Oh the treasures you can find hidden in Bobst

Marvin J. Taylor kind of resembles Hulk Hogan and is as dedicated to the history of punk as a six year old boy is about his lego collection. Taylor is the director of Fales Library and Special Collections at New York University. “I’m living proof that you could take a dissolute childhood turn it into a career,” he said.

Fales Library is a part of Bobst that I didn’t know existed and is located on the third floor. It contains over 200,000 volumes of the country’s rare book collection. It is composed of the Downtown Collection, the Food and Cookery Collection and the general Special Collections. The Downtown Collection is the largest collection of archival materials of the Downtown New York art scene anywhere and the only one in an academic library.

My Reporting Downtown class toured the Downtown Collection with Taylor last Thursday morning. Not that the collection was boring, but I didn’t appreciate it as much because I wasn't familiar with the names or cultural references.

One of the current exhibitions is a tribute to that church that NYU students walk past everyday on their way to class. The exhibit takes a look at Judson Memorial Church between 1954-77, a site for the first safe abortion clearing house, various social movements of the 1960s and home of the first gay support group.

Judson Memorial Church


Among what we saw was a recording of Yvonne Reiner's “The People’s Flag Show,” a 1964 modern dance performance in the Judson Memorial Church, with the dancers only wearing American flags over the front of their otherwise nude bodies. The press showed up and were outraged. “I think it’s absolutely brilliant,” Taylor said. “How liberating it must be to do this.”

Carolee Schneemann’s Meat Joy was another delight. It was like a sexualized synchronized swimming performance on stage. Undoubtably, very uncomfortable to watch with my class. It’s all about the body movements and the way the men are positioning the women. Partially clothed dancers writhed on stage. Women are sticking raw fish between their legs and men are putting raw chickens in their pants. “This totally changed dance and turned dance into performance,” said Taylor.

Moving the tour along, Taylor showed us what he considers “the best collection of punk rock anywhere.” I’m not into punk, but punk has certainly influenced fashion and many aspects of today’s culture. As Taylor put it, “[Punk] is so many things to so many other people.” The East Village is the birthplace of punk; what a better place than Greenwich Village to preserve these relics for artifactual value. "We believe the physicality of the object is just as important as the text in understanding the work," said Taylor. The primary sources are impressive, including the Richard Hell papers, the first copy of Punk Magazine from Jan. 1976 and a priceless interview tape with performer John Sex duping the interviewer.



Fales Library is open to all NYU students, faculty, and serious researchers. Fales is an example of a passion turned into something that all can enjoy, as well as an impressive documentation of the 70s, 80s and 90s in lower Manhattan. Tweet This