnography. In 1974 she moved to Istanbul and remained there until her death.

She traveled afar including countries in the Middle East and North Africa; Central, South, and Southeast Asia; Italy, Greece, and the Balkans. This photograph shows a coin from the

3rd - 2nd cent. BC with perhaps the photographer’s fingers on the upper right corner holding a piece of paper or plastic with a label written number 17.

Approximately 20,000 other photographs from her travels (with the exception of her material related to the culture of nomads in Anatolia) were gifted to the Fine Arts Library at Harvard University in 2002. We have 267 photographs of various coins by Josephine Powell and this is one of the rare incidents where we have a glimpse of perhaps the photographer’s hand.

Coin, tetradrachmas. Agathocles. Obverse Powell, Josephine, 1919-2007, American [photographer] Kunduz Hoard. Silver Provenance: Josephine Powell Collection Place: Kunduz, Kunduz, Kunduz, Afghanistan Greco-Bactrian Greek Bactrian Creation Date: 3rd - 2nd cent. BC Repository: National Museum of Afghanistan, Kabul, Afghanistan HOLLIS number: olvwork278451

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Happy World Book Day!

We wanted to share a behind the scenes look for some of our collections.

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Here’s your good luck coin for National Coin Week! We all need a good luck coin, don’t we?

Raoyi Shenbao' good luck coin Transliteration (Pinyin) Title: Rao yi shen bao tong qian Dimensions: 1.8 cm. Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China Five Dynasties (907-960) Creation Date: 907-978 (Five Dynasties) HOLLIS number: 8001343869

This image is part of FAL’s Digital Images and Slides Collection (DISC), a collection of images digitized from secondary sources for use in teaching and learning. FAL does not own the original artworks represented in this collection, but you can find more information at HOLLIS Images.