Artists in the Archive

The Bentley holds material related to the history and culture of both the state of Michigan and UM; for more on select topics addressed in our collections, see our Research Guides.

• A wide variety of sound and video recordings, posters, and artwork related to University or state events and programs, such as: The Ann Arbor Jazz Festival (as in the Frank and Peggy Bach papers and John and Leni Sinclair papers); The Ann Arbor Film Festival records; and documentary-style educational films from UM’s Media Resources Center records.

• Collections related to UM student life from the founding of the school through the 2010s, including a number of student scrapbooks filled with photos, notes, menus, football and theatrical performance tickets, and other ephemera from the lives of students in the 1890s-1930s. 

• Past UM classes on food systems, theatrical performance, blackface, and the construction of gender have found them especially useful. Related materials include: The scrapbook and other writing of Forman G. Brown, including lyrics for Michigan Union musicals and his semi-autobiographical gay coming-of-age novel “Better Angel,” which he published pseudonymously; and material in the Michigan Union records related to performers like student Lionel Ames, who played the female lead in at least one show, and went on to do professional drag performance.

• Material related to scientific and environmental history (and the illustrations and visual artifacts of that work). Related collections include: The journals of Bela Hubbard, a geologist who worked on 1830s-40s land surveys of Michigan and sketched views of areas like Sleeping Bear Dunes; a book printed on birch bark by Potawatomi author and activist Simon Pokagon; and the records of 20th c. environmentalists like nuclear power opponent Mary Sinclair.

• Also UM records such as the Graduate Program of Medical and Biological Illustration Records and Illustrations, which contains original artwork, administrative materials, and audiovisual materials produced by the program; or architectural plans for and scientific observations of the Detroit Observatory.

American Authors
This collection includes extensive holdings in 19th and 20th century American Literature, including first editions of authors such as Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, and Marianne Moore. In addition to published materials, the collection encompasses archival collections from 20th century American writers, such as Anne Waldman, Marge Piercy, and Nicholas Delbanco.
Special Collections Research Center

Arthur Szyk Collection
Illustrations, books, and materials by or about Jewish-American, Polish born artist Arthur Szyk (1894-1951) housed at the Special Collections Research Center as well as in other collections at the U-M Library.

Artists’ Books
Our large collection of artists’ books spans two locations and contains important examples from the last forty years of the field, including many well-known artists and presses. The AAEL collection leans toward the sculptural and the art object, while the SCRC materials focus more on the intersection with literature, poetry, and fine press. There is a significant collection of Cuban artists’ books, particularly those by Rolando Estévez, and a nearly complete collection of Women’s Studio Workshop titles. Work by women artists and regional artists has long been a collecting priority, and recently the AAEL collection in particular has become much more diverse.
Art, Architecture and Engineering Library and Special Collections Research Center

Bezalel School movement materials
Includes works by Jerusalem School movement artists Ephraim Moses Lilien, Zeev Raban, Jacob Steinhardt, Menachem Shemi, Abel Pann, and others. Housed mainly in the Jewish Heritage Collection (JHC). 
Special Collections Research Center

Children’s Literature Collections
The University Library is home to two related but distinct collections of children’s literature. The Children’s Literature Collection on the 3rd floor of the Hatcher Graduate Library South gathers together children’s and young adult literature, with special consideration to award-winners, books about diversity and inclusion, and titles with a Michigan connection. This is a circulating collection of materials that can be checked out. The Special Collections Research Center’s Children’s Literature Collection focuses on illustrated fiction, with strengths in Newbery and Caldecott medal winners, Michigan authors and illustrators, and fairy tales. This collection also includes a limited number of archival collections, such as those associated with the Lee Walp Family Juvenile Book Collection, which includes extensive correspondence with many illustrators and authors. 
Special Collections Research Center

East Asian collections
One of the largest collections on Chinese studies, Japanese studies, and Korean studies in North America. Collection materials document histories, cultural diversity, and linguistic landscape in East Asia. Some of the collection highlights include the Chinese Dance Collection and performing arts program collection, Japanese music and screen arts, and Korean popular culture.
Asia Library

House Catalogs Collection
Collection of 20th century kit-house catalogs which focus on residential construction in the Midwest from the 1910s through the post-war building boom of the 1950s and 60s. The catalogs tell many stories, including the historical story of Michigan’s industrial past transitioning from lumber to automobile; an architectural story about changing patterns and arrangements of domestic space; a sociological story of the gender roles within and outside the household; a racial story of exclusion and expectations; an urban story of the development of suburbia; and a technological story as appliances were integrated into the home.
Art, Architecture, and Engineering Library

Islamic Manuscripts
The Islamic Manuscripts Collection covers subjects including the Qur’an and its sciences, hadith, theology, jurisprudence (fiqh), Sufism, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, rhetoric, grammar, poetry, history, geography, and medicine. It consists of more than 1,100 volumes, plus a small number of fragments, dating from the 8th to the early 20th century and containing roughly 1,800 texts primarily in Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish. The collection includes a significant number of pieces by well-known Ottoman masters of calligraphy. Most of the manuscripts were produced and circulated in Islamicate areas of the Middle East and North Africa. 
Special Collections Research Center

Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive
A diverse collection of materials on the American culinary experience. Holdings cover the production, promotion, preparation, presentation, consumption, and appreciation of food and drink in America. Particular strengths include 19th and early 20th century cookbooks, charity cookbooks, immigrant cookbooks, food-related advertising ephemera, and restaurant menus. These materials offer insight into questions surrounding identity, consumption, work, leisure, the family, social relations, and much else in American life.
Special Collections Research Center

Joseph A. Labadie Collection
One of the oldest, largest, and most comprehensive collections of its kind, with materials on anarchism, anti-colonialist movements, antiwar and pacifist movements, atheism and free thought, civil liberties and civil rights, ecology, labor and workers’ rights, feminism, LGBTQ movements, prisons and prisoners, the New Left, the Spanish Civil War, and youth and student protest.
Special Collections Research Center

Lucy Lippard Slides
In 2020, famed art critic Lucy Lippard donated her slide collection to the U-M Library. There are approximately 7,000 slides in the collection, many of them organized by Lippard into categories that she used to prepare for her books and lectures over the years. There is a significant number of slides of Native American artists as well as many women artists and artists active in the feminist movements of the 20th century. This collection has not been processed or digitized, and so a researcher would be the first to get to work with the materials. 
Art, Architecture and Engineering Library

Map Collection
Extensive collection of maps and atlases from all parts of the world, dating from the 16th century through the present day. Regional strengths include the Great Lakes region and the northeast; South Asia and Japan; Eurasia; the Mediterranean world; and parts of Europe such as Ireland, Great Britain, France, Italy, Spain, and Greece. Subject strengths include topographic maps, nautical charts, archaeology, travel, forestry, aeronautics, road maps and views, and much more. 
Clark Library

Maurice Sendak Collection
Works by and about Maurice Bernard Sendak (1928–2012) housed in the Special Collections Research Center. Sendak was an American author and illustrator of children’s books. He became most widely known for his book Where the Wild Things Are, first published in 1963. Born to Polish-Jewish parents, his childhood was affected by the death of many of his family members during the Holocaust.
Special Collections Research Center

Philippine History Collection (Hatcher Library)
The Philippine history collection consists of published works, manuscript items, and photographs documenting many aspects of Philippine history, with particular emphasis on the period between 1899 and 1913, when Dean Conant Worcester served as a member of the United States Philippine Commission and Secretary of the Interior for the Insular Government of the Philippine Islands.

Screen Arts Mavericks and Makers
This collection documents film production through the papers of notable independent filmmakers, including Orson Welles, Robert Altman, Alan Rudolph, Nancy Savoca, John Sayles, and Jonathan Demme, as well as distributors Ira Deutchman and Robert Shaye. Materials consist primarily of scripts in various drafts and versions, production documents including correspondence and financial records, on-set photographs and film stills, publicity and reception materials, and material related to unproduced, unfinished, and incomplete projects.
Special Collections Research Center

Theatre History Archives
Variety of published materials and archival collections relevant to theatre history, particularly but not exclusively in the United States. Of particular interest is an in-depth view of the Little Theatre Movement and the history of American puppet theatre (Ellen Van Volkenburg and Maurice Browne papers); 20th century costume design, including several Shakespearean productions (Zelma Weisfeld Archive) and sound design during a period of technological change in the late 20th and early 21st century (Dan Moses Schreier Collection).
Special Collections Research Center

Transportation History Collection
The transportation history collection is a unique body of published and archival material on various modes of transportation and the infrastructure that supports them. These include automobiles, ballooning and dirigibles, bicycles, bridges, canals, carriages and coaches, roads and highways, and, most notably, railroads, including American, Canadian, Mexican, British, French, German, and Russian railroad companies and their rolling stock. The collection was established in 1923 by John S. Worley (1876-1956) when he came to the University to head the newly created Department of Transportation and Railway Engineering.
Special Collections Research Center

William A. Gosling Pop-up and Moveable Books Collection
Former library director, William A. Gosling, amassed an enormous collection of pop-up books, including historical examples and items from the past half century of production. He donated these to the library, forming the basis of one of the largest pop-up book collections in the country. There are approximately 2500 books, including all (or nearly all) of the pop-ups produced by well-known artists like Robert Sabuda and David A. Carter. Most of the books were originally intended for children, but there are also pop-ups created for adult audiences as well as those that overlap conceptually with the artists’ books collection.
Special Collections Research Center

Women Composers Collection
Extensive collection of musical works by more than 700 women composers. With the exception of several dozen 18th-century works, the music is almost evenly divided between the 19th and 20th centuries. Songs and solo piano music predominate, though choral, orchestral, dramatic, and chamber music are also represented; much of the content is rare or even unique.
Music Library

Richard Pohrt, Jr. Collection of Native American Photography 
The Richard Pohrt, Jr. Collection of Native American photography contains over 1500 photographs pertaining to Native Americans and Native American history from the 1850s into the 1920s. The majority of photographs are individual and group portraits of people from tribes west of the Mississippi, with the Apache, Cheyenne, Crow, and Lakota/Dakota being particularly well represented. The collection contains both studio and outdoor photographs and reflects the dramatic upheavals in Native American life that occurred as a result of the expansion of the United States.

David V. Tinder Collection of Michigan Photography
The David V. Tinder Collection of Michigan Photography consists of over 100,000 images in a variety of formats including daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, cartes de visite, cabinet photographs, real photo postcards, stereographs, and mounted and unmounted paper prints. The collection is primarily made up of vernacular photographs of everyday life in Michigan taken by both professional and amateur photographers from the 1840s into the mid-twentieth century. In addition to supporting local history research, the collection has resources for the study of lumbering; mining; suburbanization; industrialization; travel and transportation; the impact of the automobile; fashion and dress; ethnicity and race; and the participation of photographers in business, domestic, and social life.

Sheet Music Collection
The Clements Library’s sheet music collection of approximately 30,000 titles represents popular music from American and foreign publishers from approximately 1770 to 1930, and includes manuscript as well as printed music. The collection highlights vocal music, often written for parlor performances on pianoforte, organ, or commonplace string instruments like the banjo. Also included are marches, multiple part pieces for stage productions, and many dance instrumentals. Although the racially derogatory minstrel form is prevalent in the holdings after circa 1830, rare work of African American composers and performers such as Francis Johnson, Gussie Davis, and Scott Joplin also appears.

James V. Medler Crime Collection
The James V. Medler Crime collection consists of several thousand pamphlets, books, broadsides, and manuscripts, collected over a period of 30 years by James Vincent Medler of Brooklyn, New York. The collection includes a variety of genres and formats, from admonitory sermons of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to dying confessions of criminals, printed trial proceedings, and sensationalized popular illustrated crime pamphlets of the mid-to-late nineteenth century. The library also holds extensive materials related to policing, incarceration, and punishment. Related materials exist in the Clements Library’s manuscript and graphics collections.

Manuscript Division
With over 2,700 collections, the manuscript holdings at the Clements Library offer researchers the opportunity to explore the American past in great detail. The chronological focus of the division spans from the late colonial period through the long 19th century, with significant holdings related to the First and Second World Wars. The primary geography of the collection includes the British Atlantic World, the North American colonies, the United States, Canada, and the West Indies, with smaller groupings of materials pertinent to Latin America. Thematic strengths include military history, African American history, women’s history, alternative religion, social reform, and the history of everyday life.

Cartography Collection
The Map Division of the Clements Library includes an outstanding collection of printed and manuscript cartography. These images range in detail and subject matter from floor plans of rooms and buildings to maps depicting the Western Hemisphere. The focus of collecting is on maps of the Americas dating from European exploration and colonization to the early years of the twentieth century. The Map Division catalog includes approximately 30,000 maps and plans. About 2,500 of these are manuscript, and many came to the Library with large manuscript collections from the Revolutionary War and Early National period. In addition to individual maps, the Clements holds roughly 1000 atlases dating from 1486 to the end of the nineteenth century.

African American History Collections 
The Clements Library has extensive holdings across its divisions related to African American history, with particular strengths on the history of slavery, antislavery and abolition movements, the Civil War, and emancipation. Materials from all of the divisions grant different entry points to explore how Americans experienced, interpreted, and recorded race. Examples of some key manuscript collections include the African American History Collection, the Weld-Grimké Family Papers, and collections in the James S. Schoff Civil War Collection. The Graphics Division helps document the visual history of African Americans through sources like the Arabella Chapman Carte-de-Visite Albums.

Native American History 
The Clements Library has extensive holdings related to the history of Native American peoples. Topics of particular strength include Native American material culture & traditional customs, Indian-settler interactions and conflict, trade, negotiations & treaties, relocation, and assimilation. Examples of major collections with Native American content from the Manuscripts Division include the Native American History Collection, Great Britain Indian Department Collection, Fort Wayne Indian Agency Collection, Southwest Territory and Mississippi Territory Collection, John M. Johnston Collection, and the Hilon A. Parker family papers. Important collections within the Graphics Division that provide a rich source of visual information regarding Native American material culture and traditional customs include the Richard Pohrt, Jr. Collection of Native American Photography and the extensive print portfolios of Theodor De Bry, James Otto Lewis, McKenney & Hall, Karl Bodmer, and George Catlin. Highlights from the Book Division include a wide range of printed books in Native languages, while noteworthy items from the Map Division include Indian reservation maps and manuscript maps with Native American content that originally hail from the papers of military figures such as British Generals Thomas Gage and Henry Clinton. The library holds materials related to Native American boarding schools, as well as extensive collections that support research on Native American territoriality and place-making.

West Indies Collections
The Clements Library’s holdings relating to the West Indies are particularly strong in relation to colonial administration, slavery, military engagements, cartography, and American travel and trade in the region. Printed sources include travel narratives, contemporary reactions to the persistent imperial struggles in the region, satiric prints, historic views, and much more. Printed and manuscript maps highlight changes in European colonial control, information on military activity, and details of sugar production and slave plantations. Manuscript collections relating to the West Indies include papers of British politicians that illuminate colonial administration of the region (e.g. Shelburne, Lyttelton) as well as family and business papers that document daily life, plantation management, and economic activities (e.g. Tailyour, Charles Winstone, Tousard). Papers of military and naval figures illustrate key information about conflict in the region, particularly during the American Revolution (e.g. Castries, Vaughan).

Visual Ephemera Collections 
The Clements Library holds several hundred thousand examples of visual ephemera in all formats, including printed trade cards, ribbons, brochures, greeting cards, playing cards, event programs, postcards, rewards of merit, party invitations, and other printed ephemeral items. The collections also include photographic materials, including stereoviews and glass magic lantern slides. These materials cover all of what is now the United States. These collections are primarily uncatalogued.