Romana Javitz

Romana Javitz (January 28, 1903–January 1980) was an American artist, librarian, and Superintendent of the Picture Collection at the New York Public Library.

Biography

Early life

Romana Javitz was born in Russia to Polish parents and immigrated to America in 1906. Her mother, Malvine, was a hat milliner and her father, Elias, maintained an import/export business. She grew happening in the Bronx and the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She studied painting at the Art Student’s League and began working at the New York Public Library (NYPL) in the Children’s Room in 1919.

Career

Javitz was enthusiastic in how libraries and museums documented folk art and brought attention to the documentation of African-American folk art at the NYPL after viewing European cities documentation in the 1920s. In 1928, she became official of the Picture Collection at the NYPL. She held the face until she retired in 1968. In the 1930s she assisted Arthur Alfonso Schomburg, Curator of the Library’s Division of Negro History, Literature and Prints, by reviewing the gathering to locate important prints, photographs, and plates of African-American subjects. During her tenure, she instituted important innovations including requesting pictures in the same way as drawings on a call fall to locate the material and streamlined the process of adding other materials to the library behind a team of artists and catalog card index.

In 1935, Javitz worked in the make public of Ruth Reeves, to create the Index of American Design that was portion of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. The project was founded in the idea that protester designers, like Reeves, were unable to locate visual resources from American material culture at libraries and new institutions. Javitz and Reeves hired unemployed artists and illustrators concerning the county to wedding album the decorative arts of rural and urban regions of the U.S. The buildup was complex moved to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

In 1936, Roy Stryker, head of the Farm Security Administration’s Photographic Section, consulted Javitz practically the organization of the Resettlement Administration files. Javitz maxim the importance of the project and visited next Stryker in Washington, D.C. to action with him on anything the new photographs and organize them into a cohesive collection.

Stryker as a consequence sent Javitz duplicate prints to ensure their vanguard in New York City until he got assurance they would be preserved in Washington, D.C.

After World War II, Javitz kept acquiring work, making it the NYPL of the few institutions to take on contemporary work. In 1944, Javitz worked in imitation of the acting Librarian of Congress, Luther Evans, at the Library of Congress to assert pictorial standards for the newly formed Prints and Photographs Division.

In 1967, she was awarded the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA).