Nitze playing card collection?

[variantventures]

Does anyone know anything about this collection?  I found a couple of references to this collection being displayed, on loan, at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1948.  Mrs. Nitze donated about 14 drawings/prints to the Institute in 1947 but I can't find any record of her donating the cards to them.  The collection was said to span the 15th to 19th centuries and included examples from Europe, Asia, and North America.

[Don Boyer]

If you have any sources of information you can provide as a starting point, it would help.  This topic is the first hit in a Google search, with the next two hits being about Freidrich Nietzsche!

[variantventures]

If you have any sources of information you can provide as a starting point, it would help.  This topic is the first hit in a Google search, with the next two hits being about Freidrich Nietzsche!

  Here are the entire contents of my search file so far:

Displayed, on loan, at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1948
Owned by Anina H. Nitze
http://texts.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb3r29n8f4&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=div00018&toc.depth=1&toc.id=

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00119253.1949.10742804?journalCode=vzde20#.VwVHk_krLcs

I checked the holdings of the Art Institute of Chicago and found they had several prints and drawings donated by her.  None of their holdings include any playing cards.  I haven't done a usual culprits (British Museum, Beineke Library, Sotheby's, and etc...) search yet as I've been somewhat involved in my search for the Krech cards.

[Don Boyer]

If you have any sources of information you can provide as a starting point, it would help.  This topic is the first hit in a Google search, with the next two hits being about Freidrich Nietzsche!

  Here are the entire contents of my search file so far:

Displayed, on loan, at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1948
Owned by Anina H. Nitze
http://texts.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb3r29n8f4&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=div00018&toc.depth=1&toc.id=

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00119253.1949.10742804?journalCode=vzde20#.VwVHk_krLcs

I checked the holdings of the Art Institute of Chicago and found they had several prints and drawings donated by her.  None of their holdings include any playing cards.  I haven't done a usual culprits (British Museum, Beineke Library, Sotheby's, and etc...) search yet as I've been somewhat involved in my search for the Krech cards.

I would suggest trying to contact the family.  A search at Ancestry.com might help there, though there would likely be a fee for it.  Another possibility is that the colleges he's worked for might have information on it - more of a long-shot, but worth trying if the "usual culprits" don't pan out.  An inquiry with someone working in the Art Institute's archives would be more fruitful than an online search - there's a fair chance that some of the archive's items aren't yet catalogued online or were overlooked or omitted when it was done.