Are You Curious About Archives?

Have you been reading this blog and wondering "Just what is an archives or special collection anyway? Is it the same as a library?" Or maybe you are familiar with what archives are, but not sure how to identify collections and use them for research. The Society of American Archivists has a new online publication that can help.

Using Archives: A Guide to Effective Research provides helpful information to acquaint you with archives. Topics covered include the differences between archives and libraries; how to find archives and evaluate what materials they have; and considerations and procedures for using archives to do research, either remotely or by visiting in person.

The Guide is available both on the web, or as a single pdf document you can download and print.  Explore the world of archives!

"I Feel Like I've Seen Mecca"

Among her many interests, Ade Bethune was a proponent of the teachings of Maria Montessori. Bethune's St. Leo Shop became an outlet for Montessori's books, which were imported from India in the late 1950s and 1960s. In addition, Bethune sold her own booklets for writing instruction--"Teaching the Child to Write" (originally published in Jubilee magazine) and Uniscript: A New Method for Teaching Handwriting--which were based on Montessori's principles. The Ade Bethune Collection has copies of both of these, along with a set of plaster letters for children to trace with a finger.

I had been meaning to let the Montessori department at St. Kate's know the connection between Ade Bethune and Montessori's work, and had an opportunity to do Friday. One of their faculty members was visiting the Archives for another reason. I told her that Bethune had sold Montessori's books in her shop and we had those and other Montessori-related items in the Collection. After seeing the plaster letters and looking through the writing booklets, she told me she was speechless and wanted to come back later to spend more time looking through the materials.  Her comment in the heading is how she described the experience to a colleague.

This encounter reminded me, yet again, how many hidden treasures are in the Ade Bethune Collection. Bethune herself was a complex and talented woman whose work and interests went far beyond her more commonly known tag of "Catholic Worker artist." There are gems to be explored by those involved in many fields, and it is my job to make them more widely known--to the St. Kate's community and beyond.

Rita Corbin, Catholic Worker artist

Rita Corbin, whose art has illustrated The Catholic Worker newspaper since 1954, died on November 17th as the result of a car crash.  She was 81 years old.  Corbin was the last surviving member of what one Catholic Worker editor called the "Holy Trinity" of artists: Ade Bethune, Fritz Eichenberg, and Rita Corbin.  Together, their illustrations give the paper its visual impact, especially in its earlier years.

More information:
Obituary from the National Catholic Reporter

45 Years of Community Activism

Another set of materials in the Ade Bethune Collection has been organized and is available for research.  The Newport Community Organizations Materials document Bethune's involvement with the Point Association, East-West Point Committee, Citizens Advisory Committee, Foundation for Newport, and other groups in her adopted home of Newport, RI.

This part of the Collection covers almost a half-century of Ade Bethune's activities, from the late 1950s to her death in 2002.  During this time, Bethune was active on the Board or in other leadership positions for many of these community groups.  Her involvement with them centered on supporting Newport's citizens; she wanted to ensure they had good homes and neighborhoods.  In this effort, Ade Bethune addressed multiple road and redevelopment issues--working for or opposing proposals based on the impact they would have on the community.

At a February, 1970 public hearing regarding a proposed highway that would bisect Ade Bethune's Point neighborhood, she prefaced her questions and comments with the following statement:

"I will speak in the name of families, and children, and mothers, of the elderly, of the poor people, of the pedestrians on both sides of the Point. People who have no advocate to plead their cause and defend their rights. . . People who are not here tonight because they are too young to be here, or too old, like my mother, people who are working tonight and can't come."

Through her work, Ade Bethune made sure that everyone in the community would have a voice.

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Organization of the Newport Community Organizations Materials and production of a finding aid for them was made possible by a CLIR "Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives" grant with funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Puzzles from the Past

Last week St. Kate's chapter of Phi Beta Kappa brought a visiting scholar, Dr. Gloria Pinney, to campus. Her visit included participating in three separate classes, plus a public lecture on her research into the Acanthus Column at Delphi. Weaving together pieces from art/archaeology, history, literature, mythology, and astronomy/cosmology, she traced her theories into the column's meaning, including why it was erected.

Listening to her speak, I thought the fields of archaeology and archives are similar in some respects. There are obvious parallels between the two related to uncovering and preserving the past and to historical research. But her use of research to decipher a puzzle brought to mind a more specific connection, for I have faced puzzles in the Ade Bethune Collection--items whose history or purpose I needed to discover in order to fully understand what they were.

One such puzzle concerns 4 unfinished painted wooden panels. They are not quite 5 feet high, with icon-style portraits in the top half and painted drapery in the bottom half. In their unfinished state they could have been preliminary studies, except for the gold leaf that was applied to parts of them. It was unlikely Bethune would have used gold leaf on anything but a final piece. These panels seemed important to her body of work on two levels. First, the Collection has few actual examples of her art, except for original drawings used for illustrations in various publications. Second, Bethune was interested in iconography and the symbols traditionally depicted with specific saints and people.

Sketches for 2 of the 4 panels, showing the Mother
of God and Christ. The other 2 designs depict
John the Baptist and the patron saint of the church
for which they were intended.

The panels were included in the shipment of Ade Bethune's items to St. Kate's upon her death, but for a number of years I couldn't place them in any sort of context. Then one day, browsing through some of the materials in the Collection, I came upon a folder titled with the name of a church and the word "Icons." Wondering if it had any connection to the mysterious panels, I looked through the contents. Inside were 3 letters, illustrated notes on the history and traditions of the iconstasis in Orthodox churches, and sketches of designs similar to the panels. In the last letter, written in response to having received a schmatic of the altar screen for the church, she wrote:

"I am upset to see that this design was made without consulting me and without respect to the nature or tradition of the iconstasis. The size of the panels shown on the drawing is 36" x 48", whereas the actual panels you furnished, and on which I have worked, are 24" x54". It looks as though we are not communicating on a professional level. Regretfully, therefore, I would ask to resign from the project and be released from the verbal contract we made."

Here was a letter that explained both the unfinished state of the panels, and the use of gold leaf. They were intended to be used as part of an altar screen, but Ade Bethune resigned the commission due to a lack of communication. And the panels remained in her house until her death.

Archivist featured in SCAN

The October 2011 issue of SCAN, the magazine of St. Catherine University, included an item introducing Deborah Kloiber as St. Kate's new archivist.  For the past 10 years Kloiber has been curator of the Ade Bethune Collection; now she has responsibility for the Archives and other Special Collections as well.  For the full article, see "Watcher at the Gate" in the From the Heart section of SCAN.