The Oxford English Dictionary defines facsimile as: "an exact copy or likeness; an exact counterpart or representation1." The current "Collection in Focus" includes a selection of manuscript facsimiles, including books of hours, from the Ingalls Library Rare Book Collection. The original of each item featured is unique because each was produced before the use of movable type, the invention of the printing press circa 1439 by Johannes Gutenberg (c.1398-1468)2 and the subsequent mass production of printed books.

Though one can trace sampler history back to Mamluk Egypt, most sampler collections today represent works from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Amateur needle workers stitched linen with silk and wool, using the sampler, or exampler, as a record of embroidered curriculum. Early European examples of samplers record stitches (spot samplers) and borders containing letters and patterns (band samplers).

Born Ando Tokutaro in 1797 near Edo, Utagawa Hiroshige is more commonly known as Ando Hiroshige, a combination of his surname and his art name Ichiyusai Hiroshige. Despite inheriting his father's hereditary retainer of shogun and the position of fire warden at a young age, Hiroshige entered the studio of painter Ichiyusai Toyohiro where he attained an artist license and name within several years. It is Toyohiro who bestowed the artist name of Utagawa on Hiroshige, after himself. Later, Hiroshige took the name Ichiyusai in deference to his teacher.

"Mr. Goudy did more to rescue typography from standardized ugliness than any other man since William Morris, whose spiritual descendant he was"—so stated Goudy's obituary in the New York Times on May 12, 1947.

Photographer Walker Evans is well known for his stark portraits of the American Great Depression, which reflect a part of our cultural memory. In a career that spanned over 60 years until his death in 1975, Evans was a prolific artist and, like many artists, a collector. Drawn to the mundane and ordinary, Evans collected driftwood, tin-can pull-tabs, and wood and metal signs. He also collected printed ephemera—paper items intended to be discarded after use. He was a particularly obsessive collector of picture postcards, amassing a collection of over 9,000 during his lifetime.

The museum is in the process of reevaluating the attributions of its paintings associated with Rembrandt. Responsibility for reattribution ultimately falls to the community of Rembrandt experts and, for the museum's own works, to the curator responsible for the collection.  However, we want to cast the widest possible net for opinions on the paintings, and so but we seek your input in this process as well.  Through a mobile app or the museum web site, you can indicate your attribution and, if you wish, comments on your reasoning.

Hot Dream, a new acquisition in the Ingalls Library, is a collection of 52 journals—one for every week of the year—by Jim Dine. Dine, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, is a prolific and accomplished artist who works in a wide range of media. In Hot Dream, Dine, who began his career in the 1950s, revisits many of the themes that have held great meaning for him over the years.

On March 24, 1970, at around 12:45 a.m., a powerful bomb was detonated on the steps of the Cleveland Museum of Art, toppling from its base Auguste Rodin's 900-pound work of art, The Thinker. The destruction was extensive: the explosion destroyed the base of the statue and the lower portion of the figure's legs, contorting and expanding several areas of the sculpture. Ultimately, no one was charged in the crime, but many suspected Weatherman, an American underground radical organization.