BY MARIA KHIM

In print | October 25, 2007

In June 2005, William Lieberman ’43, a well-known curator for the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, passed away and donated his extensive personal collection to the college library. Sarah Burford ’08 has been working on the Lieberman Collection since last spring semester and is putting on an exhibition at McCabe Library that begins next week.

The opening reception for the exhibition titled “Modern Musings: Treasures from The Lieberman Collection” will take place next Tuesday afternoon on Oct. 30 in the McCabe Library Lobby. There will also be a short lecture presented at the reception by visiting art history professor Graham Bader introducing the collection. Anne Strauss, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is also planning to attend the event to view the collection.

Some items that will be on display as part of the exhibition include original prints signed by Joan Miro, a hand-made artist book with an etching signed by Picasso and original lithographs by Andy Warhol.

“In the past, we’ve had many exhibits of traveling collections from outside institutions and libraries,” Outreach & Instruction Librarian Pam Harris said. “My goal is to have more student-curated exhibits and more exhibits that are in some way related to the curriculum and that showcase more of the library holdings.”

Burford initially became involved in this project as part of her Mellon internship and first came up with the idea to have an exhibition. She stayed as an intern throughout the summer to work on the project. “When I interviewed for the Mellon internship, they told me about the collection and I thought it’d be really exciting,” Burford said. “I credit the Mellon internship program and the McCabe staff for giving me a lot of freedom with this and letting me use all the different resources. The collection is like a snapshot of his era and the culture of the 20th century.”

The Lieberman Collection includes approximately 6,000 items mainly consisting of books on various subjectsincluding art, biographies, art history and fiction. The collection was bequeathed to the Swarthmore College Library in Lieberman’s will and transported to the college on August 1, 2006. His donation also includes many primary sources, such as Lieberman’s informal interview with Lee Krasner about Jackson Pollock’s work that occurred over dinner.

According to Reference and Instruction Intern Amanda Watson, the Lieberman collection is still in the process of being made available to the campus.

“This exhibition is like a preview,” Watson said. “We’re working on the collection as fast as we can, but it’s such a huge collection. This will continue to be an ongoing process as it has been for sometime.”

Lieberman was personal friends with many artists and therefore the collection includes many art works signed by the artists themselves, including those of Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro and Andy Warhol. There are also many original prints and lithographs as well as catalogs from various exhibitions that he collected over the years. In addition, he collected many rare and special edition books with the authors’ signatures such as William Blake and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Currently most of the books are being stored on the lower level of McCabe in a series of closed compact stacks. However, the library staff and others such as Burford have been going through and examining each of the books.“We have searched approximately 60 percent of the collection at this point, and once we have finished with the searching process, we will have the collection re-appraised by a professional appraiser,” Assistant Head of Technical Services and Coordinator of Collection Development Amy McColl said. “At that point we will determine which titles we will add to the permanent collection, and begin the process of cataloging and processing the books.”

In addition a major part of the process has involved cross-referencing with the existing collection to see if there are any overlaps in the library holdings. In certain cases, such as the wide range of books on different aspects of Japanese culture and Japanese art written in Japanese, outside help was recruited to understand and judge the value of the books and various art works.

“I think it’s wonderful because it shows that Swarthmore, which is academically renowned, is also a strong promoter of culture,” Andrew Scott Taylor ’09 said. “We as students are privileged not only by receiving a great education, but also being given this opportunity to access these amazing cultural artifacts that we are able to appreciate.”

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