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40
years of Special Collections
Collector and collection hailed at Gotlieb tribute
By Brian Fitzgerald
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Author David Halberstam, who was invested as the first Fellow of the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center on September 30 (from left), with center director Howard Gotlieb, actress Angela Lansbury, and Chancellor John Silber. Photo by Allan Dines |
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Four decades ago, Howard Gotlieb founded Special Collections at BU as
an archive that would “tell the story of our times” through
the personal papers of influential public figures, writers, and performers.
On
Tuesday, September 30, many of those celebrities, his “collectees,” as
he calls them, came to campus to honor Gotlieb at a tribute dinner in
Metcalf Hall. Formal recognition of his contributions, however, began
during a reception at Mugar Memorial Library prior to the event, when
BU President-elect Daniel Goldin announced that Special Collections was
being renamed the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center.
Noting Gotlieb’s
ability to coax hundreds of politicians, actors, and musicians to commit
their personal effects to BU’s archives,
Goldin said that Gotlieb “persevered, he persuaded, in his own
words, ‘often begged,’ ” and his “persuasion
and passion created and has sustained our one-of-a-kind collection.” Unveiling
a wooden sign with the department’s new name, he praised Gotlieb
as “incomparable.”
The reception, hosted by the Friends of
the Libraries of Boston University, also marked the opening of the Mugar
Library exhibition Capturing the
Century: Forty Years of Collecting, and the investiture of journalist,
author, and historian David Halberstam as a Fellow of the collection.
The exhibition, a major selection of papers, memorabilia, and photos
from the center, showcases the lives of more than 100 notable figures,
including authors D. H. Lawrence and Robert Benchley, poets T. S. Eliot
and Allen Ginsberg, cartoonists Harold Gray, Al Hirschfeld, and Paul
Szep, and actor James Mason.
Halberstam, who won a Pulitzer Prize for
his Vietnam reporting, was on hand for the evening’s events, as
well as were actresses Angela Lansbury (Hon.’90), Claire Bloom,
and Tammy Grimes, explorer, cartographer, and photographer Brad Washburn
(Hon.’96), and opera divas Sandra
Warfield McCracken and CFA Dean Emerita Phyllis Curtin. They are among
the luminaries whose manuscripts, letters, and diaries are in the collection,
a trove that includes such artifacts as the papers of Martin Luther King,
Jr. (GRS’55, Hon.’59) and journalist Dan Rather, Fred Astaire’s
shoes, Elizabeth Taylor’s gloves, and Oscar statuettes from Gene
Kelly (Singin’ in the Rain) and Rex Harrison (My Fair
Lady). The
Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center also has more than 100,000 volumes
of rare books and historical documents dating back to the 1500s.
Chancellor
John Silber pointed out that the archives are “always
in use.” For example, 164 book projects are under way right now
using materials in collection. “There are 49 dissertations being
written,” said Silber, “and 36 documentary films are making
use of material he has provided.”
Lansbury said that 40 years ago, “Howard
bravely began the daunting and challenging task of accumulating the letters,
publications, trophies,
and general memorabilia of what is now a collection of some 2,000 individuals.
He has succeeded in establishing what must be the finest collection of
published and private papers of the 20th century in this country.”
Provost
Dennis Berkey made the announcement to those in attendance that Gotlieb
had been named a full professor of history in the College of
Arts and Sciences.
Gotlieb said that the archives will continue to grow. “I
like to think of all the books yet to be written, all the dissertations
yet to
be researched, all the honors papers yet to be submitted, based on the
60 million documents we’ve gathered here,” said Gotlieb. “And
perhaps, just perhaps, some small part of me will be in that work, and
for that I am extraordinarily grateful.”
3
October 2003
Boston University
Office of University Relations