Blog topic: Art

October 1, 2015, marks the 125th anniversary of the establishment of Yosemite National Park. To commemorate our nation’s third National Park, the University Archives has mounted an exhibition of photographs of Yosemite Valley taken by Eadweard Muybridge in 1872. On display are ten albumen photographs printed from replicated negatives made from photographs by Muybridge in 1872. This set of images comes from a limited edition printed by the Chicago Albumen Works, Inc. and published by Yosemite Natural History Association in 1977. Only 50 sets were produced.

The Stanford Media Preservation Lab and the Department of Special Collections are delighted that Shu-Wen Lin is spending the summer with us in Redwood City interning as a media archivist. Leveraging her interest and background in the arts, Shu-Wen will help to process and preserve several media-based collections, including the archives of visual artist Carolee Schneeman and the archives of Telling Pictures, a prominent Bay Area film production company. Shu-Wen's first day is June 1.

As previously announced, the Ruth Asawa papers are now available. In thinking of fun and innovative ways to present certain aspects of her work, we decided to scan a small series of San Francisco architecture snapshots from her collection and upload them to the social mapping website Historypin, and also include them in their Year of the Bay local history project.  These photographs were probably used as research in creating the San Francisco Fountain in Union Square, which features many cast dough relief images of the city. Unfortunately there is no information on or about the prints in the collection. They are likely all from the 1960s, and were probably taken by Asawa (she has referred to taking pictures of the city in preparation). Architectural historian Sally Woodbridge may have also contributed. The varying qualities of the prints implies that several cameras or developers were used, and that they were probably taken over a period of time. At any rate, they collectively serve as a remarkable portrait of the city in that decade.