"A Snake Charmer with a Camera" : Nina Leen's Contributions to Life Magazine: 1940-1972

Nina Leen (c. 1909–1995) was a Russian-born émigré photographer who worked for Life magazine from 1940–1972, contributing photographs to stories published in 374 issues. Leen’s photography received little attention following her death, as her working method, oeuvre, and character depart from those of the archetypal photojournalist. Using digital reproductions of Leen’s photographic prints and negatives from the Life Photo Collection, a full run of Life, and archival documents housed in the Time Inc. Records at the New-York Historical Society, this thesis evaluates Leen’s contributions to both Life magazine and the field of photojournalism. An introduction, literature survey, and methodological description contextualize Leen’s career. Two appendices and a list of figures present images selected in this thesis, and the issues and sections of Life in which Leen’s photographs were published. Three chapters discuss the beginning of Leen’s career and her typical approach to magazine photography, and two chapters analyze the years leading up to Life’s conclusion as a weekly magazine, when Leen held more command over her output.

"A Snake Charmer with a Camera" : Nina Leen's Contributions to Life Magazine: 1940-1972

Nina Leen (c. 1909–1995) was a Russian-born émigré photographer who worked for Life magazine from 1940–1972, contributing photographs to stories published in 374 issues. Leen’s photography received little attention following her death, as her working method, oeuvre, and character depart from those of the archetypal photojournalist. Using digital reproductions of Leen’s photographic prints and negatives from the Life Photo Collection, a full run of Life, and archival documents housed in the Time Inc. Records at the New-York Historical Society, this thesis evaluates Leen’s contributions to both Life magazine and the field of photojournalism. An introduction, literature survey, and methodological description contextualize Leen’s career. Two appendices and a list of figures present images selected in this thesis, and the issues and sections of Life in which Leen’s photographs were published. Three chapters discuss the beginning of Leen’s career and her typical approach to magazine photography, and two chapters analyze the years leading up to Life’s conclusion as a weekly magazine, when Leen held more command over her output.

The Politics of Women's History: Collecting for the Centennial of Women's Suffrage in New York State

The 2017 New York State suffrage centennial provided momentum for institutions to review and reimagine their women's history collections. Five of the many museum exhibitions timed to this anniversary— Votes for Women: Celebrating New York's Suffrage Centennial at the New York State Museum, Woman's Protest: Two Sides of the Fight for Suffrage in New York at the Cayuga Museum, Beyond Suffrage: A Century of New York Women in Politics at the Museum of the City of New York, and Hotbed and Collecting the Women's Marches at the New-York Historical Society—offer an opportunity to examine curatorial strategies that build on and share existing women's history collections, often accompanied by pointed acknowledgments of the unfinished struggles for voting rights and women's rights. As a constellation of historic sites and museums, state and federal commemorative commissions, and public and private funders join forces to bring these materials and the ideas they carry out of storage and into the exhibition gallery, this study of New York-based institutions speaks directly to commemorations being planned for the 2020 centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment and to new collecting projects in U.S. history museums more broadly.

Reversing Dighton Rock’s Polarity

American ethnologist Henry Rowe Schoolcraft continues his struggle to understand Dighton Rock and place it in his understanding of American prehistory. He visits the rock in 1849 and declares its markings to be a mix of Icelandic and Indigenous. He then reverses himself and says it is purely Indigenous, based on the reading provided him by the Ojibwa leader Shingwauk. Schoolcraft’s investigations are situated within the rise of the American Ethnological Society and his leading role in the New-York Historical Society, the growing controversy over polygenism and monogenism within his intellectual circle, his friendship and falling out with Ephraim Squier, and Schoolcraft’s conviction that an archaeological fake, the Grave Creek stone, is genuine.

Polonika starodruczne w bibliotekach naukowych Nowego Jorku

W artykule omówiono kolekcje poloników wydanych w XV-XVIII w. przechowywane w bibliotekach naukowych Nowego Jorku. Największy ich zespół posiada Biblioteka Publiczna (New York Public Library). Spośród bibliotek uniwersyteckich wartościowy zbiór poloników znajdziemy w księgozbiorach bibliotek Uniwersytetu Columbia (Columbia University Libraries). Znacznie mniejsze kolekcje, liczące od kilku do kilkudziesięciu woluminów, posiadają inne uczelniane książnice: General Theological Seminary Library oraz Biblioteka Akademii Medycznej Nowego Jorku (New York Academy of Medicine). Niewielkie zespoły lub pojedyncze egzemplarze można odnaleźć również w Bibliotece Publicznej Brooklynu (Brooklyn Public Library) i w księgozbiorach towarzystw naukowych lub fundacji, m.in. w Bibliotece Towarzystwa Hiszpańskiego (Hispanic Society of America) oraz w zbiorach Nowojorskiego Towarzystwa Historycznego (New York Historical Society). Wartościowe i rzadkie polonika, w tym kilkanaście inkunabułów i wczesnych druków z XVI w. oficyn krakowskich, zgromadziła Biblioteka Morgana (Morgan Library & Museum, dawniej Pierpont Morgan Library). W jej zbiorach są także egzemplarze należące ongiś do znakomitych polskich kolekcji historycznych. W nowojorskich placówkach znajdziemy publikacje z różnych dziedzin wiedzy: historii i literatury staropolskiej, teologii (z bogatą kolekcją druków reformacyjnych i kontrreformacyjnych), nauk przyrodniczych i prawnych. Wśród autorów spotykamy najczęściej pisarzy takich jak Stanisław Hozjusz, Marcin Kromer, Mikołaj Kopernik, Wawrzyniec Goślicki i Jan Heweliusz.