New Finding Aid | Gordon Gilkey portfolio of etchings

Special Collections and University Archives is pleased to announce a new finding aid published for a portfolio of etchings made by Gordon Gilkey titled “A Series of Etchings Showing the Construction Progress of the University of Oregon Library” (Coll 242). The finding aid is now available on Archives West.

This portfolio contains 15 line etchings detailing the progress of the 1936 construction of what is now the Knight Library at the University of Oregon. Gilkey completed this portfolio as his thesis for a Master of Fine Arts degree in etching at the University of Oregon’s School of Architecture and Allied Arts in 1936.

Gordon W. Gilkey (1912-2000) earned the first Masters in Fine Arts in Printmaking from the University of Oregon in 1936. Early in his career he was an official etcher during the New York World’s Fair, 1937-1939. Later he became an art professor and dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Oregon State University, positions he held for 30 years. During World War II he founded an international program for the protection of art and later helped recover art stolen by the Nazis. Gilkey was also instrumental in establishing the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as the Oregon Arts Commission.