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Emily Grubbs, curatorial assistant in Bywaters Special Collections, will give the gallery talk “Adventures in the Archives: Discovering the Gigaku Masks” at the Dallas Museum of Art along with Dr. Anne Bromberg, The Cecil and Ida Green Curator of Ancient and Asian Art at the DMA, on Wednesday May 25 at 12:15.
Photographs by Brad Flowers, Dallas Museum of Art.
Question: What do Queen Noor of Jordan and the catalogue from the 1923 Fourth Annual Exhibition of the Dallas Art Association have in common?
Answer: Queen Noor’s grandparents owned Halaby Galleries, originally located in the Majestic Theatre Building, where the Dallas Art Association’s Fourth Annual Exhibition was held in 1923. Her grandfather, Najeeb Elias Halaby, migrated from Beirut to New York when only 12 years old with his older brother, Habib. Together, the two young men learned how to survive in the city by selling Oriental rugs, damask fabric, copperware, and jewelry from their homeland. Najeeb eventually moved to Texas in search of oil and cotton money and there met and married his future wife, Laura Wilkins, the daughter of a local rancher, in 1914. With her interior decorating skills and his import-export knowledge they established Halaby Galleries in the early 1920s. Due to the success of their business, the Halabys were asked to move their gallery to the top two floors of the newly expanded Neiman Marcus store in downtown Dallas. Unfortunately, Najeeb died soon after opening the gallery in the new location and the business did not continue.
Effective April 1, 2011, Central University Libraries (CUL), which includes the Hamon Arts Library, has updated circulation privileges to better meet the needs of faculty at SMU.
All of the staff at the Hamon is excited about these changes and we hope they are sufficient for your needs.
As always, if you have any questions or concerns about this or anything else about borrowing, you may contact Hamon Arts Library circulation desk by calling 214-768-3813 or emailing hamcirc@smu.edu.
In recent months, we have had some problems with access to Naxos Music Library, our most popular audio streaming service. We kept running into a limit on the number of users who can use it at the same time. In order to address this problem, we have changed our subscription and made a few tweaks to the system. In addition to doubling the number of seats available for people to use simultaneously, we have also made it easier for the system to time out and log someone off if he or she has stopped using the service. Never fear—if you really are browsing or listening, even if you’re doing something else like looking at a score, you won’t be logged off.
If you haven’t tried Naxos Music Library or got frustrated and stopped using it, I would encourage you to try it (again)! It gives our users access to the entire Naxos label as well as many, many other independent labels, such as Alfred, Albany, Carus-Verlag, Chandos, The Cliburn, Da Capo, Delos, and Loft.
As a reminder, we also have Classical Music Library and DRAM for additional audio streaming services—as well as our Variations system for streaming our own recordings! If you have any questions, contact Jon or Maristella, our new AV Supervisor. All of these services can be accessed directly from the Hamon website.
Hamon Library’s Jones Collection and the Meadows School’s department of Film and Media Arts are co-presenting a mini screening series this semester.
The first film, Gene Autry’s Oh, Susanna!, will be shown (with bonus cartoon!) on Wednesday, March 2 at 7:00 PM in Garson room #3531. Sean Griffin, the chair of Film and Media Arts, will introduce the film. The show is free to all, but seating is limited.
Oh, Susanna! is one of dozens of Western films, television programs, and other materials donated to the film archive by Mr. Autry in the late 1980s.
Other film presentations planned for this semester include
04/16/11 — Giulietta degli spiriti, a.k.a. Juliet of the Spirits, Fellini’s first color feature
04/27/11 — The Roaring Twenties, a classic drama with James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart
All films are at 7 PM in Garson room #3531. Schedule is subject to change without notice. For more information, write to filmarchive@smu.edu.
Twenty years ago, in the fall of 1990, the west side of the Owen Arts Center was buzzing with the intense work and festivities attendant to the official opening of the Jake and Nancy Hamon Fine Arts Library. The move from Fondren Library occurred in stages throughout the autumn of 1990, culminating with the transfer of the Jerry Bywaters Special Collections Wing in the same week as the opening (there was a party deadline to meet, after all). Although the library began offering some services as early as October 10, it was not until mid-November that all of SMU’s library holdings in the arts disciplines were officially brought together in the building with the great curved facade.
A consolidated arts library had been in consideration for a decade—relevant books and special collections materials had previously been housed in at least five different campus locations. 
However, it was only in March 1988, when Nancy Hamon made a generous gift in memory of her late husband, that such a library become a reality; ground was broken for construction on December 12 of that year.
The library was reviewed in the Dallas Morning News on November 29, 1990. Columnist David Dillon called the building’s design a “refreshing change” and described the interior as a quiet but energetic space. The reading rooms on the first, second, and third floors were admired as “comfortable, unpretentious spaces designed with the pleasures of curling up with a good book in mind.” And to this day, it seems that the curved glass facade with its detached brick wall, Architect Milton Powell’s “one dramatic design move,” provides one of the most fascinating features on campus.
The Hamon Library has grown and blossomed since its opening, and its circulating and reference collections now contain more than 180,000 physical items relating to the visual and performing arts, including over 32,000 sound and visual recordings. In addition, the Library has some 300 subscriptions to arts periodicals and provides access to more than 60 online resources that are specific to the arts. The library’s collections support the Meadows curriculum and are particularly strong in European and American arts. Together with Bywaters Special Collections and the G. William Jones Film and Video Collection, the collections of the Hamon provide for an urban academic arts library supporting curricula and research at SMU as well as in the greater Dallas community.
Hamon’s annual book sale for fall 2010 will be on Thursday, December 2nd from 9 am – 10 pm and Friday, December 3rd from 9 am – 5 pm. This year, the Library will be offering many hard and soft cover books, numerous opera CDs, DVDs and VHS tapes. Subjects will include art, music, theater, dance, film or fiction. Most items will range in price from $1.00 – $10.00. On Friday, from 3 – 5 pm, prices will be 50% off and Friends of SMU Libraries will receive a 10% discount with their card.
Please note the following policies: check or cash only, no sales tax, all sales final, no holds, and no bulk discounts. The Hamon Arts Library is located in the Owen Art Center, 6100 Hillcrest Ave. For further information, please call 214-768-2894 or e-mail bmitchel@smu.edu.
A couple of Jones Collection films are on the road these days. Blood of Jesus played at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto last month. It will play again at Eastman House in February 2011. If you are in New York this month, you can see our tinted print of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1925 feature, The Pleasure Garden, at MoMA on November 26 and 29.
A Jones Collection film, Siegmund Lubin’s The Goose Takes a Trolley Ride, played during a presentation at the 2010 conference of the Association of Moving Image Archivists. There were about 80 people in the audience, and the film got a great response — a lot of laughs and exclamations. Throughout his presentation, Joseph Eckhardt, the leading Lubin expert, referred to SMU and the importance of our Lubin holdings, which are part of the Sulphur Springs Collection of Pre-Nickelodeon Films.
The Goose was shown as part of “The Life and TImes of Siegmund Lubin: King of the Movies.” The speakers included Eckhardt, Jon Gartenberg, and Peter Decherney. Henry Nevison, who is developing a film based on Eckhardt’s book, The King of the Movies: Film Pioneer, Siegmund Lubin, was also in attendance. It was a particular pleasure to attend this presentation in Philadelphia, the home of Lubin’s great pre-Hollywood film empire.
![Aunspaugh Art School, Dallas, Texas [ca. early 1900s]](/quarternotes/files/2010/10/29/Aunspaugh_Va_94_2002.jpg)
A detailed description of the Vivian L. Aunspaugh Art Club records is now available for viewing on the Texas Archival Resources Online website [TARO]. The Aunspaugh Art Club was organized in 1945 by students of Miss Vivian Aunspaugh and others who were interested in the study of art. Miss Aunspaugh established the Aunspaugh Art School in Dallas in the early 1900s and is credited as the first art school in the Southwest to offer classes in fine and commercial art, including the use of live models. In 1946 the club had their first art exhibition at the Joseph Sartor Galleries and, later in 1956, exhibited at the Dallas Museum of Art. The club eventually disbanded in 1986, but left behind an archive that reflects their activities and involvement in the arts through the years.
