Volume 8, Number 3, Sept. 1986, p.8

Collections at the University of Utah Marriott Library

The University of Utah Marriott Library holds a complete collection of Karl Bodmer's series of eighty-one prints of the American West. These aquatint illustrations, of which the library has 199 separate plates, were produced to accompany Prince Maximilian of Wied's Travels Into the Interior of North America, an account of his 1832-1834 scientific expedition to the Upper Missouri region. Relatively few of these prints are known to exist. The Marriott Library is one of only six libraries in the country holding the complete collection of the published accounts: three first-editions of the text in German, French, and English, and the accompanying atlantes of prints. These texts and prints represent the largest body of ethnological information available concerning the Plains Indians during this time in western history.

The Marriott Library Conservation Unit is currently cutting mats and constructing boxes to house the aquatints. In August photographic documentation will begin, so that the necessary conservation treatments for the collection can proceed.