From Shelf to Spotlight: Rediscovering Modernist Books From Eastern Europe at The New York Public Library

Abstract

This essay contextualizes the overall development of eastern European resources at the Library, highlighting some of the personalities who have contributed to building this internationally significant research resource. The development of the Baltic, east‐central European, and southern Slavic collections of The New York Public Library has been a neglected area of the Library's history. Reciprocity with institutions in the Slavic and Eastern European homelands played a vital part in the growth of the Library's holdings of materials in their languages until the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Library materials were acquired through local dealers, as gifts, and on international exchanges, as well as through personal visits to the region by library staff. Modernist books were an important part of these acquisition efforts. This article was originally published by The New York Public Library in S. A. Mansbach, with Wojciech Jan Siemaszkiewicz, Graphic Modernism: From the Baltic to the Balkans, 1910‐1935, pp. 52‐65. This article is copyrighted 2007 by The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, and reprinted with permission.