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Vol. 24, No. 7 Oct. 23, 1998

Avery Library's Architectural Treasures Are in Demand Worldwide

By A. Dunlap-Smith

If public demand is any gauge of celebrity, then Avery Library's already celebrated collection of architectural drawings, books, renderings, prints and manuscripts is a star rising to new heights.

Recently a 200-year-old Roman account book and fragile drawings on silk from the early 20th century, among many other items, have been shipped around the globe. "Loans from Avery's collection are like roving goodwill ambassadors for us," said Angela Giral, director of the Avery Library, "and the more we loan the more curators and exhibitors ask us for materials, as awareness of the extraordinary holdings we have here spreads."

As aware as the world already appears to be, these "ambassadors" certainly have much more roving to do. Just since the summer, for example, items from Avery have been put on display in Tokyo; Rome; Sydney, Australia, and Pasadena, Calif.

To Rome, for a show entitled "Piranesi e l'Aventino," the library sent a "very rare book," according to Giral, signed and dated-April 10, 1767-by Roman architect and engraver Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78).

The exhibition, sponsored by The Vatican and the Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta, is held in the Order's extraterritorial enclave on the Aventine Hill. It recounts Piranesi's work in this section of Rome, which overlooks the Tiber River and The Vatican City on the far bank.

In his essay for the show's catalogue, Columbia professor Joseph Connors of the art history and archaeology department describes the Avery loan to "Piranesi e l'Aventino" as a "misura e stima" (measurement and estimate) book. Connors writes that in it Piranesi logged the materials, the work and the costs of restoring and decorating Santa Maria del Priorato, the small church that now houses the exhibition. "Piranesi e l'Aventino" runs through Dec. 8.

A group of 19 drawings, some of which are on silk, from Avery's extensive collection of work by the architects Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin are presently at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. They will remain there through May 1999 when the show "Beyond Architecture: Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin" closes.

It is the first major retrospective of this American couple. Mahony and Griffin, who early on worked under Frank Lloyd Wright, moved to Australia after winning the competition to build its federal capitol of Canberra. Their plan for the city's layout is however all that was executed because World War I halted building, and by war's end the government, and with it government tastes, had changed. Mahony and Griffin nevertheless remained in Australia, designing and building there as well as in India.

The show's comprehensive catalogue features many of the 118 Mahony and Griffin drawings held in Avery's archive.

On display in Pasadena are nine original drawings by the arts and crafts architects Greene and Greene. All are of the R.R. Blacker House, a California bungalow, the recent renovation of which was profiled in the Oct. 1 New York Times.

The exhibit and public tour of the Blacker residence that took place during the first three weekends of October was organized to benefit the Gamble House, another bungalow by the Greene brothers also located in Pasadena. Now a museum and study center owned by the University of Southern California's architecture school, the Gamble House too has a Columbia connection; its architectural drawings can also be found in Avery.

The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art asked the library to contribute to its "At the End of the Century: One Hundred Years of Architecture," an exhibition about which Time magazine said in a July review: "By virtue of its size and scope alone, the show is likely to become a vital intellectual landmark as the millennium approaches."

Avery sent 12 drawings to Tokyo where the show opened this summer. The works are by architects Charles Lamb and Felix Candela, and the renderer Hugh Ferriss. "They're in the show because Lamb and Ferriss were urban visionaries and Candela a technological pioneer," said Janet Parks, the library's curator of drawings. "And since Avery is the largest repository of their work [The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art] naturally came to us."

The exhibit will move to Mexico City; Cologne, Germany; Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Los Angeles, before winding up at New York's Guggenheim Museum in 2000.