The Second Monday (and Tuesday) in June: Watson Library Acquisition Highlights 2019

Watson Library staff sharing recent acquisitions with Museum staff and volunteers during Watson's annual Acquisition Highlights display. All photos by author

For more than a decade, Watson Library has been hosting an annual Acquisitions Highlights display in late May or early June. Originally organized as a single celebratory evening and "thank you" program for the Friends of Thomas J. Watson Library, the program was expanded several years ago to a two-day event to share the display with Met staff, volunteers, and the general public during Museum Mile.

While notable new library acquisitions are featured throughout the year on Watson's Instagram page, in pop-up displays organized in conjunction with symposia, and for Museum-wide programs such as MetFridays, the Highlights display serves as the main event through which Watson shares this material with library supporters who made the acquisitions possible and Museum staff and visiting researchers most likely to use them.

Andrijana Sajic (left) and Yukari Hayashida, Senior Book Conservation Coordinators, ensuring that books are safely and securely supported for display.

For this year's display, which took place June 10 though 11, Watson staff selected approximately 220 distinctive titles out of more than 24,000 volumes added to the library's collection in the 2019 fiscal year. The display featured rare books and journals related to art, architecture, design, books arts, paper arts, and other subjects that were purchased primarily through the generous financial support of the Friends of Watson Library or received as gifts.

Exhibition catalogues and other art publications from around the world, including Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Japan, Western Europe, Latin America, and the United States, purchased with funds provided by the Friends of Thomas J. Watson Library

This year's display reflected Watson's sustained commitment to documenting and supporting research on "art across all times and cultures" through monographs, periodicals, and auction, exhibition, and collection catalogs. In recent years, Watson has dedicated particular energy and attention to documentation of early twentieth-century modernism and avant-garde movements in Asia, Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union. Also on display were a number of trade catalogues (automobile, ocean liner, ceramic tile, decorative paper, type specimen, musical instruments, furniture, and lighting), and books related to architecture, ornament, and design.

Musical instrument, automobile, and ocean liner catalogues

Other notable acquisitions and "crowd favorites" featured in the display include: portfolios of reproductions of works by African American artists published by the Harmon Foundation in the 1930s; masterful facsimiles of significant Hebrew illuminated manuscripts; portfolios and catalogues of works created by Jewish artists and other targeted populations who survived concentration camps, depicting what they endured and observed; Mexican handmade bark paper (amate) books created by Otomí artists Alfonso García Tellez and Antonio López M in the 1970s; adult-content periodical issues from the 1960s published by, or featuring, Yayoi Kusama; rare catalogues and artists' publications by Carolee Schneemann, Dorothy Iannone, Clara Tice, and Joyce Scott; Op Art and Kinetic Art exhibition catalogues designed by Carlos Cruz-Diez, Ludwig Wilding, and others, with movable, interactive components; and artists' books, contemporary photobooks, and 'zines from around the world.

Avant-garde, modern, and contemporary Japanese language publications. Foreground (left to right): Shikei senkoku: Shishū / Hagiwara Kyōjirō cho (Tōkyō : Chōryūsha Shoten, Taishō 15 [1926]); Tadanori Yokoo (Woodbury, N.Y.: Barron's, 1977); and Ezōshi Urotsuki Yata / Shibata Renzaburō cho, Yokoo Tadanori ga. (Tōkyō-to Chiyoda-ku : Shūeisha, 1975)

Mindell Dubansky, Museum Librarian for Preservation, Sherman Fairchild Center for Book Conservation, Thomas J. Watson Library, discussing Watson's Paper Legacy Project with Met staff

In addition to offering Met staff a chance to view new acquisitions, the event also affords opportunities for Watson staff to connect with our colleagues across departments, to learn about their active projects and upcoming exhibitions, and identify new ways and areas of collecting in which Watson may support their research. We are thrilled to have developed such a popular response to the event among our colleagues over the years and always find the event to be affirming and re-energizing for the next year. Thank you to all the Met staff and volunteers, as well as the general public, who made time to stop in, view the display, and speak with us.

Watson librarians in conversation with Met staff from multiple departments. On table in foreground: selections from collections of artists' books donated to Watson Library by Liliana Dematteis, Robert J. Ruben and Yvonne Korshak Ruben.

If you missed attending in person, fear not! Photographs of every table have been posted in an album on Watson’s Facebook page. Additionally, Claire Lanier, The Met's Senior Manager of Social Media, filmed a twenty-six-minute video walk-through of the display for The Met's Facebook page. The video features Watson staff members providing an overview and brief commentaries on select items in the display in a multitude of languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and Italian. (Bonus points for spotting the guest appearance by Coco, a visiting researcher's service dog much adored by Watson staff).

Watson staff members Min Xu, Yukari Hayashida, and Holly Phillips, ready to discuss works in the display for a video walkthrough posted on the Met's Facebook page.

Is there a particular book or periodical featured in the video or in the images here that piques your interest? A complete list of all works shown in the display, with direct links to request them for viewing within Watson Library, may be found here. Like the one million other holdings in Watson's collection, these publications are available to Met staff and visiting researchers for consultation six days a week, during regular library hours. (Click here for more info about using Watson, and a link to register online).

If you would like to join us for next year's public display, mark your calendar now: on June 9, 2020, Watson will be offering the display once again during Museum Mile, which next year promises to be monumental for the Museum, as we celebrate the Met's 150th Anniversary.

Watson Library's Acquisition Highlights display may not be quite as large of a world-wide phenomenon as the "First Monday in May" Costume Institute Gala, but we do strive to make all Watson visitors feel like they are being given the red carpet treatment—without the paparazzi.