Art & Photographs

The Art & Photographs Collection, located at HMML, includes prints, art, and archaeological objects dating from the ancient world through the 20th century, and photographs and slides from the late 20th century. Most of the collection was the gift of liturgical artist Frank Kacmarcik, OblOSB (1920-2004), who spent a lifetime gathering materials into an “Arca Artium” or “Ark of the Arts” to inspire his work. Areas of focus include the graphic arts, liturgical art, monasticism in art, and printing, totaling more than 6,000 original woodcuts, engravings, etchings, and lithographs. The photograph collection includes the Robert A. Hadley Slide Collection of archaeological sites across the Middle East, the Columba Stewart Photographs collection of monastic sites, and important American photography from Edward Weston (1886-1958), a master of 20th-century photography.

Highlights

• Etchings by the important Italian printmaker Giovanni Battista Piranesi, like this View of St. Peter's Square, from the series Vedute di Roma (AAP 5185)
• Prints focused on monasticism, such as the Hermit print series, by Dutch printmaker Marten de Vos, produced between 1585 and 1600, depicting male and female religious recluses
• Bronze Age pottery from the Bāb edh-Dhrā site in Jordan’s Dead Sea Plain, are the earliest items and come from the Alberic Culhane OSB Collection
• 19th-century Japanese woodblock prints
• Modern prints, like George Rouault’s 1920s masterpiece series Miserere et Guerre (AAP2343) and Mexican modernist Rufino Tamayo’s print, Woman at the Window, from the Mujeres suite (AAP 0129)
• The Edmund Gronkiewicz collection of Russian icons, dating from mostly from the 18th century to 19th century