Samuel Zagat Drawings and Photographs
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Abstract
Samuel Zagat was a Lithuanian-Jewish artist best known for his work as a cartoonist, first for his popular comic strip Gimpel Beinish" and later for his political cartoons. This collection documents Zagat's career as a cartoonist and more generally illustrates the efforts of an American cartoonist working in Yiddish. Materials include photographs, original drawings, negatives, contact prints, and newspaper clippings. Major subjects include labor relations, anti-Semitism, Cold War diplomacy, Israel and the Middle East, and humorous aspects of daily Jewish life.
Biographical / Historical
Samuel Zagat (1890-1964), a Lithuanian-Jewish artist and cartoonist who emigrated to New York City as a child. Zagat is best known for his comic strip "Gimpl Beinish", published in the Yiddish-language newspaper "Warheit" from 1912 to 1919, and later for his political cartoons published in the "Jewish Daily Forward" from 1919 until his death in 1964. "The Forward", where Zagat also headed the art department and supervised the newspaper's weekly rotogravure feature, also published his drawings of street life, court sessions, and theater. His cartoons and drawings also appeared in numerous other publications, including the "New Masses", "Jewish Morning Journal", and "The Hat Worker", a publication of the Hat, Cap, and Millinery Workers Union.
Arrangement
This collection is arranged into four series:
Missing Title
- Original Drawing Portfolios
- Cartoons by Publication
- Cartoons by Year
- Lower East Side Photographs
Scope and Contents
This collection documents Samuel Zagat's career as a cartoonist and more generally illustrates the efforts of an American cartoonist working in Yiddish. The collection contains photographs, original drawings, negatives (presumably taken from the screen of a microfilm reader), contact prints of negatives, newspaper clippings, and photocopies of Zagat's cartoons from the 1910s through the 1960s. The majority of the materials are from the 1940s and 1950s. Major subjects include labor relations, anti-Semitism, Cold War diplomacy, Israel and the Middle East, and humorous aspects of daily Jewish life. A substantial portion of Zagat's cartoons contain Yiddish captions; the majority of materials in this collection have supplied English translations.
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Donors
Conditions Governing Access
Materials are open without restrictions.
Conditions Governing Use
Copyright (or related rights to publicity and privacy) for materials in this collection, created by Samuel Zagat, was not transferred to New York University. Permission to use materials must be secured from the copyright holder.
Preferred Citation
Identification of item, date; Collection name; Collection number; box number; folder number; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.
Immediate Source of Acquisition Note
The collection was donated by Ida R. Zagat in 1974. The accession numbers associated with this gift are 1974.008, 1974.009, and 1974.010.
Existence and Location of Copies
Reference photocopies of the materials in portfolios 1-7 and 9-10 of the Original Drawing Portfolios are available. These may aid researchers in browsing the collection. The copies are in binders located in boxes 14-15 of the collection.
About this Guide
Processing Information Note
Original order was maintained for the arrangement of Zagat's portfolios; however, there was no discernible system of arrangement for the remaining materials. In this arrangement, physical arrangement does not necessarily follow intellectual arrangement due to the variety of formats and their unique housing needs. Materials were placed in new acid-free folders and boxes. Photographs were removed from their original housing in albums. Folder titles and dates have been applied by the archivist. At one point the materials had been divided into the Samuel Zagat Cartoons (GRAPHICS 012) and the Samuel Zagat Photographs (PHOTOS 037); these were combined back into one collection based on the materials' content and the nature of the original donation.
