Collections : [Rare Book & Manuscript Library]

Collection contains watercolor renderings, sketches, technical drawings (ground plans, elevations and details), photographs, glass plate and acetate negatives, scrapbooks, set models and some related papers covering Urban's career in Vienna and New York as an architect, set designer, decorator and illustrator. There is a thorough representation of his New York career including his set designs for Florenz Ziegfeld (1915-1932) and the Metropolitan Opera (1917-1933). The collection also contains information on Urban's work for William Randolph Hearst as art director for Cosmopolitan Studios, his exhibitions including his 1921 Wiener Werkstätte store, and his many architectural projects. Biographical information and research gathered by Richard Cole and Randolph Carter including contributions from his daughter,Gretl Urban, and biographical notes and some letters from his widow, Mary Urban, are also present.

The collection consists of correspondence, manuscripts, and an enormous number of notecards (that were collected over a twenty-year period for a proposed "Slovar' russkikh khudozhnikov") and several dozen notebooks containing entries to which the cards refer. Among the correspondents is Eugène Fabergé, whose letters contain information about the Fabergé dynasty of jewelers. Sakharov's manuscripts include essays on Ivan Bilibin, M. V. Rudaltsov, Mariia Bashkirtseva, Nikolai Globa and V. E. Borisov-Musatov. The cards containing information on artists are arranged alphabetically by artist and contain references to specific notebook entries. There are also bibliographic cards containing citations of articles on art in Russian and other languages. These are arranged by author. The notebooks are largely devoted to a particular artist or genre; others are designated by color and number, letter, number or not titled at all. There are also two sets of large notebooks which seem to belong to another series. There are a few photographs of artists (notably a 1939 photograph of Globa) and photographic reproductions of works by Bakst and Lukin among others. The collection contains approximately 11 exhibition catalogues dating from 1915 to 1940 and primarily relating to the exhibitions of Russian emigre artists in Paris. There are also 4 issues of "Illiustrirovannaia Rossiia" and some clippings dealing with Russian emigre artists.