“There is an artificial stone floor of a brilliant blue color, surrounded by a baseboard molding of old gold,” explained the designer Lucian Bernhard (1885–1972). “The walls are about seven feet high, of a yellowish white, and of a very rough texture, resembling the surface of a cut of Roquefort cheese. This wall is surmounted by a projecting undercut surface of transparent cloth which hides the source of light that illuminates the walls …. The fascia of this undercut forms a very marked profile in blue and gold. Above this the ceiling looms invisible in an impenetrable black. This is the Exhibition Room.” (Oskar M. Hahn, “Bernhard-Rosen,” Gebrauchsgraphik Jahr 3, no 2 (Februar 1926): 9).

Bernhard was describing what the New York press came to refer to as the Little Gallery of the Pynson Printers, located on the seventh floor of The New York Times Annex at 229 West 43rd Street in New York City. The gallery’s curator, director of the Pynson Printers and later, Princeton University curator of graphic arts, was Elmer A. Adler (1884–1962).

In documenting Adler’s years on 43^rd street, I compiled a chronology of the approximately fifty exhibitions held in Pynson Printers gallery from 1926 to 1939, when Adler finally closed his press. This was too lengthy for the article published in our Princeton University Library Chronicle 73, no. 3 (Spring 2012). Here is a pdf of that timeline, in case it is of interest: http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/ga_pdf/exhibitions pdf.pdf

These photographs of Adler’s rooms at 43rd Street were taken by Ralph Steiner (1899-1986).

With joint forces this week from the Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton University Campus Collections, the Graphic Arts Collection, and Atelier Art Services, we are hanging paintings, sculpture, and mosaics in the newly renovated Firestone Library. We began today with this section of mosaic pavement with a male head, Roman Syria, Antioch-on-the-Orontes, ca. 400 A.D. from the Princeton University Art Museum. Gift of the Committee for the Excavation of Antioch to Princeton University (y1965-223)

It looks wonderful in the new Hellenic Studies Reading Room and we hope the students will be pleased when they return from their winter break. Thank you very much to the dozens of people who helped with this in the preparation stages and the execution today.

Last night, our friends and colleagues Ronald K. Smeltzer (director of the Princeton Bibliophiles and Collectors); Paulette Rose; and Robert J. Ruben, Princeton Class of 1955, opened a groundbreaking exhibition entitled Extraordinary Women in Science & Medicine: Four Centuries of Achievement. The show is open to the public free of charge 18 September to 23 November 2013 at the Grolier Club in New York City. Take your daughters.

Extraordinary Women explores the legacy of thirty-two remarkable women whose accomplishments in physics, chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, computing, and medicine changed science.

Did Marie Curie refuse to wear this academic cap? See the show

As noted in the press release, of particular interest will be Emilie Du Châtelet’s 1759 translation of Newton’s Principia with the bookplate of Talleyrand; copies of all of her other scientific publications; a mathematics workbook and a letter, both in her hand; and materials about her fourteen-year relationship with Voltaire, including a book she co-authored—although without her name on the title page. A scientific breakthrough in genetics written on a brown paper bag is displayed.

A number of events are being held in conjunction with the exhibition including a collectors’ forum on Thursday, 3 October 2013 hosted by Rose, Ruben, and Smeltzer.

On Saturday, 26 October 2013, there will be a half-day symposium featuring Dava Sobel, historian, author of Gallileo’s Daughter and other popular expositions of scientific topics; Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, author of critically-acclaimed books about scientific discoveries and the scientists who make them; Professor Paola Bertucci, Assistant Professor of History and in the History of Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine; Professor Sandra K. Masur, Professor of Ophthalmology, Associate Professor of Structural and Chemical Biology at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York.

For more information, see http://www.grolierclub.org/

 
Thank you to our colleagues at the Library of Congress prints and photographs division who were so much help this week.
If possible, don’t miss the last week of their exhibition “The Gibson Girl’s America.” Or view it online at http://myloc.gov/Exhibitions/gibson-girls-america/Pages/default.aspx
This is what a library looks like.