June 2012 Archives

Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries has been awarded a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation to preserve select films from the Harris H. Stilson film collection. Grants were awarded to 35 projects--including preservation of a newly discovered film by composer John Cage--in 22 states. VCU is the first university in the commonwealth to receive a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation. For more information

Stilson (1868-1934) was a Richmond streetcar conductor, later a motorman, and amateur photographer and film documentarian. His films offer a rarely-seen visual record of Richmond 1929-31. Highlights of the collection are street scenes of black and white citizens, streetcars and buildings and leisure life at Byrd Park and Shields Lake.

"The Stilson work is a unique treasure," said Wesley J. Chenault, head of Special Collections and Archives at James Branch Cabell Library. "Film footage of the city is rare and our research suggests that these films are among the oldest, if not the oldest, held by any local or regional cultural institution in the commonwealth."

Adding to the historic value are provenance and documentation. The donor is the filmmaker's great-granddaughter, Kitty Snow. Recognizing the importance of this record, she has actively worked to locate and preserve Stilson's collection, which includes some 3,000 photographs and negatives that document the ordinary lives of Richmonders, including African American and Jewish communities and individuals from his streetcar routes. It also contains meticulous records - ledgers, receipts, notes - that identify who and what Stilson captured through his lenses.

Snow says her great-grandfather (at left) "was the poor man's photographer, selling pictures for 20 cents to pay for his cameras, film, and developing materials. He was also an innovative photographer, hand-coloring and even inserting a missing relative's face into a family portrait, sort of an early 'Photoshopped' picture." A selection of his images is the subject of Snow's forthcoming book "From a Richmond Streetcar." The film collection at VCU Libraries represents his only known surviving film work. VCU Libraries is working with Snow to acquire the photographs, negatives and personal papers, which will add immense historical depth and context.

The Kodacolor films in the collection will be the first to be preserved. Introduced for 16 mm film in 1928, this Kodak brand was associated with an early color process known as lenticular. After being cleaned and preserved, the films will be made available for public research and use in Special Collections and Archives at James Branch Cabell Library and online through VCU Libraries Digital Collections.

The film collection is expected to have broad research interest to scholars, students, documentarians and others interested in early 20th century urban life, Virginia and Richmond history, race relations, urban studies, architectural history and more.

Created by the U.S. Congress in 1996 to save the nation's film heritage, the National Film Preservation Foundation is affiliated with the Library of Congress's National Film Preservation Board.  It awards basic preservation grants to nonprofit and public institutions for laboratory work to preserve culturally and historically significant films.

The Sunday, June 24, 2012 Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial page featured this historic cartoon. First published in June 1948 as commentary about a tense moment in the early days of the Cold War, it chronicles the start of the Berlin Blockade. Western powers squared off against the Soviets, who blocked access to rails, roads and waterways to control supply lines into Berlin. In response, Western Allies organized  the Berlin Airlift to provide needed supplies to the people of West Berlin. The blockade, which started on June 24, 1948  and ended the following May, resulted in the creation of two German states and a divided Berlin. 

The cartoonist Fred O. Seibel was the newspaper's editorial cartoonist for more than 40 years.

The Fred O. Seibel Papers are housed in the James Branch Cabell Library's Special Collections and Archives. The collection is part of the library's Comic Arts Collection which includes the papers of several cartoonists, a collection of comic books and a significant collection of reference materials that focus on the comic arts and its history.

The Seibel collection includes correspondence to Seibel, a complete set of his published cartoons, 34 thirty-four original Seibel cartoons and other items. More 

 
 

The "Tri-State Gang in Richmond" book talk with Selden Richardson, scheduled for Wednesday, June 20, has been cancelled because of the speaker's illness. We apologize for the cancellation and hope to reschedule the event for later this summer. Stay tuned for updates.

Richmonder Selden Richardson, author of "Built by Blacks: African American Architecture and Neighborhoods in Richmond," will discuss his newly released book, "The Tri-State Gang in Richmond: Murder and Robbery in the Great Depression," on Wednesday, June 20 at 3 p.m. in the Multipurpose Room (room 250) on the second floor of James Branch Cabell Library. Following the talk will be a reception in Special Collections and Archives on the fourth floor. Books will be on sale at the reception, and Mr. Richardson will be signing books.

Leading the infamous Tri-State Gang were Robert Mais and Walter Legenza, the "Dillingers of the East." In 1935, their ring of organized crime came to an end in Richmond. Mais and Legenza's sensational story made a powerful impact on the nation, and for decades after it would be used as the basis for crime fiction, comic books and numerous movie and television crime dramas, including "The Untouchables."

Selden Richardson holds master's degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Richmond, and he is a former archivist for Architectural Records at the Library of Virginia. For a review of his book "Built by Blacks" by VCU Libraries Archives Coordinator Ray Bonis, click here.

At last week's Venture Richmond annual Downtown Development Forum, VCU Libraries' plans to build a new building on the Monroe Park campus was one of the projects discussed. The article

Longtime Richmond Times-Dispatch cartoonist Chick Larsen is the subject of a small exhibition in the Fourth Floor Gallery of James Branch Cabell Library.

From 1950 to 1954, Carl E. "Chick" Larsen (1923-1991) studied commercial art at Richmond Professional Institute (RPI), the forerunner to VCU. He worked for the Richmond Times-Dispatch for more than 35 years.

He worked in the pre-digital age when X-ACTO knives and India ink were among the trade's tools. Some of those art supplies are on display along with samples of his work for various clients and his student work.

Also on view are clippings of the color comic strip he created around a newspaper delivery carrier. "Carrier-Toons" ran in newspapers nationwide from 1979-84.

The materials on view are from the Carl "Chick" Larsen Papers housed in VCU Libraries Special Collections and Archives in James Branch Cabell Library. The materials in the exhibit were donated by Larsen's family to VCU Libraries. The collection documents Larsen's career as a professional artist and contains materials ranging from Larsen's original art work to the art supplies he used during the 1950s through the 1980s. The photograph of Larsen, left, was taken in 1978.


VCU Libraries' Comic Arts Collection, housed in Special Collections and Archives at James Branch Cabell Library, consists of some 100,000 items, including more than 40,000 comic books, graphic novels, editorial cartoons, comic strips, memorabilia, comic journals, fanzines and an array of reference materials. In addition to the growing, comprehensive collections for the study of comic arts, VCU Libraries is the repository for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards Archives.