Artist: R. Adams Title: The Wallabout Market Audio: Date: 1930s Dimensions: 20″ x 57″ Location in Library: First floor Media: Watercolor Owner: The Brooklyn College Library Collection. © Artist’s Estate Description: In 1637, Joris Jansen de Rapelje, the father of the first European baby born in New York, purchased 335 acres of land in Brooklyn. In the late 1800s, part of this land became the Wallabout Market, an enormous wholesale market that sold produce from local farms. The market’s buildings were Dutch-style two-story structures with stepped gables. The market was demolished during World War II, when the U.S. government needed the land to expand the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Suggested Reading– Berner, Thomas F. The Brooklyn Navy Yard, 1999.Call Number: Special Collections – Brooklyniana – VA 70 .B7 B47x 1999
Watercolor
Artist: William Kentridge (South African, b. 1955) Title: Typewriter Audio: Date: 2003 Dimensions: 30 1/2″ x 36 11/16″ Location in Library: First floor Media: Sugarlift aquatint, works on paper Owner: The Brooklyn College Library Collection. Purchased with The Dormitory Authority of New York Art Acquisition Funds. © William Kentridge Description: The typewriter in this print is full of quirky character; the old-fashioned keys, typebars, and levers twitch with motion and life, even in the absence of a typist. William Kentridge infuses many of his works with this kind of vitality, and he often combines them to make stop-motion animations, or “drawings for projection.” Though the resulting films are sequences of still images, they burst with energy, especially when he is addressing politically charged subjects such as apartheid. Related Websites– William Kentridge at MoMA– William Kentridge at New Museum– “Why the Art World Is So Drawn to William Kentridge” from New York Magazine –William Kentridge’s Charcoal Drawings Animate Africa’s History of Colonial Resistance
