As you may know, for a relatively small library (click for a map of the library) we have a number of nooks and crannies. One area you may not be familiar with is our Rare Book / Artist Book collections. They are closed shelves that are kept locked to maintain the security of the collection. But all of the items there can be checked out for use in the library. You can browse the shelves through the door windows. Alternately, if you come across a title in the catalog (vision.sva.edu) that has a location of Rare Book or Artist Book, just ask at the Reference Desk or the Circulation Desk and we will retrieve it for you.
Books may be classified as rare because they are hard to find, hence the name of the section, or have become collector’s items since they were published, or just so we ensure we always have a copy available, as with some SVA faculty and alumni productions. Artists’ Books are pieces of art in the form of a book.

The collections continue to grow and here are some of the new titles recently added:

Jeff Wall: Catalogue Raisonné 1978-2004 / edited by Theodora Vischer
TR647 .W355 2005
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Martin Munkacsi / edited by F.C. Gundlach ; texts and research by Klaus Honnef
TR647 .M86 2006
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Brakhage Scrapbook : Collected Writings, 1964-1980 / Stan Brakhage
PN1995 .B715 1982
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One Thousand Drawings / Tracey Emin
NC242.E45 A4 2009
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And for Advertising / Graphic Design students and all who are curious, take a look at the Senior Library series. Each year the BFA Advertising / Graphic Design program puts out a collection of some of the best work by that year’s graduating class. We have just added six volumes, from 2003 to 2008. Each year’s production takes a different, often ground-breaking, form. For inspiration or just to see what rules to break when your turn comes, come in and check out a volume.
NC1000 .S45 2003-2008

One of our student workers, Alysha Colangeli, created this collage to celebrate the season (with some help from Arcimboldo!). Come in and take a look, because this photo doesn’t do it justice. You’ll find the collage above the water fountain on the south side of the library.

And while you’re here, take a moment to browse our New Book Shelf, where we’ve got an ever-flowing stream of cool stuff available for you to check out.
Currently we have a crop of newly added classic jazz cds on display (from artists like John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Thelonius Monk and many more), along with the usual array of current titles on art, politics, design, graphic novels, etc.

And don’t forget the New DVD shelves.

Come in, browse and check out your choices – It’s all free!

Art – Photography – Design – Comics/Graphic Novels – on offer at low, low prices! Come take a look.

(image by Wes Benson)

Richard Wilde, chair of the BFA Advertising and Graphic Design program here at SVA, recently passed the 40 year mark of his service to SVA and its students. In honor of his decades of tutelage, a show of work by just a few of his thousands of his former students is now on display at the Visual Arts Gallery through November 7, 2009: The Wilde Years: Four Decades of Shaping Visual Culture.
Click here for a complete list of the artists/designers who have contributed to the show.
Steven Heller, chair of SVA’s MFA Design program and prolific design critic/blogger, interviewed Wilde about his career for Print Magazine.

The Visual Arts Library has several books by Wilde, including his classic, Visual Literacy (Call #: NC845 .W55), based on his course of the same name.

This year’s Best American Comics 2009, part of the venerable Best American Series family, will premiere at powerHouse Books in Brooklyn this Thursday (rsvp here: rsvp@powerhousearena.com).

The series editors are Jessica Abel and Matt Madden, two accomplished graphic novelists and comics textbook authors, as well as instructors in the Cartooning department here at SVA. This year’s guest editor is Charles Burns, author of Black Hole and cover artist for The Believer.

WHEN: Thursday, October 22 from 7–9pm
WHERE: 37 Main Street (corner of Water & Main St) · DUMBO, Brooklyn
Ph: 1.212.604.9074

Previous years in the Visual Arts Library collection:

PN6726 .B47 2006

PN6726 .B47 2007

PN6726 .B47 2008

Waltz with Bashir : a Lebanon war story by Ari Folman and David Polonsky.
PN6790.I73 .F65 2008
And we also have the film version on DVD: V-F F6717 Wal DVD

The Photographer by Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefèvre and Frédéric Lemercier
TR820.6 .G9513 2009

The Eternal Smile : Three Stories by Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim
PN6727.Y36 E83 2009

Masterpiece Comics by R. Sikoryak
PN6727.S55 M38 2009

SVA Faculty Members:

Life Sucks by Jessica Abel *, Gabe Soria and art by Warren Pleece
PN6727.A25 L54 2008

Stuffed! by Glenn Eichler & Nick Bertozzi *
PN6727.E346 S78 2009

Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli *
PN6726.M19 A78 2009

SVA Alumnus:

Blazing Combat by Archie Goodwin with Frank Frazetta, Wally Wood, et al.
PN6727.G664 B53 2009

Along with the usual flood of great new art/animation/comics books getting added to the Visual Arts Library all the time, there are a couple of new photography series to keep your eyes out for.

The University of California’s press has a series titled “Defining Moments in American Photography” that collect and analyze important images and imagemakers.
Here are three of the titles in this series:

Lynching photographs / Dora Apel , Shawn Michelle Smith.
HV6459 .A64X 2007

On Alexander Gardner’s photographic sketch book of the Civil War / Anthony W. Lee, Elizabeth Young.
TR140.G35 L44 2007

Weegee and Naked city / Anthony W. Lee, Richard Meyer.
TR820 .L44 2008

And the from the publisher Errata Editions, their Books on Books series offers full reproductions of classic works of photography. “These are not reprints or facsimiles but complete studies of those originals. Each in this series presents the entire content, page for page, of an original master bookwork which, up until now, has been too rare or prohibitively expensive for most to experience.”

American photographs / Walker Evans ; with an essay by Lincoln Kirstein.
TR650 .E85 2008

Atget : photographe de Paris / préface par Pierre Mac-Orlan.
TR653 .A83 2008

Fait : Koweit 1991 / [Sophie Ristelhueber] ; essays by Marc Meyer and Jeffrey Ladd.
TR654 .R567 2008

In flagrante / Chris Killip ; with an essay by John Berger & Sylvia Grant.
TR653 .K55 2008

We’ve just added ESSENTIAL ART HOUSE: 50 YEARS OF JANUS FILMS a 50-DVD box set (and companion reference tome – call number:REF PN1997 .E87), with a diverse and stellar array of films, from Pandora’s Box (1929, dir. GW Pabst) to The Rules of the Game (1939, dir. J. Renoir) to Rashomon (1950, dir. A. Kurosawa) and 47 more as well.

Film buffs and newbies looking to broaden their cinematic horizons will find this collection a treasure trove. To respect the collection, we have decided to break from our normal way of categorizing Feature films by their director and group the films all under one call number: V-F J259. The individual films will have unique call numbers based on their titles, ex. for Rashomon: V-F J259 Ras DVD or Alexander Nevsky (by S. Eisenstein): V-F J259 Ale.

This is a good time to explain how our films are arranged, for those of you who’ve puzzled over the system. First, everything is arranged by a subject/genre heading. Below is a list of all our headings for videos/dvds in order, as they are to be found on the shelves:

V-A Art
V-AN Animation
V-AR Architecture
V-AT Art technique
V-ATH Art Therapy
V-B Ballet, dance, etc.
V-CA Computer art
V-D Documentary films/Educational films
V-F Feature films, classics, film history
V-L Literature, drama, poetry
V-M Music
V-N Nature
V-O Opera
V-P Photography
V-V Video art, performance, etc.

This way you can peruse what we have in a given area as a whole. We’ve added that V- at the beginning of each heading to differentiate videos from books.

Within those main headings, the films are generally arranged by director (though sometimes by Artist in V-A and by studio in Animation – so Disney films are all together, for instance, in V-AN D476). So a feature film directed by Woody Allen will be at V-F A554 and one by Martin Scorsese will be at V-F S367. If you are looking for a documentary by Errol Morris, check at V-D M677.

If this still doesn’t explain the system come in and ask a reference librarian to show you how it works! That’s what we’re here for. There are some exceptions to the rules I outlined above and we will gladly help figure out where the item you need is to be found.

Also, if there are films you think we should carry in our collection, let us know by filling out a Request for Purchase form. And don’t forget to use the note field to tell us why you think your suggestion belongs in the Visual Arts Library – your opinions carry a lot of weight around here!

The 50th anniversary of the US publication of Frank’s groundbreaking photo essay, “The Americans” (Call Number: E169.Z8 F713 2008) – the product of a yearlong sojourn through the United States in the mid-50s – is approaching. To commemorate this event and to celebrate the book’s impact the National Gallery put together an exhibition titled “Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans“ that traces Frank’s journey and provides multiple perspectives on his work and influence.
The traveling exhibition will open next week at the Metropolitan Museum on Sept 22 and running through Jan 3rd.
We have copies of the accompanying catalog in the library (Call Number: TR647.F74 L6 2009)
From a review of the show and appreciation of the book, the New Yorkers’ Anthony Lane: “[H]e took around twenty-seven thousand. There were more than seven hundred and sixty rolls of film to develop: an impressive tally, even to snap-happy profligates of the digital age. Then there were contact sheets to print and mark up; from those, he made a thousand work prints, which were tacked to the walls of his apartment on Third Avenue, near Tenth Street, or laid flat on the floor for closer inspection, before being whittled down to a hundred. The final count, from all those months on the road, was eighty-three pictures: enough for a slim book, which was published in November, 1958, in Paris, as “Les Américains,” and here, in January, 1960, as “The Americans.””

Other Robert Frank materials in the collection:

Books:
Come again. – TR647.F74 C66 2006
Flamingo / – TR647 .F72 1997
Hold still, keep going – TR647 .F725 2001
The lines of my hand – TR654 .F7 1989
Paris – TR647 .F74 2008
Peru : photographs – TR653 .F73 2008
Robert Frank : New York to Nova Scotia – TR140.F67 A3 1986
Robert Frank : part two / Du, die zeitschrift der kultur – TR647 .F74 2002
Story lines – TR647 .F74 2004

Exhibition catalogs:
Robert Frank : [an exhibition of] The Americans and New York photographs. – Alphabetical by Artist – F

Videos:
Pull my daisy [videorecording] / directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie ; written and narrated by Jack Kerouac. – V-F F726 Pul
Robert Frank : the complete film works. Vols. 1-3 – V-P F736 Com1-3 DVD

The word “library” may derive from the Latin for books (via the word for the inner bark of a tree, back before 8 1/2″ x 11″ office paper, much less the invention of the printing press), but the Visual Arts Library refuses to be bound by old rules! We have long carried other media, such as movies (VHS & DVDs) and music (CDs) and CD-Roms. Now we have added a new format to our collections: Xbox games.
They are in the Vision Catalog (searchable from anywhere at http://vision.sva.edu) under the Call Number: Xbox (Search by: Call Number).

Here’s a list of our titles at this point:

Assassin’s Creed
BioShock
Call of Duty 4
Chrome Hounds
Club
Condemned
Crackdown
Dead Space
Elder Scrolls IV
Fable II
Fallout 3
Farcry 2
Gears of war
Grand theft auto IV
Halo: combat evolved.
Halo 2
Halo 3
Left 4 dead
Lost odyssey
Mass effect
Mirror’s edge
Ninja Gaiden II
Orange Box
Red Faction. Guerrilla
Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection
Street Fighter IV

Check out time is one week.