Home Medical Historical Library It's in the Family: Three Libraries, Three Donors

It's in the Family: Three Libraries, Three Donors

William HelfandWilliam Helfand

Three donors, all in the same family, have made a lasting impact at the Yale Library —William Helfand, Jessica Helfand ’82, ’89 MFA, and William Drenttel, Senior Faculty Fellow and Social Enterprise Fellow at the Yale School of Management. William Helfand has been a collector of prints since the 1950s, and medical ephemera since 1969. In 1983, Helfand exhibited materials related to the “American Medical Show” in the rotunda of the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library. He has given multiple gifts of posters, prints, books, and patent medicine advertising in the past fifteen years, and he continues to support the library through scholarship, helping to identify medical bookplates in the collection.

Helfand’s daughter, Jessica, earned her BA and MFA at Yale and has been a senior critic in graphic design at the School of Art. After publishing the award-winning Reinventing the Wheel in 2002, she gave her core collection of volvelles to the Arts Library. Her popular Scrapbooks: An American History (2008) led to a press tour, after which she donated her collection of scrapbooks and dexterity puzzles to the Beinecke. The most recent iteration of her freshman seminar focused on the color blue, which dovetailed with the Beinecke exhibition of the same name.

William Drenttel, Jessica’s husband, was a well-respected graphic designer, who donated collections in partnership with Jessica until his passing in December 2013. Several years ago they created the Winterhouse Design and Visual Culture Collection, with regular donations of contemporary books on design in a very wide sense. Over a thousand titles have been given to the library so far, including the archives for Winterhouse, Jessica and William’s design agency. Drenttel also donated to the Medical Historical Library, including his periodic table collection (he was interested in the visual depiction of the periodic table in a variety of formats).

Through donors like the Helfand/Drenttel family, the Yale University Library is able to enrich its collection in multiple areas, presenting new opportunities for teaching and scholarship.