Her Cambridge imagery established her as a community icon

On September 15, 1978 — when The Harvard Gazette still published a physical edition — it was circulated as usual around the campus and to subscribers’ mailboxes nationwide. However, this edition had a notable distinction. For the first time, the cover featured an illustration.

The steps of Widener Library are instantly identifiable in the artwork, and the exuberant style would have resonated well with local readers at the time. This artistic flair belonged to Barbara Westman, whose close connections to Harvard allowed her to illustrate four books about Boston and Cambridge during the 1960s and ’70s. In 1977, she took on the role of the Gazette’s first staff artist, producing entire pages for holidays and celebrations, half pages for philanthropic campaigns and campus announcements, alongside numerous spot illustrations portraying Harvard Yard and Harvard Square. After relocating to New York in 1980, she began contributing to The New Yorker, ultimately creating 17 covers and over 100 spot drawings across a 13-year tenure with the magazine.

“Barbara was the sort of individual who attracted people,” reflected Fritz Westman regarding his aunt, who passed away last year at the age of 95. He fondly remembers her as a fashionable local icon donned in a raccoon coat and school hat, speeding around in a small red Volkswagen. “She wasn’t your typical Bostonian. She possessed a unique way of being herself, akin to exclamation marks in oversized bubble letters. It was evident there was something about her that stood out and was simply enjoyable.”

Recently, Westman’s illustrations for the Gazette were rediscovered as part of an ongoing initiative to digitize the publication’s past physical editions. A selection of her Gazette works is being made available online for the initial time.

Prior to her engagement with the Gazette, Westman worked at Harvard from 1967 to 1977 as an archaeological draftsman for the Peabody Museum. Nevertheless, her association with Harvard predates this employment, as noted by her nephew.

Born in 1929 in Boston to Frederick W. Westman, an architect, and Eleanor Proctor Furminger, a concert pianist, buildings designed by her father’s firm, Whelan & Westman, can be discovered throughout Boston and Cambridge — including within Harvard Yard. The firm was contracted for portions of Dunster House and Lowell House, both constructed in 1930. According to her nephew, she began drawing by the age of 2, and her parents’ artistic influences were fundamental to her development as an artist, alongside her admiration for comic strips like “Little Orphan Annie,” “Joe Palooka,” and “Moon Mullins.” After attending Goucher College in Maryland and completing her postgraduate art education in Munich, Westman returned to Boston in 1957 to study at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, where she graduated at the top of her class.

Famous landmarks like City Hall Plaza, Commonwealth Avenue, and the Longfellow Bridge fill the pages of Westman’s inaugural book, “The Bean and the Scene: Drawings of Boston,” released in 1969. Her late husband, philosopher and art critic Arthur Danto, reminisced about the local influence of her artwork in an essay introducing one of her exhibitions: “Posters, adapted from the books, were showcased in shop windows throughout Cambridge and Boston, and nearly everyone possessed copies of the volumes.” Between 1970 and 1991, Westman published six additional illustrated books, three of which highlighted Greater Boston.

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Westman (along with her pet parakeet) resided in a flat close to Harvard Square during her tenure at the University. Her nephew Fritz Westman often visited as a child, roaming the Square and exploring shops like Design Research on Brattle Street, highlighting what fascinated them the most. When Westman visited her nephew’s family in Rockport, Massachusetts, she would invite him to “revise” her books. Fritz noted it was an opportunity to spend time with him — he was about 10 years old then — and a means to observe how a child responded to her creations. “It felt like having a companion of my age. I admired her; it felt like strolling with a cartoon figure.”

Harvard significantly features in Westman’s works. A 1970 Harvard Crimson critique of “The Beard and the Braid: Drawings of Cambridge” remarks, “When Barbara Westman states ‘Cambridge’ she is essentially alluding to Harvard,” further stating, “Miss Westman may reside in Cambridge, but she observes it through the lens of a traveler.” The reviewer was onto something: In a correspondence to a friend after spending four years in Europe, Westman expressed, “Now I view America as a traveler perceives America. I notice EVERYTHING!”

Many regarded Westman’s perspective on the world as one of the most alluring facets of her artistry. Danto once stated: “Barbara had crafted a visual myth of Boston. The realm she provided was uniquely hers. Truthfully, her illustrations were her thoughts, manifested externally.”

In 1980, Westman relocated to New York City to marry Danto. Despite the shift in surroundings, her methodology remained constant. While residing in Europe, Barbara sketched from lofty rooftops. In Boston, her nephew recalls her seated in a snowdrift in the Beacon Hill area, diligently capturing every brick of a structure. And in New York, she would observe people on the bus or during walks along Broadway. The metropolis served as her creative workspace. Once she translated her observations into sketches and notes, Westman mentioned in a letter to a friend, it was time to return home to her “second studio, a space for tranquility and reflection.”

In an artist’s declaration from the early 2000s, Westman stated, “I prefer to set down the image immediately — very straightforwardly — and not alter it.” For this reason, she favored paper, ink, and acrylic over canvas.

“Many individuals in the contemporary art sphere did not regard her creations as valid since they were predominantly on paper,” remarked Fritz Westman, an artist himself. Yet, “She was not someone who sought to validate herself to the art community. When you’re creating work that you cherish, you genuinely don’t concern yourself with what others are intrigued by. You just pursue your own path.”

Westman’s artwork is featured in both public and private collections across the U.S. and internationally, including the Harvard Art Museum; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Boston Athenaeum; Kjarvalsstaðir in Reykjavik, Iceland; and the Galerie Mantoux-Gignac in Paris. However, her impact endures not only through exhibitions and the memories of those close to her — but also on the very streetscapes she immortalized.

In the Leavitt & Peirce tobacco shop on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, a dusty copy of “The Beard and the Braid” rests on a shelf behind the register, opened to a page featuring an illustration of their storefront. And in Hillside Cleaners on nearby Brattle, an artwork of Brattle Street that Westman gifted to the original owner of the store in the late ’60s is showcased framed above the front desk. Maureen German, a long-serving worker at the cleaners, highlights a street sign in the illustration that states “NO NOT HERE.”

“Finding parking in Harvard Square was quite a hassle,” German remarked. “In all her artworks, when you observe them, there’s always something humorous woven in. She had quite the funny bone.”

Westman instilled that artistic instinct, ambition, and humor in her nephew. His formative years surrounded by creatives in Rockport, along with the encouragement of his aunt and uncle later in life, propelled him to shift from his undergraduate business studies to art school. Since the ’80s, he has been a sculptor and collaborator on art restorations. Now, he aspires to pass on to family and friends what his aunt imparted to him, beginning at his home in Pennsylvania.

“My home represents a small self-portrait. There are works by Barbara, my creations, and items belonging to my grandfather,” he stated, “but, most importantly, it’s evolving into ‘a cousin’ to Barbara’s apartment in New York City” — a haven for laughter, creativity, and the everyday sights and sounds that inspired her.

“In our extremely hectic lifestyles,” Barbara wrote in “The Beard and the Braid,” “we seldom pause to admire or marvel at truly beautiful things. Artists do. Children do. I suppose it’s upon artists, photographers, and children to assist busy individuals in perceiving what surrounds them.”

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