one of the most challenging things I’ve encountered in my career, and, hands-down, the most fun. Ranging from serious debate about scholarship value to conservation issues to hilarious back stories, the discussions were a rare, perhaps unique, look at the collection and the people who intimately know it, expertly manage it, and deeply care about it. The extraordinary breadth and depth of the Newberry collection made round one relatively easy; it would later make the final round almost excruciatingly difficult. Several paintings from the American Indian collection (ours is the best in the world) had been nominated, many of which were by the same artist, and the group made quick work of eliminating most. The enormous strength of our collection of Ptolemy’s Geography led to replacing one nomination, an atlas published in Florence in 1480, with one published in Ulm, Germany in 1482—the two so similar, in certain respects, that we almost exhibited the wrong one. American history materials and modern manuscripts are certainly distinct categories but overlap in, for example, the U.S. Civil War, enabling Team Q to rather swiftly pare down Civil War-related items.
“ ... the discussions were a rare, perhaps unique, look at the collection and the people who intimately know it, expertly manage it, and deeply care about it.” It also greatly eased two more practical but critical concerns—preservation and space. Because of the richness of the collection, there were often two or more items that could fulfill our objectives, giving us welcome latitude when an item was deemed too fragile for the kind of handling required by a book and four-month exhibition, or too large for the available gallery space. “Our wonderful collection certainly gave us a wealth of options in our decision-making,” exhibition co-curator Bohlmann said. “But it would not have been possible without the skill and commitment of the conservation staff, who worked tirelessly to find creative ways to safely exhibit the materials we chose, and to place, in a visually appealing way, 125 objects of all shapes and sizes into two galleries.”
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Indeed, throughout the process, we heavily, and gratefully, relied on many members of our expert staff. Scott Manning Stevens, director of the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, showed us where we were wrong and why, and then set us right in innumerable and invaluable ways; the former and the current directors of the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography, Bob Karrow and Jim Akerman, respectively, taught us the sometimes subtle nuances that made one map a clear choice over another; and Carla Zecher, director of the Center for Renaissance Studies and recently named music curator, thoughtfully and meticulously reviewed, rejected, and replaced items—all from 2,000 miles away and while meeting the demands of her Huntington Library Fellowship. Dozens of spreadsheets and six months later, we entered the final round, with just 171 nominations. “Now we began to know what pain really is,” joked Briggs, curator of “Realizing the Idea 1887 – 2012,” the accompanying exhibition on the history of the Newberry. “Right up until the final round, we had been able to retain most of the items we strongly believed needed to be included. It was extremely tough—but also, and more importantly, it was a testament to the staff ’s commitment to and passion for particular collection items, the collection as a whole, and the Newberry itself.” That passion resulted in a spirited three-hour discussion, in which committee members drew upon their diplomacy, creativity, and even cunning to do battle for their preferred nominees. When Team Q left the room, it was with regrets, but we had our 125. “It was challenging, invigorating, frustrating, and enlightening,” Spadafora said. “And I wouldn’t have had it any other way. The candid debate among those who best know the collection and why it’s important resulted in a book and an exhibition that truly ref lect the library and its mission.” The selection process revealed that, though “The Newberry 125” refers to objects, it is also about people. We made our choices based as much on the who as on the what. Each item in the collection carries the stories of the authors and editors, readers and writers, collectors and dealers, binders and artists, and librarians and scholars who sought it and bought it, wrote it or wrote in it, designed it, illustrated it, shelved it, sold it, read it, and, in some way, learned from it. Like the humanities themselves, it is the story of us.
The Newberry Magazine