Duke University Libraries has received $10 million in support of the planned renovation and expansion of Lilly Library, one of Duke’s oldest and most architecturally significant buildings. The donation to Duke is comprised of three gifts: a $5 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., $2.5 million from Irene and William McCutchen and the Ruth Lilly Philanthropic Foundation, and $2.5 million from Virginia and Peter Nicholas. Lilly Library is named for philanthropist Ruth Lilly, the last great-grandchild of pharmaceutical magnate Eli Lilly. Ruth Lilly made a gift to “renovate and computerize” the library, where her two nieces, sisters Irene “Renie” Lilly McCutchen and Virginia “Ginny” Lilly Nicholas, spent time as they attended the Woman’s College at Duke, graduating in 1962 and 1964, respectively. The gift renamed the building and provided the first significant upgrade since it was built in 1927. The planned renovation and expansion will update facility needs—including enhanced lighting, technology infrastructure, and furnishings—to meet today’s standards of safety, accessibility, usability, and service. Anticipated changes will also extend to the Thomas, Few, and Carpenter reading rooms while maintaining the character of these spaces. The proposed renovated building will also feature several new spaces for collaborative research and academic services, such as a tutoring space for the Thompson Writing Program, an event space for the Duke FOCUS Program, a student-testing facility, and an exhibit gallery. An anticipated added entrance and commons space holds promise to become a crossroads environment to encourage informal interactions and allow students and faculty to gather.
The Fritz Henle archive has been ac-quired by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas-Austin. The archive contains approximately 180,000 black-and-white negatives, 10,000 color transparencies, 150 contact sheet books, 11 books of magazine clippings and tear sheets, and thousands of work prints spanning the photographer’s six-decade career. The materials were donated by the Henle Archive Trust. Henle (1909–1993) was one of the most productive and best-known magazine and editorial photographers of the post-war era. Born in Germany, he immigrated to the United States in September 1936, and between 1937 and 1941 his work was featured on the cover of five issues of Life magazine and in more than 50 stories in its pages. Henle’s photographs were widely published in magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar, The Saturday Evening Post, Holiday, Collier’s, Look, Town and Country, Mademoiselle, and Glamour. In addition to these popular picture magazines, Henle was a frequent contributor to photography publications such as U.S. Camera, Popular Photography, Modern Photography, and Minicam Photography. Henle also published dozens of books of his photographs including This is Japan (1937), China (1943), Mexico (1945), Paris (1947), Hawaii (1948), Virgin Islands (1949), Figure Studies (1954), The Caribbean (1957), Holiday in Europe (1963), The American Virgin Islands (1971), Fritz Henle (1973), and Casals (1975).
The Fritz Henle archive joins more than 1,000 color and black-and-white photographs acquired by the Ransom Center since 1979.