Japanese postcard donated to MFA, Boston by Leonard Lauder, circa 1877-1910

The Museum of Fine Arts Boston has named Benjamin Weiss as the first Leonard A. Lauder Curator of Visual Culture. The position falls under the department of prints, drawings and photographs.

Lauder endowed the position in connection with a gift of 100,000 postcards. One of Weiss’ first tasks will be to mount a 2012 exhibition featuring the Lauder postcard archive.

Weiss will oversee the museum’s postcards, posters, artist archives and illustrated books.

He is a man unafraid of harnessing large quantities of material.  Weiss was responsible for 5,000 wall labels and texts in the museum’s new American Wing, and was featured here in a Boston Globe story. His previous title was head of interpretation.

Weiss was previously curator of rare books at MIT’s Burndy Library.

According to a 2002 article in the New York Times, Lauder owned around 200,000 postcards that he began collecting as a child. He told the Times, “Postcard are the best history lesson.”