may09c.indd


Ann-Christe Galloway G r a n t s  a n d  A c q u i s i t i o n s  

Syracuse University Library has received 
a $350,000 grant from the National Endow-
ment for the Humanities (NEH) to create 
a digital scholarly edition of the works of 
Bauhaus architect Marcel Breuer. The project, 
entitled “Marcel Breuer, Architect: Life and Work, 
1922–1955,” will run from May 2009 through 
April 2011 and culminate in the release of the 
Web-based edition in May 2011. Breuer began 
donating his papers to Syracuse University 
Library in 1964. Today, the Syracuse Breuer 
collection includes thousands of original over-
sized drawings and blueprints, correspondence, 
and photographs. Breuer was born in Pécs, 
Hungary in 1902. At the age of 21, he went to 
work in the office of Walter Gropius, founder 
of the modernist Bauhaus School of Design. 
He and Gropius emigrated to the United States 
in the late 1930s, where they taught at Harvard 
University and maintained a joint architectural 
firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1941, 
Breuer established a singular reputation for his 
“bi-nuclear” house, which organized physical 
space around new modes of day-to-day life. 
By the mid 1950s, Breuer had designed some 
60 private residences and had begun to un-
dertake large-scale, institutional projects like 
the UNESCO headquarters in Paris (1953), 
the Whitney Museum of Art in New York 
(1966), buildings on the campuses of New 
York University and St. John’s University in 
Collegeville, Minnesota, and the Cleveland 
Museum of Art (1970). 

University of Massachusetts (UMass)­
Amherst’s W.E.B. Du Bois Library will digitize 
an estimated 100,000 items from its Du Bois 
collection thanks to a $200,000 grant from the 
Verizon Foundation. The project will provide 
online access for the first time to original dia-
ries, letters, photographs, and other material 
related to the journalist, social analyst and 

Ed. note: Send your news to: Grants & Acquisitions, 
C&RL News, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611-2795; 
e-mail: agalloway@ala.org. 

activist, and a founder of the NAACP. Once 
the materials are scanned and cataloged, 
UMass-Amherst will work with Verizon to 
identify documents to include in Thinkfi nity. 
org, Verizon Foundation’s free educational 
Web site that provides resources to enhance 
teacher effectiveness and improve student 
achievement. Included are Du Bois’s letters 
to and from presidents and public fi gures 
such as Marcus Garvey, Booker T. Washing-
ton, Albert Einstein, and Mohandas Gandhi. 
Over his extraordinarily long life—from his 
birth in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in 
1868 to his death in Ghana in 1963—Du Bois 
witnessed or took part in many of the most 
important social movements and events in 
United States history, from post-Civil War 
Reconstruction to the civil rights movement of 
the 1960s. Du Bois vigorously explored many 
approaches to fighting racism, including 
integration, separatism, cultural and political 
groups including communism, expatriation 
to Africa and more. 

Acquisitions 

The University of South Florida (USF) Librar­
ies Holocaust and Genocide Studies Center has 
acquired 500 drawings done by child refugees 
from Darfur. The drawings depict the atrocities 
that these children witnessed in their now-
destroyed home villages. The images are so 
detailed that they have been accepted for use 
at the International Criminal Court as evidence 
in the case against President Omar al-Bashir of 
Sudan. In addition to the children’s drawings, 
the USF Libraries Holocaust and Genocide 
Studies Center will be the permanent home 
of extensive handwritten testimonials from 
displaced Darfuris now residing in refugee 
camps. In an effort to create a Western-style 
petition for action, 100,000 Darfuris have writ-
ten what amount to personal essays, addressed 
to Gordon Brown and George W. Bush. 

314C&RL News May 2009

mailto:agalloway@ala.org