Welcome to MSU's Janet A. Ginsburg Chicago Tribune Collection (1880s to 1940s) composed of beautiful visual journalism art, in many forms, that was used to communicate news of the day.

These scanned images illustrate that the historic Chicago Tribune was an innovator in color inks and printing, but also a pioneer in bringing colorful art in the form of illustrations, photographs, cartoons and advertisements to the average person in an everyday medium. Famous artists in this collection are Frederic Remington, Grant Wood, Mary Cassatt, John McCutcheon, Carey Orr and others.

In 2004, a friend of MSU’s College of Communication Arts and Sciences, Janet Ginsburg brought the collection of more than 15,000 images on 5,500 pages to The College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University.

Thanks to a grant from the Robert McCormick Foundation to MSU's School of Journalism, the collection's original print artifacts have been carefully repaired, preserved and housed in the Michigan State University Library's Special Collections, and its images scanned and put into this website with a searchable database, in the spirit of bringing history about the color process and art in newspapers to the public.

Copyright Information

These materials are either in the public domain, according to U.S. copyright law, or permission has been obtained from rights owners. The digital version and supplementary materials are available for all educational uses worldwide.

 

Although the MSU Libraries strive to collect, acquire and develop accessible digital/electronic collections, unfortunately, not all are. The MSU Libraries are able to provide remediated, accessible versions of digital/electronic library documents to library users. Please be in touch to discuss your specific request by contacting us at libraryremediation@lib.msu.edu. For more information about the service, please visit the MSU Libraries Remediation page.