The Museum of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Art will reopen in the Walsh Family Library after a renovation, once again displaying antiquities dating back to the 10th century B.C. On view in its new glass cases will be Greek ceramic jars from 400 B.C.E., Roman coins, amulets and jewelry from the 1st century B.C., and more.

The museum has offered the hands-on experience to Fordham classes over the years, with students curating exhibits on classical objects, including one last year dedicated to ancient glass.

Classes will once again be able to meet directly in the museum, a large conference table surrounded by exhibits.

“The important thing about teaching from the objects is that nothing makes students more excited about the ancient world than being able to handle something that is 2,500 years old,” said Jennifer Udell, Ph.D., the museum’s curator.

The renovation of the museum, which first opened in 2007, has improved its display cases, brightened the space significantly, and made possible the display of objects that had not previously been viewed by the public.

The original collection, which featured more than 260 antiquities dating from the 10th century B.C. through the 3rd century, was a gift from William D. Walsh, FCRH ’51, and his wife Jane. It grew over the years as the museum received several major gifts, including a 2014 gift of nine mosaics from the 5th century. In 2018, the museum received a collection of 118 objects comprised of small terracotta and bronze figurines and Roman glass.

Udell said that the items in the 2018 acquisition were an important addition to the museum’s holdings, but many were kept in storage because the museum lacked space to display them. But in 2021, Udell learned that she’d have a lot more space to spare.

Helping Resolve An Art Trafficking Case

In September 2021, Udell shared in a blog post that the museum had closed its doors on June 1. That day, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office seized 99 objects in the collection as evidence in an ongoing criminal investigation of a trafficker in ancient art.

Three months later, those objects and 61 more from other institutions, tied to Edoardo Almagià, a Rome-based antiquities dealer, were repatriated to the Italian Government.

Rethinking How to Show Objects

For Udell, the loss of the items was an opportunity for reinvention.

“Everybody said ‘Do you still have a museum? And I said, ‘Yes, we just have a different museum, with different types of material. The new install has given me a way to rethink how we show objects.”

Thanks to the generosity of Mark and Esther Villamar, she was able to purchase custom-made display cases that are brighter, more secure, and accessible from the back, for easier access. Carpeting has been replaced with polished concrete floors, and a large conference table has been installed in an alcove.

When it came to organizing the objects, Udell started with a description of Walsh’s original collection.

“Once you start putting objects in a case, then you have to see how things evolve. It’s difficult to plan from the get-go, and say ‘Ok, this is going to go here and that’s gonna go there.’ I kind of let it evolve organically,” she said.

That means pairing for the first time together the ram head drinking cup with an Askos (flask) with Nike figurines and Medusa heads in relief dating back to B.C.E. 300. An Etruscan Amphora (jar with two handles) from circa 650 B.C.E. is now the centerpiece of a case centering on Etruscan burial ceremonies.

In one of the cases, Udell grouped together never before displayed implements and tools, including spear blades, a cosmetic applicator, a neolithic spoon, and a flint hand axe dating back from 300,000 to 150,000 BCE.

Another new display features half a dozen pieces that are in fact forgeries.

“Were they specific forgeries or were they just tourist trinkets that then over time were viewed as deliberate fakes? Who knows?” she said.

“So this is fun to look at with students and to say, ‘Why aren’t they genuine?

This is the Real Thing

Linda LoSchiavo, director of Fordham Libraries, noted that the initial creation of the museum was the first major renovation to the Walsh Library, as the space was originally designed to be a periodical reading room. Many spaces in the building have been updated since then, so it made perfect sense to update this space now.

“This gave us entrée to rethink and reexamine everything that was in there, and go in the direction that it was inevitably destined to go—not just as a place to view beautiful things, but as an arm of teaching and learning,” she said.

“Whether you have a student who’s just inches away from an Etruscan vase as someone is turning it and showing it from every angle, or you have a medieval manuscript placed in front of them and you’re turning the pages, you’re allowing them to interact directly with history,” she said.

“This is the real thing.”

For Udell, the renovation is everything she wanted to create when she first arrived in 2007. The display cases have room for more objects, and Udell has secured loans for objects from the Metropolitan Museum of Art that will arrive in September. She anticipates working with other institutions in the future as well.

“There are lots of exciting collaborative things happening with other New York City institutions, so I’m excited about that,” she said.

“And I’m just excited about being able to unveil this collection in its best aesthetic possibility.”

Thanks to a new grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the library will be able to keep adding to the COVID-19 archive that it began assembling in April 2020. The archive is currently made up of items that are reminiscent of the many stages of the pandemic, including “Do Not Sit Here” signage and floor arrow decals, Fordham’s COVID-19 “Five Things” e-mails, photos of testing tents, and press coverage from the Observer newspaper. LoSchiavo said there are currently roughly 400 items in the collection, and she’d like to get to 1,000 by the end of the year. 

It’s an ambitious goal, but LoSchiavo is optimistic it can be done. The federal grant of $30,299 will allow the library to purchase heavy-duty, high-end scanners to catalogue printed material and camera equipment to conduct interviews with as many members of the community as possible. From the shutdown in March 2020, to the transition to remote learning, to connecting with colleagues from home, to deep cleaning building interiors, LoSchiavo wants to hear from the people who lived it. 

“I really thought this was a way to show future historians how lives changed under the duress of a pandemic. If enough schools do this, it’ll be a way to compare and contrast how public institutions handled it, how private institutions handled it, and how as a large Catholic, Jesuit university in the middle of New York City, the epicenter of the pandemic, it affected our students’ lives,” she said.

The hope is to get everyone on record, from vice presidents and deans to administrators, faculty, and staff. LoSchiavo said the library is still working on a formal way to reach out to everyone in the University community and let them sign up for interviews; she plans to share updates via the library’s blog. Interviews will be conducted in person, over the phone, through Zoom, and via e-mail.

She’s especially interested in highlighting the can-do spirit that the community embraced during the pandemic.

“We shut the doors at the library on Friday, March 20, but we never stopped. On March 21, we were still at it, virtually. I had teams of people who just knew what they had to do, and they just kept getting it done,” she said, noting that this was a pattern that was repeated across the University.

“I look at what the facilities people had to do in the spring and summer to get us open for August 2020. The maintenance people were certainly in this building every day and night, cleaning. These are people we want to talk to.”

Above all, LoSchiavo is cognizant that as months and the years pass, people tend to forget how quickly things changed. But hopefully, everyone will be able to look back at that time with pride.

“When we got back, I can’t tell you how many people said, ‘Well, no one was laid off,’” she said.

“For the most part, I felt like it was a really a spirit of optimism, and hopefully that’s what will come through.”

Luckily for fans, hundreds of episodes from The Big Broadcast’s archive are now available to stream on Fordham’s Digital Collections page, thanks to a generous donor and a collaborative effort between WFUV and the University Library.

“It’s a wonderful tribute to Rich and his knowledge and infectious passion for this timeless music,” says Chuck Singleton, general manager of WFUV. We’re grateful to our anonymous donor for his support, and to the Fordham Library team for providing a new home for these wonderful sounds to be enjoyed for generations to come.”

Conaty started The Big Broadcast in 1973, as an undergraduate at Fordham, and over the course of 43 years—almost all of them at WFUV—he attracted a dedicated fan base that listened as much for his encyclopedic knowledge and humor as for the pre-World War II playlists featuring the likes of Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Bessie Smith, and Benny Goodman. He would play from his expansive collection of often-rare records, giving listeners biographical details of the composers, singers, and musicians they heard.

When he stepped away from the program in September 2016, dealing with the lymphoma that would take his life months later, Conaty had hosted more than 2,200 episodes of The Big Broadcast and had gotten the chance to meet some of his musical idols, including the Boswell Sisters, Bing Crosby and the Mills Brothers, Mitchell Parish, and Calloway.

Michael Considine, director of Fordham’s Electronic Information Center, and his staff worked through technical and legal issues on the way to getting the show’s broadcasts digitized. To comply with copyright law, listeners can drop in on a stream that plays episodes continuously, one after another, allowing users to start and stop the stream but not select specific shows or songs.

While fans may miss the voice of Conaty live on Sunday nights, the new digital archive gives listeners a chance to hear his signature “Aloha” anytime they like.

“We’ve heard from perhaps one hundred fans of the show, and they are over the moon to be able to hear those shows again,” says Singleton. “Rich’s sudden passing was very hard on his fans, including all of us at the station. There is a lot of gratitude to Rich’s alma mater for making [this archive]possible.”

You can listen to the Big Broadcast stream at library.fordham.edu/juke7.html.

Hendrik Hameeuw of Katholieke Universiteit Deuven originally came to the U.S. to demo the Portable Light Dome Scanner for the curators and researchers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Through a connection that Lisa Lancia, director of international initiatives at the Fordham Libraries, had with a Belgian program, Hameeuw offered to give Fordham faculty and staff a demo of the device on campus.

Offering a state-of-the-art approach to looking at cultural heritage, the scanner helps others visualize the topography of medieval book illuminations, stamps, inks, seals, and bookbinding stamps in two-dimensional.

The demonstration included Hameeuw’s presentation on advanced imaging techniques followed by test scans of items selected from Fordham Library’s Special Collections.

Director of University Libraries Linda LoSchiavo called the technology “thrilling.”

“Digitization is an important issue for us, not only in terms of preserving Fordham’s past,” she said, “but in the that it allows us to present research in a truly unique way.”

–Lindsey Fritz

The $20,000 grant will enhance Fordham’s academic library collections and encourage and promote resource sharing among reference and research libraries in New York State.

Located at the Rose Hill, Lincoln Center, and Westchester campuses, Fordham University Libraries owns more than 2 million volumes and subscribes to over 15,500 periodicals and 50,000 electronic journals.

Although Fordham Libraries has received the CCDA grant in the past, this year’s award is larger than any previous CCDA grants.

According to Linda LoSchiavo, director of the libraries, materials purchased through the CCDA grant will be made available to patrons through interlibrary loans and document delivery systems, as well as electronically on the Fordham Libraries’ website.

“Given the escalating cost of library materials, it is neither feasible nor desirable to attempt to purchase and preserve everything published,” said LoSchiavo. “A library cannot stand alone in terms of its collection development. Academic libraries have always been great collaborators, and pooling resources is important to us.”

Fordham is among the top interlibrary loan lenders in New York State and is an active participant in resource sharing.

“By helping the Fordham Libraries, the CCDA grant helps all libraries and their users,” said LoSchiavo.

Fordham University Libraries has received a 1599 publication of Father Ribadeneira’s response to The Prince, titled, Trattato della Religione. The book was gifted to Fordham’s Special Collections by Italian businessman Gianluigi Longhi.

“Today, people talk about virtues in business—and they are all here in this Jesuit’s book,” said Longhi. “Entrepreneurs, bankers, and managers today must be able to show Christian virtues, so that people can follow leaders who behave correctly.”

Longhi said he decided to donate the book after meeting Henry Schwalbenberg, Ph.D., director of the graduate program in International Political Economy and Development, and Michael C. McCarthy, S.J., vice president for Mission Integration and Planning. The three attended conferences at the Vatican and at Fordham which focused on ethics in business, government, and economics.

“It’s an excellent text, a witness to a long tradition of anti-Machiavellian thinking,” said Alessandro Polcri, Ph.D., associate professor of Italian who specializes in 14th- and 15th-century Italian literature. “Machiavelli was criticized as a person who didn’t defend Christian virtues and promoted an approach to life with no moral limits.”

Polcri described Father Ribadeneira as a multilingual intellectual best known for his biography of St. Ignatius, Life of Loyola. He said that Father Ribadeneira’s criticism of Machiavelli in his native Spanish was published in 1595. The 1599 copy given to Fordham is a first edition translated “in beautiful Italian”—of which there are only 35 known copies in existence.

“De Ribadeniera’s book is a strong statement about how to use religion and the veneration of God in the act of governing and politics,” said Polcri.

In addition to igniting interest in critical texts surrounding The Prince, the gift could also reignite interest in “a figure who is a fundamental Jesuit,” said Polcri.

“Few at Fordham knew of Father Ribadeneira outside of his Loyola biography,” he said. “Now there’s more to explore.”

Polcri said that original sources in a digital age have become increasingly important as teaching tools. “In the digital era, students study the past as if it’s something abstract. Manuscript and printed material from that period is fascinating for students even if it is not easily readable. It has its own characteristics.

“But print is a great opportunity for them to understand the changes over the centuries. They can see the materiality and realize the transmission of the texts in that time,” he said. “When I teach Machiavelli, I will take them to the library to see this.”

It was no wonder, then, that those same kids devoured popular comic books—even religious ones—the first chance they got.

Last month, a former faculty member donated two-dozen rare copies of old Catholic comic books to the library’s archives. The books were from the series Treasure Chest and Topics, and had been distributed and widely read in Catholic schools from the 1950s to the late 1960s.

Donor Bert Hansen, Ph.D., said he bought the comics to research how medical heroes were depicted in American comics and other popular culture mass media.

Popular culture and medicine

“Public libraries don’t collect comic books, so they don’t get saved,” said Hansen, author of Picturing Medical Progress from Pasteur to Polio: A History of Mass Media images and Popular Attitudes in America (Rutgers, 2009). “Since I was looking for popular images related to medicine and doctoring, the comic book was where it was at—that, and Hollywood movies.”

Hansen, who taught in the Department of Natural Sciences at the Lincoln Center campus in the 1970s, said he limited his purchase of hundreds of comics to those that featured medical stories. The Catholic comics often featured American heroes with medical accomplishments, such as Walter Reed, Jonas Salk, and Albert Sabin, as well as plenty of “medically relevant saints.”

“What made the Catholic books different is that they included a saint in almost every issue,” said Hansen, a professor emeritus of history at Baruch College. “There was the Mother Cabrini story; there was Marguerite d’Youville, (who ran the General Hospital of Montreal) who was recently canonized. And there’s a story about Father Lazzaro Spallanzani, an 18^th-century biologist and physiologist.”

Touchy topics

LoSchiavo said she was an “avid reader” of the comics as a child growing up on Long Island. She welcomed the collection for an additional reason: “Besides Treasure Chest’s puzzles, games, lives of the saints, and devotional prayers, it also attempted to deal with issues like juvenile delinquency and social unrest at a time when these topics weren’t easily discussed in Catholic grammar school,” she said.

For now, Hansen is glad the fragile bits of memorabilia are safely stored in a temperature-controlled environment. But he also hopes their presence will inspire more donations of Catholic popular culture.

“As a historian, I hope we might find alumni who have some of these comics in their attic and didn’t know the library would like them,” he said. “What people might perceive as some funny old things are actually of interest to librarians, archivists, and scholars.”

“The gift reflects the diversity of our archives because we have everything from early papyrus up to contemporary books on the origins of hip hop, and this will add to our eclectic collection,”  said Kane. “Mr. Klos saw what we have and thought of things from his own collection that match, like a document likely signed by Aaron Burr that will fit in nicely with other material we have on the Founding Fathers.”

The senior Klos joined the Xaverian Brothers in 1933 and went on to become an expert in business education, founding the National Catholic Business Association in 1945. He taught at several New York City colleges before enrolling at Fordham to earn his doctorate in school administration. In 1952 he met Eileen Hundertmark. The two married and had eight children. After Eileen died in 1974, he married Elizabeth Rutowski, and the two had a child.

The collection includes Louis Klos’ own papers as well as content relating to Jesuits, Catholic businesses, the nation’s Founding Fathers, Freemasons, the meteorological musings of Ben Franklin, Hessian flies, and breeding mules—to name but a few.

The collection’s diversity is additionally reflected through its assortment of autographs, which include the famous Father Flanagan of Boys Town, actress Helen Hayes, playwright Charles Gordon MacArthur, and explorer-adventurer Roy Chapman Andrews.

There is also a document signed by King Ferdinand VII of Spain, dated Nov. 9, 1815, in which Ferdinand permitted the Society of Jesus to reenter the country after 48 years of expulsion from the home of St. Ignatius. The document, which retains a steel engraving print of the royal crest, is signed “Yo el Rey,” or “I The King.”

A papal decree from Pope Innocent XI, dated March 2, 1769, condemns “some opinions of the Jesuits,” while a folio of magazines dating from 1830 through 1831 represent one of the first Catholic periodicals printed in the United States that defended Catholics from nativists.

There’s a “boldly signed” document by 19th-century New York Governor William Learned Marcy, and another signed by 20th-century New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller.

There’s also a document with a signature that Kane said is thought to be that of Aaron Burr, the former vice president of the United States and nemesis of Alexander Hamilton.

Another 20th-century document features the signature of famed coroner Cyril H. Wecht from his testimony before the Warren Commission, concerning the assassination of John F. Kennedy:

“Based upon the findings in this case, it is my opinion that no [single]bullet could have caused all these wounds . . . , or any fragment of any bullet that we know about in this case.”

There, the general discusses finances and directs the commanding officers of the regiment to “make out pay abstract for the month of May.”

Not until July 9 does the general mention that the members of the Continental Congress “have been pleased to dissolve the connection which subsisted between this country and Great Britain and to declare the united colonies of North America free and independent states.”

The entries, some in the general’s own straightforward script and some in his secretary’s more florid style, are among many documents and manuscripts by the nation’s Founding Fathers that have been donated to Fordham Libraries over the years.

The diaries are from the Charles Allen Munn Collection, which also includes manuscripts from Benjamin Franklin, the Marquis de Lafayette, Paul Revere, John Quincy Adams, and General Nathaniel Green, as well as 18th-century painters Charles Wilson Peale and John Trumbull.

The collection has an international reputation. In 2016, two of the letters were on exhibit at the Palace of Versailles in France: one written to George Washington from artist John Trumbull, the second written to Marquis de Lafayette from George Washington. The letters will be on view the month of July in the atrium of the Walsh Library at the Rose Hill campus.

Now, the University is benefitting too; she recently helped procure a book of 200 photo-offset lithographs by master printer Richard Benson, a donation from Yale University that is one of a limited print run.

The weighty book was produced by the Gilman Paper Company under the direction of Howard Gilman, a descendent of the company’s founder and collector of rare photographs. Largely considered one of the world’s premier photography collections, the Gilman trove of 8,500 photographs was purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2005.

The donated book serves as an album of the collection’s highlights, said Kismaric.

Kismaric’s professional relationship with Benson, the former dean of the Yale School of Art, facilitated the donation of the book by Yale to Fordham Libraries. He is largely considered one of the best printers in the world, said Kismaric.

The lithographs are particularly significant, she said, in that they match not just the tonality and tone of the original prints, but also their finish as well. In fact, the reproductions are so convincing that MoMA mounted an exhibition of the originals beside Benson’s prints in a 2008 exhibition titled The Printed Picture.

Wed., Nov 2 from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m.Once considered the ugly stepchild of original source material and the bane of professors, Wikipedia has evolved into go-to source of in-depth information on the internet.

Now, a group of Fordham librarians is spreading the word that Wiki is not only reliable, but continues to evolve into a high-quality source of information sharing.

Next week, the librarians will hold a Fordham-focused edit-a-thon on Wed., Nov. 2 from 12 noon to 3 p.m. The event will take place in Lab 047 at the William D. Walsh Family Library on the Rose Hill campus.

According to Wikipedia, an edit-a-thon “is an organized event where editors edit and improve a specific topic or type of content, typically including basic editing training for new editors.”

In celebration of Fordham’s Dodransbicentennial, the librarians have chosen University history as the topic. The intent is to beef up citations for existing Wikipedia articles, and to add content that may have been overlooked—such as the history of women and minorities at the University, said Shira Atkinson, who works at Quinn Library as the scholarly communications and distance learning librarian.

Another benefit of the event will be three hours of training on Wikipedia for professors, students, and staff. No prior experience is necessary. A representative from Wikimedia New York City will be on hand for the training.

Wikimedia “is a global movement whose mission is to bring free educational content to the world.” Through its various chapters, the group has held edit-a-thons on a variety of topics and for a variety of organizations. Last month an edit-a-thon focused on African-American history. In June there are edit-a-thons to build up LGBTQ history.

“At MoMA they held one that helped expose hidden resources at the museum,” said Elizabeth Karg, emerging technologies librarian at Fordham Libraries. “For a large and complex organization like Fordham, this very important. A couple of our schools don’t even have a Wikipedia article and several of our notable faculty are missing.”

Timothy Ryan Mendenhall, metadata librarian at Fordham Libraries, said that participants will start by setting up account and making their first edits. They’ll then move toward best practices and learn how to make entries that meet Wikipedia’s increasingly stringent standards.

“There’s a huge community out there that goes through the cue of articles and decides which ones are good,” said Karg. “Once it’s taken from there it’ll go on the web. After that, simple things like enriching citations make the article better.”

Mendenhall said that edits can be done by anyone with an account at any time. He added that faculty-directed class projects on the site can help build the Wiki community and improve the quality of the site.

The librarians said they understood there is a lingering reticence on the part of the research faculty to encourage students to use Wikipedia, but they insist that the site is a far cry from what it once was.

Mendenhall said that having an article on a topic, person, organization, or event in Wikipedia can greatly increase its prominence in Google search results,

“This make  Wikipedia a crucial gateway for the online representation of an organization like Fordham,” he said. “But beyond the University, it’s crucial that scholars leverage Wikipedia to improve global knowledge of underrepresented topics.”

“The fact is that articles are promoted by Google, and we all use it almost every single day,” said Karg.

“Students may not want to admit they use it, but they do,” added Atkinson. “If you show them how to better use it, they’ll understand what the information limits are.”