Renovated Marquand art library attracts students and scholars

Marquand Library reopened in McCormick Hall on Aug. 25 after 18 months of renovations. Its dedication ceremony last Friday celebrated the renovated space's ability to house extensive University collections and welcome undergraduates into its warm, inviting study spaces.

President Tilghman, Chair of the Department of Art and Archaeology Patricia Fortini-Brown, University librarian Karen Trainer and Marquand librarian Janice Powell cut an orange and black ribbon at the dedication. Held in the library, the celebration included drinks and hors d'oeuvres, which Brown jokingly noted will never again be seen in the library. Marquand enforces a strict policy of no food or drinks. "I've worked in libraries all over the world, and when I walked in the door of the new Marquand Library this fall, it simply took my breath away," Brown said. "I can say with no exaggeration that Marquand is one of the finest art history libraries in the world not only in terms of its holdings — we've always known that — but now also in terms of its state-of-the-art facilities."

Brown said the new home to the old collection will "bring together groups of manuscripts that have a long and distinguished pedigree with the cutting-edge technology necessary to carry out scholarship."

The library now boasts 109 carrels, three seminar rooms and a new electronic demonstration room to be used by librarians to show students online art history resources, according to the posting. In addition, the first-floor reading room has been expanded, and there is a new climate-controlled reading room for rare books and the new P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Seminar and Reading Room devoted to East Asian art.

The renovations will also allow Marquand to expand its collections by 20 to 30 percent. The library usually adds 8,000 volumes to its collection each year and added 10,000 last year, the posting said.

These new facilities have attracted undergraduates since the beginning of the fall semester, making it a "hot spot" for studying, Trainer said.

This was, in fact, one of the goals of the renovations, she said.

"All of you know that an important reason that we talked a lot about for rebuilding this library was our desire to protect this wonderful collection that has been built by generations and generations of art historians and librarians," Trainer said. "But we also had a stealthy secret purpose — and that was to build a library that was both so beautiful and so functional that undergraduates would feel drawn in by the welcome beauty of it and then would find that it worked so well, they were hard-pressed to leave." she said.

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Far from being hard-pressed to leave, students were hard-pressed to go to Marquand Library during its displacement — the library was temporarily housed in the Engineering Quadrangle and Mudd Library, both a long way from the Department of Art and Archaeology's headquarters in McCormick Hall.

Tilghman said she was pleased to welcome the dedication's attendees, not only as the president of the University, but also as the mother of a graduate of the Department of Art and Archaeology who had spent two years "trudging" to the E-Quad to do senior thesis research.

The library was established 95 years ago by Professor Allan Marquand, a graduate of the Class of 1874.

Marquand also founded the Department of Art and Archaeology and, with Charles Eliot Norton of Harvard University, is respected for his introduction of the serious study of art history to the United States. Marquand Library is one of the oldest in the country.