Baker Library, Harvard Business School

11 04 2011

Last week, I did some research at the Baker Library at the Harvard Business School. In this photo of the HBS campus, you can see the spire of the Baker Library.

My experience using archival material in the de Gaspé Beaubien Reading Room was great. The archivists there were very helpful. I was at the Baker Library to research the origins of credit reporting in Canada. Today, we take the existence of credit-rating agencies such as Experian for granted, but they were new in the 1850s and 1860s, the period I am really interested in. The Baker Library has a wonderful collection of records relating to R.G. Dun, an early credit reporting firm.

I`ll say more about research on credit-rating in the Province of Canada in a future blog post. Right now I would just like to thank that staff and the business history unit within HBS, which generously provided me with a Chandler travel fellowship.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , ,
Categories : Uncategorized

“The High Art of Photographic Advertising: The 1934 National Alliance of Art and Industry Exhibition”

25 05 2010

Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibition “The High Art of Photographic Advertising: The 1934 National Alliance of Art and Industry Exhibition”. The exhibit will run through October 9, 2010 in the North Lobby, Baker Library | Bloomberg Center.

In 1934, a stunning photographic exhibition sponsored by the National Alliance of Art and Industry (NAAI) and the Photographic Illustrators, Inc. opened at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York. The show featured works by the top photographers of the day- including Russell Aikins, Margaret Bourke-White, Nickolas Muray, John Paul Pennebaker, and William Rittase – with a particular emphasis on advertising and industrial images. A year later the NAAI donated over 100 prints from the exhibition to the Harvard Business School, which at the time was actively collecting photographs for exhibition and classroom use.
“The High Art of Photographic Advertising,” organized by Baker Library Historical Collections, revisits the original 1934 exhibition, exploring the synergy between photography and corporate culture of the time and how 75 years later, the collection survives as a telling chapter in evolving perceptions about photography’s artistic,
commercial, and cultural significance.

Visit the accompanying website here.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: ,
Categories : Uncategorized