Mary Louise Reynolds (1891-1950) led a fascinating life at the center of the Surrealist circle of artists, numbering as her friends Max Ernst, Man Ray, Paul Éluard, André Breton, Jean Cocteau, and Salvador Dalí. Reynolds and Surrealist Marcel Duchamp were partners in a long term relationship thought by their friends to be far happier than most marriages. She was a book artist and served in the...

The Museum at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute may currently be closed for renovation (until July 4, 2014), but in the meantime digital collections from the Library at the Clark are still available online. The Library's special collections are diverse and include formats such as artists' books, photographs, clippings, digitized books, archival finding aids, and ephemera. One important...

A companion site to an exhibit now on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (last mentioned in the November 6, 2001 Scout Report), The Russian Avant-Garde Book: 1910-1934 affords visitors an opportunity to explore a lost world of artists and intellectuals who wanted to help change the world by making it see the sense in communism and socialism. Broken into three parts, provocatively...

How can you turn the pages at the Art Institute of Chicago if you aren't there in person? The gentle digital experience offered on this site is a fine surrogate if you can't make it to the Windy City. Currently, there are over 35 items here that are organized into four categories: Sketchbooks, Manuscripts and Paintings, Printed Items, and By Date. One place to start is with the work of James...