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Subject Guide: Art History

Highlighting archival collections and library materials that document artists, art movements, and the history of art and culture.

Women being instructed in art class at the Y.M. & Y.W.H.A. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, c1950. I-337. AJHS

Archival Highlights

Theater and Film Poster Collection of Abram Kanof (P-978) [Collection is digitized and available online.]

From 1948-1962 Kanof was the Chairman of the Jewish Museum in New York, where in 1956 he founded the Tobe Pascher Workshop for the creation of modern Jewish ceremonial art. The collection consists of 331 posters representing 205 different theater and film productions, spanning the years 1899 to 1970.

Papers of Hannah Ruth London (P-347) 

The collection consists primarily of research notes for Ms. London's published works on portraits, miniatures and silhouettes of American Jews. The notes contain family histories of the subjects as well as information on the artists, and are arranged both by subject and artist.

A.S.W. Rosenbach collection (P-748) [Collection is digitized and available online.]

The collection consists of 8 items relating to A.S.W. Rosenbach's work as a collector and dealer of rare books and manuscripts, and in managing the Rosenbach Company with his brother, an art and antique dealer. 

Arthur Szyk Collection (P-819)

Collection consists of advertisements, articles, books, lithographs, magazine covers, posters, and stamps that Szyk illustrated between 1931, 1941-1955. Additional items contain exhibit promotions and articles about Szyk's work. 

Library Highlights

Remembrance of patria : Dutch arts and culture in colonial America, 1609-1776 / by Roderic H. Blackburn and Ruth Piwonka; with an essay on paintings by Mary Black and additional contributions by Charlotte Wilcoxen, Joyce Volk, and Nancy Kelley. Produced by the Publishing Center for Cultural Resources for the Albany Institute of History and Art, 1988. 

The Monuments men : Allied heroes, Nazi thieves, and the greatest treasure hunt in history / by Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter. Little, Brown and Company, 2013.

Jewish art, from the Bible to Chagall / by Ludwig Gutfeld; translated from the German by William Wolf. T. Yoseloff, 1968.

A History of Jewish art / by Franz Landsberger. Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1946.

Women as interpreters of the visual arts, 1820-1979 / edited by Claire Richter Sherman with Adele M. Holcomb. Greenwood Press, 1981.

A Crown for a king : studies in Jewish art, history, and archaeology in memory of Stephen S. Kayser / edited by Shalom Sabar, Steven Fine, William M. Kramer. Judah L. Magnes Museum ; Gefen Pub. House, 2000.

Comic books as history : The narrative art of Jack Jackson, Art Spiegelman, and Harvey Pekar. / by Joseph Witek. University Press of Mississippi, 1989.