Interests

The Jerome Robbins Dance Division of The New York Public Library is the largest and most comprehensive archive in the world devoted to the documentation of dance. We preserve the history of dance by gathering diverse written, visual, and aural resources, and work to ensure the art form's continuity through active documentation and educational programs. The Division is used regularly by choreographers, dancers, critics, historians, journalists, publicists, filmmakers, graphic artists, students, and the general public. Other resources available for study free of charge include papers and manuscript collections, moving image and audio recordings, clippings and program files, and original prints and designs. more »

These pocket-sized buildings are at once a reminder of travel, and a record of popular architecture. Included in the collection are iconic tourist destinations, like the Tower of Pisa; Empire State Building; the Parthenon; the Space Needle; the Alamo; the Eiffel Tower; and the Temple of Heaven. Also included are more modest buildings, like dozens of suburban American banks, grain silos, and football stadiums, as well as souvenirs from places with less architectural, but nonetheless popular, pedigrees: Lincoln’s log cabin; Elvis’ Graceland; and the Disneyland Castle. After decades of display in museums and private residences, the entire collection was donated to the Museum in 2019. more »

"Every type of stitch has a different elasticity, and if we figure out everything possible then we could create things that are rigid in a certain place using a certain type of stitch, and use a different type of stitch in another place to get different functionality" said Elisabetta Matsumoto." Knitting is a periodic structure of slip knots. Textiles with intricate patterns are knit by combining slipknots in specific combinations. Members of the Matsumoto group are beginning to delve through the complex math which encodes mechanical properties within the interlocking series of slip knots of a material. more »

The practice goes back to the earliest days of print in the fifteenth century. Artists, printers, booksellers, consumers, and readers all applied color to originally black-and-white images. Before Gutenberg’s innovation of the moveable-type press, both woodblock and engraved prints, single sheets with printed images, were popular in Germany and parts of Central Europe. They were used in various ways, and many people did what we might do with them — hung them on the walls of their home. more »