Current Exhibition -
The Art Institute 1879-2009: An Archival Timeline
May 20 - July 27

This exhibit features a wide variety of archival documents, photographs, books, artifacts, and ephemera culled from the Institutional Archives of the museum. Among these objects you'll find the original charter dating back to 1879, a photograph of one of the guard dogs that used to roam the museum galleries at night, old postcards, floor plans, catalogs of the controversial 1913 Armory Show, and even original fragments from the Stock Exchange Trading Room, used during the reinstallation of the room at the museum in 1976.

Please note the exhibition is closed on Saturdays and Sundays.

Image: Postcard from 1900 showing the Art Institute, seen from the corner of Jackson and Michigan. 

Currently on Display -
Roni Horn's Some Thames

Currently on display in the Libraries' Reading Room are a selection of framed photographs belonging to a series of 80 different images that comprise Roni Horn's Some Thames, which depicts the surface of the Thames river in central London. Some Thames, like most of Horn's work, is an abstracted self-portrait. Self, like this river, is transendently fluid, ultimately unknowable.

Please note the exhibition is closed on Saturdays and Sundays.

Image: Roni Horn, Some Thames – Group N, 2000
Inkjet print on lacquered paper 2006.57.4 . 

Collection Highlight -
Daniel H. Burnham Photograph Albums

This year Chicago is celebrating the centennial of the Plan of Chicago, written by Daniel H. Burnham and Edward H. Bennett. As the repository for the papers of both architects, the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries have been involved in many of the programs developed for the centennial. A very special event was the gathering of Burnham family heirs in April 2008 in the Libraries' Reading Room. On that occasion the Libraries received three photograph albums and some business papers from family members, as well as the loan of two silver loving cups that had been given to Burnham.

The photograph albums are important and fascinating additions to the Burnham archives offering rare images of the private Burnham, with his wife, his children, and his friends. For a complete description and finding aid for collection, click here.

We are deeply grateful to the Mardi Burnham LeGrow Family, Christy Burnham Laier, Kendall Morris, and the Hubert Burnham, Jr. Family for their generous gifts to the Burnham archives, and to George Wells III and Mardi Burnham Brayton for the loan of the loving cups, currently on view in the Reading Room.

Image: Photograph of Burnham family from the Daniel H. Burnham Collection (1934.1) at the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries. Front row: Daniel, Jr., Hubert and Margaret B. Back row: John, Ethel, Daniel and Roland Woodyatt

New Book Shelf -
A Selection of Recent Acquisitions

The Libraries add hundreds of titles to the collection each month. Now, patrons are able to browse the New Book Shelf in the Franke Reading Room. Each day new books are added to these shelves. Here is just a small selection of books added to the collections in March and April:

Colorado Abstract: Paintings and Sculpture
Paglia, Michael.
Albuquerque, N.M. : Fresco Fine Art Publications, c2009.
N6530.C6 P34 2009

Pop Cultured
McNulty, Mark.
Liverpool : Liverpool University Press, 2008.
ML3534.6.G7 M368 2008.

Eye to the East : The Turner Collection of Chinese Art
Columbia, S.C. : Columbia Museum of Art, 2008.
NK4165 .E93 2008.

Donatello: Il David Restaurato
Firenze : Giunti, c2008.
NB623.D7 A74 2008.

Title Brilliance from the East: An Important Exhibition of Indian, Southeast Asian and Chinese Art
London : Jonathan Tucker Antonia Tozer Asian Art, [2008].
N7262 .B75 2008.

Agnes Martin
Zurich : Thomas Ammann Fine Art AG, c2008.
ND237.M2465 A4 2008.

Everybody Dance Now
Parr, Martin, 1952-
New York, NY : Editions2wice : 2wice Arts Foundation, c2009.
TR655 .P373 2009.

Architects for a New Age: The Gothic Revival to the Arts & Crafts Movement 1827 to 1927
Fine Art Society.
London : Fine Art Society : in association with Haslam & Whiteway Ltd., 2008.
NA610 .F56 2008.

Quid Pro Quo: Lawrence Weiner
Rome : Gagosian Gallery, c2008.
N6537.W35 A4 2008.

The Hearing Eye: Jazz and Blues Influences in African American Visual Art / edited by Graham Lock and David Murray
New York : Oxford University Press, 2008.
N6538.N5 H43 2008.

Prophets of Nature: Green Spirituality in Romantic Poetry and Painting
Strachan, Gordon (Charles Gordon).
Edinburgh : Floris Books, 2008.
PN603 .S77 2008.

Urban Design for an Urban Century: Placemaking for People
Brown, Lance Jay, 1943-
Hoboken, N.J. : Wiley, 2009.
NA9105 .B76 2009.

Contemporary Crafts
Racz, Imogen.
New York : Berg, 2009.
NK808 .R25 2009.

Landscape and Philosophy in the Art of Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625)
Prosperetti, Leopoldine van Hogendorp, 1948-
Farnham, England ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, c2009.
ND673.B72 P76 2009.

Prefabricated Homes in America: The Early 20th Century Mail-order House
Miller, Jessamyn Leigh.
2008.
TH4819.P7 M55 2008.

Image: Dale Chisman. Word (detail), 2007.