The First Art Newspaper on the Net
Darin Mickey, a photographer and chair of the creative practices program of the International Center of Photography, browses the Accidents folder of the New York Public Librarys Picture Collection, in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building in New York, July 30, 2021. Founded in 1915, the collection lends images to library users who are seeking visual information of a mind-boggling range. Gus Powell/The New York Times.
by Arthur Lubow
(NYT NEWS SERVICE)
.- Artist Joseph Cornell once requested a picture of a street urchin with a white cockatoo. Andy Warhol borrowed hundreds of images for inspiration and never returned them. For more than a century, the Picture Collection of the New York Public Library has flourished, gloriously but precariously, as a shape-shifting misfit within a Dewey Decimal grid. Founded in 1915, the collection lends images to library users who are seeking visual information of a mind-boggling range: Praying, Fairies