The Cloisters: Very Old Books

I thank and farewell Michael, and traipse through the austere halls and galleries of the Cloisters.

I pause awhile at this illuminated Illuminated Manuscript.

This is the Manuscript of the Apocalypse, and I really want to touch it. Good thing it is covered with (probably bulletproof, certainly UV proof) glass. With a name like that who knows what could happen?

The Cloisters: Deep Stacks

This second, deeper stack room of The Cloisters Library holds the monographs unconverted to LC, and the rest of the archival material.

This has resulted in a awesome salmagundi, the best kind of bits and pieces.

Museum administration papers, the personal papers of founder George Grey Barnard, early glass lantern slides of material held by the museum, collections of images of museum under construction, curators papers both internal and external, scholars papers. Bequests of dealers records (particularly those whose merchantry contributed to the Cloisters collection), a bequest from scholars of medieval architecture. Spools of reel to reel tape of classical music for piping through the museum halls, back when one used reel to reel technology to sidestep vinyl records skipping. Piles of loose maps in various states of repair and decay. Basically, this room is crammed with wonderful, ephemeral and very orderly treasure.

And the longest, most impressive compactus I've ever met.

The Cloisters: Deep Stacks

Cloisters: Trolley

a very empty trolley

Cloisters: Stacks of stacks

The first stacks we visit are in this great primary blue, and were completed in the early 1990's.

This room holds the working collection. Most of the titles here have been acquired post 1992- when the reading room upstairs officially ran out of space. The few older publications are from collections that were displaced from the reading room for some heavily used subjects like medieval cooking and gardening (the Cloisters grounds have extensive historical gardens, documented here).

Michael admits he really has the best of both worlds in managing a collection like the Cloisters. A small, by-appointment repository, in a beautiful setting, with the full financial and operational support of a major organisation to boot.

While the finances of the Met mean Michael's budgets aren't lean, the Cloisters do receive bequests. There have been about 5 major donations, mostly by retiring scholars. These high quality collections have helped fill the gaps nicely. A bequest from a scholar of Medieval Scandinavia filled just such a gap. 

For the most part the collection supports the curators, and reflects the museum focus of Western Europe: Germany down to Spain, and British to a certain extent. The Library wasn't restrictive against Scandinavia, they just hadn't been actively collecting. They ARE restrictive against Byzantine era resources- there is a strong focus and specific Byzantine collection downtown at the Met proper.

Cloisters: belly of the beast

I love getting to see the underbelly, the raw workings of these institutions.
Exploring library stacks means walking through awesome corridors like this deep in the viscera.

It consistently makes me feel a little like Lorraine Bracco's character in Goodfellas, getting taken in by Ray Liotta through the kitchens. By the art library mafia.

Cloisters: Reading Room

The Cloisters Library was established early in the museums history.
Images and descriptions from thirties show the reading room is virtually unchanged. There are a few more tables, and some scanners, but it has retained its original form and function.
The Cloisters Library has never intended (or had funding, space or staff) to be a fully fledged medieval studies, or medieval art library. It is an extremely refined collection of about 13000 titles supporting the museums specific collection: with a focus on the actual art and architecture held by the Cloisters collection.
The library is by-appointment, postgraduate only (except by special arrangement).
The Met Education Department does host eight undergraduate interns in the summertime, and they spend 2 months doing research here.This culminates in a gallery talk about a particular area of the collection.
Those two months are a busy time for this little library.

The collection was converted to LC in 2002, away from a customised Dewey system developed and implemented by the (apparently quite mad) Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art Librarian in the mid 1880s. The reading room and working reference collection in the first stacks were the first to be converted, although the second stacks, containing much of the archive and older materials still retains some of the original tweaked Dewey system.

The handsome card cabinets are still in situ in the reading room.
When Michael started with the Met Library (the Watson, at the Central Park location we all know and love- and where i received a tour of their new state of the art preservation/restoration lab) the card files were still in effect.
The LMS in use is the Innovative Millennium system
The central Met OPAC, punningly titled Watsonline includes all 11 major library collections, and is an efficient, utilitarian interface to the magnificent resources of this museum.

The Cloisters: Phenomenal Frankenstructure

Again, an ArtLibraryCrawl library resides in an extraordinary building.

The Cloisters Museum is an imposing frankenstructure which incorporates a number of authentic medieval architectural elements.

These components came from the collection founder George Grey Barnard, sculptor and collector.

They also came from the collection of John D Rockefeller, who acquired Barnards works and merged the collections to form an extraordinary gift to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The grounds are a large, quiet reserve at the tippity top of Manhattan, purchased by John D Rockefeller in order to shore up some "peaceful tranquility" away form the bustle of downtown. It was, then, a scarcely inhabited part of Manhattan.

Not only did the philanthropist establish the quiet green space of the Cloisters grounds, now planted according to medieval horticultural practices, he successfully bought all the land across the Hudson River - the Palisades- in order to establish a serene view from the proposed Cloisters Museum.

An ambitious vision then, an extraordinary result now. 

The wide open green space is universe away from the tiny Lower East Side apartment we called home in NY.

Cloisters Museum, with a view of the leafy Palisades in the distance, across the Hudson River.

Back to the building though. It is completely overwhelming.

Built to resemble the Medieval aesthetic it exhibits, it incorporates structural elements of five separate French cloistered abbeys, and a large Spanish apse (pictured from within, below) all of which were dissembled and shipped brick by brick to the new world of NY, NY.

Metropolitan Museum of Art: the Cloisters Library

Next: the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Cloisters, where these feet (above) take me through many of these apt passageways (below), to meet with Michael Carter, Cloisters Librarian Extraordinaire (and all round swell guy) for a chat about the Cloisters Library and Archive Collection.

The Cloisters: card catalogue

We'll get to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's wonderful Cloisters Museum Library eventually.

I am procrastinating/managing a large photo archive right now, so thought I'd post this image of their handsome card file. What a lovely, obsolete block of chocolate it is.

The Cloisters: Pamphlets

The Cloisters: Illuminated illuminated manuscript