The Katharine Kyes Leab & Daniel J. Leab American Book Prices Current Exhibition Award Winners 2011

The Exhibition Awards Committee of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries is pleased to announce the following winners of the 2011 Katharine Kyes Leab & Daniel J. Leab American Books Prices Current Exhibition Awards.

A complete list of entries for the 2011 competition with contact and ordering/access information, as well as lists of entries and winners for other years may be found on the RBMS Exhibition Awards Committee page.

Award certificates were presented on Sunday, 26 June 2011, preceding the RBMS Information Exchange at the ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans, LA. The list below includes the remarks of the chair of the Exhibition Awards Committee, as given in the presentation.

Division One (Expensive Printed Catalogs)

Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, University of Rochester River Campus Libraries, for Claude Bradgon and the Beautiful Necessity, edited by Eugenia V. Ellis and Andrea G. Reithmayr, designed by Mark Argetsinger.

The committee was swift to award this catalogue, a broad survey of the life and career of architect, artist, and designer Claude Bragdon. Described by one judge as “transcendent,” the volume is an exemplar in its category. A definitive study of a relatively unknown figure in the history of twentieth-century American architecture, it contains a rich variety of information. The greatest strength of the volume is its success in communicating how many kinds of intellectual work a single creative archive can foster in its users. The beautifully curated catalog of images from the Bragdon Family Papers at the University of Rochester is complemented by essays on Bragdon’s diverse interests by an equally diverse set of contributors including academics, independent scholars, and practicing architects. The volume’s broad reach and enduring value to all audiences interested in Bragdon’s work--and American architectural history more generally--is confirmed by extensive apparatus including a timeline, bibliography, and full subject index.

Division Two (Moderately Expensive Printed Catalogs)

Stanford University Libraries Dept. of Special Collections and The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, for Celebrating Mexico: The Grito de Dolores and the Mexican Revolution, 1810 | 1910 | 2010, by Theresa Salazar, Jack von Euw, and Adan Griego with essays by Ivonne del Valle, Margaret Chowning, and Jorge Ruffinelli and forewords by Charles Faulhaber and Roberto Trujillo, and designed by Elizabeth Fischbach.

This volume celebrating the anniversary of the Mexican Revolution is also an implicit celebration of inter-institutional collaboration. Documenting concurrent exhibitions mounted at the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University, it reveals to audiences the complementary resources of these institutions through twin checklists and essays by library staff and faculty at both universities. Bilingual text--in English and Spanish--makes the volume accessible to a wide audience, and a careful integration of text, images, and the checklist offers readers a fully unified reading experience. Richly illustrated with extensive commentary, the volume serves not just to document the exhibitions but to provide an excellent introduction to the Mexican Revolution more generally. The use of historic typefaces and colorful section dividers throughout the volume confirms the volume’s welcoming, celebratory success.

Division Three (Inexpensive Printed Catalogs)

Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History at Duke University, for The Power of Refined Beauty: Photographing Society Women for Pond’s, 1920s to 1950s, by Richard L. Collier, Jr. and Jacqueline Reid, and designed by Michael Reid Design (Michael Reid).

This slender, concise volume is a fascinating study of the interplay of high art, marketing, and the lives of high-society women from the 1920s to the 1950s. Perhaps the volume’s most important success is its ability to tell a complex, information-rich story in a manner that is cogent, compelling, and visually appealing. Anyone designing a catalog about the idea of beauty is faced with quite a challenge; the results of this project are entirely successful. The mostly black-and-white images jump off the page and are complemented by a subdued pastel color palette that evokes the period being described but is anything but outdated. The exhibition topic brings alive the rich research value inherent in commercial archives, asking audiences to consider a compelling set of questions about gender, social class, corporate marketing, and ideals of beauty that can help us better understand the vastly changed world of advertising in our own time.

Division Four (Brochures)

Johns Hopkins University, Sheridan Libraries, for A View of the Parade: H. L. Mencken and American Magazines by Gabrielle Dean and Cynthia Requardt, designed by JHU Marketing and Creative Services.

This whimsical brochure captures the spirit of Mencken’s work in the magazine industry. Its witty design and carefully selected images frame a substantive essay that is engaging, informative, and does just what an exhibition brochure should do: encourage audiences to attend the exhibition and learn more on their own afterwards. The exhibition topic is pitched beautifully for its Baltimore audience, which likely knows Mencken’s work already: limiting the project’s scope to magazines not only offers the opportunity for an in-depth investigation of the topic, but aligns with a surge of scholarly interest today in early twentieth-century periodical culture.

Division Five (Electronic Exhibitions)

Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology for The Grandeur of Life: Gallery Guide by William B. Ashworth, Jr., designed by Michael Irvin with illustrations by Digital Projects Unit, Linda Hall Library.

Of the many centenary exhibitions of Darwin mounted recently, Linda Hall’s web exhibition stands out as a thoroughly engaging, carefully researched, and flexible resource for audiences of all ages. The website conveys a great deal of visual and textual information in a manner that feels intuitive and inviting. The site is carefully designed so that it does not overwhelm viewers with content, but provides ample opportunity to learn more through in-depth essays, and becomes further useful through the addition of a site index. The diverse, richly colorful illustrations produce a second, implicit narrative about the development of scientific illustration, and high-resolution images ensure that audiences will be able to fully enjoy the high-quality scans.

Honorable mention:

John Carter Brown Library for Remember Haiti by Ted Widmer, Patrick Tardieu, and Carlo Celius, designed by Leslie Tobias Olsen and Laura Mullen.

The committee agreed that Remember Haiti deserved special recognition for its innovative use of the Internet Archive to curate an exhibition that is both historical and topical. As more and more massive collections of digital images appear on the internet, opportunities are created for experts to curate selections of these materials for audiences who might be overwhelmed by the scale of the collections as a whole. This project’s elegant interface, varied section topics, and French-language option offer numerous points of entry for a broad audience. Built to take full advantage of the web, the site connects directly to the Internet Archive and Brown’s own digital repository social interactivity, including links to share the collection on Facebook, Twitter, and other venues, and will expand in the future.