The Carnegie Corporation Grant: The Organization of Pictures as Documents, 1941-42
Newsstand, 32nd Street and Third Avenue, Manhattan. (1935). Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. Retrieved from http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-4f7ea3d9- e040-e00a18064a99 Image ID 482798 By 1941 Romana Javitz was at the top of her field and was known world-wide as an authority on the use of pictorial materials. Many institutions, cultural organizations and corporations began clamoring for guidelines to organize their own burgeoning collections of visual materials. So i n 1941, NYPL director Harry M. Lydenberg approached the Carnegie Corporation for funds to allow Javitz time off from her regular duties to craft a manual for the classification and arrangement of picture collections. In order to proceed, Javitz, writing to Franklin F. Hopper, who succeeded Lydenberg as director i n 1941, insisted that she would need to first write: “a comprehensive