Treasures and Musings @ Modern Graphic History Library

Women in Pop Culture at the Modern Graphic History Library

We've created a new research guide about mid-century depictions of women in popular culture. Women as girlfriends, wives, single girls, mothers, homemakers, workers, consumers, rebels, femme fatales, even superheroes...they're all here. The guide provides an overview of what kind of materials and images we have in our collections and how to find them, recommended books, and an image gallery. It will be particularly helpful to users interested in 20th century ideas about gender roles, domesticity, consumerism, sexuality, and feminism. A few highlights are included below. Check out the Women in Popular Culture at MGHL research guide to see more.

Al Parker ad for American Airlines, from Ladies' Home Journal, September 1950

From the Al Parker Collection

Al Parker illustration for Ladies' Home Journal, August 1946

From the Al Parker Collection

Ladies' Home Journal, August 1912

From the Periodicals Collections

Wonder Woman #137

From the Center for the Humanities Comics Collection (A new collection we're currently preparing for public use. We'll have more information about it very soon!)

Edwin Georgi illustration from The Saturday Evening Post, December 1944

From the Charles Craver Collection

Happy Birthday, Robert Andrew Parker!

Happy birthday to Robert Andrew Parker, who turns 85 today. Since the 1950's, Parker's work has appeared in numerous books, magazines such as The New Yorker and Sports Illustrated, and museums and fine art galleries across the country. Many of his original watercolor illustrations for children's books can be found in the Robert Andrew Parker Collection; check out a few highlights below.

from The Ballet of Elephants, written by Leda Schubert (2006)

from The People with Five Fingers: A Native Californian Creation Tale, written by John Bierhorst (2000)

  from Father Time and the Day Boxes, written by George Ella Lyon (1985)

  from The Mermaid and the Whale, written by Georgess McHargue (1973)

  from To Fly: The Story of the Wright Brothers, written by Wendie Old (2002)

Robert Weaver's Spring Training Sketchbook

Now that it's baseball season, we wanted to share with you some of the most popular images from the Robert Weaver Collection: the spring training sketchbook. The work below was done on assignment for Sports Illustrated in 1962. Many more of these sketches are available through LUNA. (You will need your WUSTL key to log in; if you're not affiliated with Washington University and would like to see more, you can contact us.)

Four Views of Music

Because it's been a little while since the last Four Views post, we thought it was time to do another. While "music" may seem a difficult thing to represent, our collections are so full of images related to the subject that it was difficult to only choose four. A few favorites are below.

Illustration by Robert Andrew Parker.  Parker also wrote and illustrated the book Piano Starts Here: The Young Art Tatum, a children's book about the eponymous jazz musician. Both the book and the original artwork for it are in the collection.

Illustration by Cliff Condak, quite possibly for an album cover. During the 1960s and 1970s, Condak illustrated many album covers for people like George Gershwin, Glenn Gould, and Billie Holiday; original artwork and reproductions are available in the collection.

Jack Unruh's illustration of Lyle Lovett. More illustrations of musicians and other well-known figures can be found in the Jack Unruh Collection; you can also see his illustration of Bob Dylan in this blog post about new images in LUNA.

An illustration for a January 1945 issue of Ladies' Home Journal by Al Parker. (You can see the photograph on which this illustration is based in the digital exhibit Double Exposure.) Parker was a lifelong music lover, and after high school played drums with a jazz band on his grandfather's riverboat.