The Organization of Vision: Romana Javitz and the New York Public Library’s Picture Collection
The Organization of Vision: Romana Javitz and the New York Public Library’s Picture Collection Romana Javitz. ca. 1942. Trude Fleischmann. Private collection. Origins: an immigrant, an art student, and an “untrained” librarian Romana Javitz was born in Russia in 1903 to Polish parents and immigrated to New York as a child. Her family settled in the Bronx and on the Upper West Side; her mother was a hat milliner and her father an importer of fine woods, giving the family a modest middle‑class footing and daily contact with materials, texture, and craft. This background – immigrant and artisanal at once – matters for understanding her later commitments: she instinctively took seriously both “high” art and the visual culture of ordinary life and work (Worth Beyond Words, pp. 6–7; Words on Pictures , passim). She entered the New York Public Library young, first in the Children’s Room (1919), then part‑time in the Picture Collection (from 1924), while studying painting at the Art Stud...