“A Fine Addi­tion: New & Notable Acqui­si­tions in Princeton’s Spe­cial Col­lec­tions” high­lights recent addi­tions to the hold­ings of the Depart­ment of Rare Books and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions, includ­ing the See­ley G. Mudd Man­u­script Library, as well as the Mar­quand Library of Art and Archae­ol­ogy. The exhi­bi­tion is on view through August 5 in the Main Gallery of the Fire­stone Library.

Vesal­ius, De Humani Cor­poris Fab­rica, 1543.

One high­light among many on dis­play is a copy of Andreas Vesalius’s De Humani Cor­poris Fab­rica, first pub­lished in Basel in 1543 (read more about the recent acqui­si­tion of the first and sec­ond edi­tion here). At the offi­cial open­ing on Sun­day, April 22, Dr. Eugene Flamm ’58, Jef­frey P. Berg­stein Pro­fes­sor and Chair­man of the Depart­ment of Neu­ro­log­i­cal Surgery at the Albert Ein­stein Col­lege of Med­i­cine and Mon­te­fiore Med­ical Cen­ter, will high­light Princeton’s recent anatom­i­cal and phreno­log­i­cal acqui­si­tions with a talk inves­ti­gat­ing “Obser­va­tional and Imag­i­nary Anatomy.” The lec­ture at 2:30 p.m. in Betts Audi­to­rium will be fol­lowed by a recep­tion in the Main Gallery. The exhi­bi­tion and its related events are free and open to the pub­lic thanks to the gen­er­ous sup­port of the Friends of the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library.

Exhi­bi­tion Synopsis

A Fine Addi­tion: New & Notable Acqui­si­tions in Princeton’s Spe­cial Collections

Anti­quar­ian book­sellers’ cat­a­logs are rife with superla­tives: “The finest copy known,” “a splen­did exam­ple,” “a fine edi­tion of this extra­or­di­nary work.” Yet, excep­tional rar­ity and con­di­tion are not suf­fi­cient jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for choos­ing to acquire one item rather than another. How do cura­tors, librar­i­ans, and archivists look beyond a “fine edi­tion” and select items that rep­re­sent a fine addi­tion to col­lec­tions as vast and diverse as Princeton’s?

Build­ing on strength is one obvi­ous approach. To Princeton’s exten­sive hold­ings of lit­er­ary archives come new addi­tions to col­lec­tions of F. Scott Fitzger­ald, Ernest Hem­ing­way, and Mario Var­gas Llosa. Recent addi­tions to the Uni­ver­sity Archives and the Pub­lic Pol­icy Papers high­light piv­otal moments in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury: Princeton’s con­tri­bu­tions to the Man­hat­tan Project and Sec­re­tary of State James A. Baker III’s reac­tions to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the begin­ning of Oper­a­tion Desert Storm. And the Cot­sen Children’s Library has com­ple­mented some of its impor­tant series of pic­ture books with the acqui­si­tion of orig­i­nal art­work for them, such as the archive of draw­ings for the 34-volume Ger­lach Jugend­bücherei (1900–1920) and Nathalie Chel­panova Parain’s draw­ings and unbound dummy for the French-language edi­tion of Baba Yaga (Paris, 1932).

Early New Jer­sey and Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Amer­ica have always been well rep­re­sented at Prince­ton. A recently acquired map of Penn­syl­va­nia from 1791 con­tains the ear­li­est Amer­i­can illus­tra­tion of a canal; the map once belonged to Robert Let­tis Hooper, a New Jer­sey patriot who served as deputy quar­ter­mas­ter gen­eral in the Con­ti­nen­tal Army. Even a West­ern Amer­i­cana addi­tion has a New Jer­sey con­nec­tion: The Yo-Hamite Falls, a lith­o­graph made in 1855 from a draw­ing by New Jer­sey native Thomas Ayres, was the first pub­lished image of Yosemite Falls.

If the pil­lars of a col­lec­tion are eas­ily per­ceived, so are its gaps. A notable omis­sion among Princeton’s land­marks in the his­tory of sci­ence has been cor­rected with the pur­chase of the first and sec­ond edi­tions of Andreas Vesalius’s mon­u­men­tal anatom­i­cal trea­tise, De humani cor­poris fab­rica (Venice, 1543 and 1555). Recent com­ple­ments to Vesal­ius in the Graphic Arts Col­lec­tion and Mar­quand Library are the orig­i­nal wood­block used for the fron­tispiece of Realdo Colombo’s De re anatom­ica (Venice, 1599) and Pietro da Cortona’s Tab­u­lae anatom­i­cae (Rome, 1741).

Emerg­ing areas of schol­ar­ship also influ­ence col­lect­ing choices. Over the past decade the Numis­matic Col­lec­tion has been acquir­ing coins to illus­trate the mon­e­tary inter­re­la­tion­ships through­out the Mediter­ranean area in the later Mid­dle Ages. Princeton’s exam­ple of a gold florin issued in Clar­entza is only the third known extant spec­i­men. The Mar­quand Library has added first edi­tions of the most renowned works of wood­block print artists Kat­sushika Hoku­sai and Kita­gawa Uta­maro. Hokusai’s exper­i­men­ta­tion with the “col­ors” of black ink and Utamaro’s mica-sprinkled images can be truly appre­ci­ated only in these orig­i­nals. Like­wise, schol­ars wish­ing to study the begin­nings of the mod­ern artist’s book (livre d’artiste) can turn to the Graphic Arts Col­lec­tion to find Pierre Bonnard’s per­sonal copy of his mas­ter­piece, Par­al­lèle­ment (Paris, 1900).

Cura­tors, librar­i­ans, and archivists strive to enrich col­lec­tions by acquir­ing mate­ri­als that build on exist­ing strengths, fill per­ceived gaps, and assist new paths of teach­ing and schol­ar­ship. The diverse acqui­si­tions on dis­play do just that, pre­sent­ing fine addi­tions to a fine collection.