A Mania for Collecting—with a Purpose

Collectors can be maniacal about gathering one of everything, but to a museum curator that’s a good thing. Joan Hoffman has kept me posted on a number of finds in her dedicated search of work that Holling — and his wife, Lucille — completed.

Regarding the Indian dancer postcard series, Joan writes that “a contact from Colorado…in the past sent me copies of mural pictures from the Ranch Restaurant in Chicago owned by his grandfather. His father scraped some of these Holling gems off the walls (they were on canvas) when the restaurant closed in the early 1950s. He now has a number of them in his home.” She points out a further discovery. “In October [2010] his father passed away and he found in his father's home a postcard of the bar section of the restaurant. Both he and I previously had seen the restaurant section but not the bar part on postcard.”

Holling was a commercial artist in addition to being one of America’s foremost illustrators and children’s book authors. Holling did many commercial things, particularly in the 1920s and 30s. For example, Joan has purchased a 1932 Holling ad for Packard that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post. “I don’t expect ever to see all of them,” she says, “and am amazed when one is found on Internet.”