Teaching Visual Arts in Special Collections

Edgar Everett ("Abe") Martin (1898-1960) was born in Indianapolis. His family later moved to Monmouth, Illinois where his father was a biology professor at Monmouth College. Martin attended Monmouth, but left in his junior year to study at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. He joined the Newspaper Enterprise Association in 1921 as a syndicated cartoonist. Boots and Her Buddies, created by Martin, was introduced as a daily comic strip on February 18, 1924 and became popular immediately with NEA subscribers and their readers.

The majority of the items in this collection are original pen and ink cartoons drawn for the Chicago Tribune from 1903 to 1944. These editorial cartoons focus on social issues, economics, politics, and both World Wars. The collection includes cartoons on the Great Depression and several presidential races, as well as a number of cartoons that are of particular interest to the history of Missouri. The collection also contains illustrations drawn for Cosmopolitan from 1912 to 1926, many of which accompanied the humorous stories by George Ade in his collection entitled Fables in Slang. Reproductions of some of McCutcheon’s more popular cartoons, and some original pen and ink drawings painted with watercolor are also included in the collection.

Pages from the Past is a collection of manuscript and rare book leaves compiled and sold by a New York book dealer Alfred W. Stites from 1964 to 1967. Each set of Pages from the Past is unique. This collection is labeled Set no. I, “The History of the Written Word”. This is version “B” from the Stites’ third “release” of sets. Within the set I it is no.14 of 15 sets.

The collection consists of posters from both World War I and World War II with a few tourist and other miscellaneous posters from the same periods. Additionally, the collection contains broadsides, banners, pamphlets, and ephemera.

The collection contains examples of the cartoonist V. T. Hamlin’s work from high school until the end of his career. Although best known for his long-lived comic strip, Alley Oop, this collection includes some of his earlier cartoon work. Also included in the collection are newspaper and journal articles about Hamlin’s work; contracts and correspondence with his primary publisher Newspaper Enterprise Association; personal and career photographs; and personal and family papers, correspondence and memorabilia.

Digital Scriptorium is a growing consortium of American libraries and museums committed to free online access to their collections of pre-modern manuscripts. The website unites scattered resources from many institutions into a national digital platform for teaching and scholarly research.

ILLUMINATED invites you to view multiple images within each manuscript, zoom in on details, discover drawings hidden beneath the painted surfaces, learn about the pigments and the advanced scientific methods used for their identification, and explore the relationships between scribes, artists and original owners.

With more than 900 illuminated manuscripts, 1,250 of the first printed books (ca. 1455 - 1500), and an important collection of post-1500 deluxe editions, this extraordinary collection chronicles the art of the book over more than 1,000 years.

The Picture Collection Online (PCO) is a select group of images from The New York Public Library, Mid-Manhattan Library, Picture Collection. Since its creation in 1915, the Picture Collection has met the needs of New York's large community of artists, illustrators, designers, teachers, students, and general researchers. Covering over 12,000 subjects, the Picture Collection is an extensive circulating collection and reference archive, the largest of its kind in any public library system.