Her Cambridge iconography made her a local icon - Harvard Gazette

"It was that of Barbara Westman, an artist with close ties to Harvard who, throughout the 1960s and '70s, had illustrated four books about Boston and Cambridge. She became the first staff artist for the Gazette in 1977, illustrating full pages for holidays and anniversaries, half pages for charity drives and campus notices, and dozens of spot drawings depicting Harvard Yard and Harvard Square. After moving to the Big Apple in 1980"

""Barbara was the kind of person people gravitated to," said Fritz Westman about his aunt, who died last year at age 95. He recalls her as a stylish local celebrity in a raccoon coat and school hat zooming around in a little red Volkswagen. "She was not the conservative Bostonian. She had a method for being herself, like exclamation marks in large bubble letters. You could tell there was something about her that was just different and fun.""

"On Sept. 15, 1978 - back when The Harvard Gazette still had a print edition - it was distributed as usual around campus and to the mailboxes of subscribers across the country. But something about this issue was different. In a first, the front page was illustrated. Widener Library's steps are immediately recognizable in the illustration, but to local readers at the time the exuberant style of the drawing would have been just as familiar."

On Sept. 15, 1978 The Harvard Gazette front page was illustrated for the first time, showing Widener Library's steps in an exuberant style. Barbara Westman became the Gazette's first staff artist in 1977 and produced holiday and anniversary pages, half-page notices, and dozens of spot drawings of Harvard Yard and Harvard Square. She worked at Harvard from 1967 to 1977 as an archaeological draftsman at the Peabody Museum and illustrated four books about Boston and Cambridge. Westman moved to New York in 1980 and drew 17 covers and more than 100 spot illustrations for The New Yorker. Her Gazette drawings were recently rediscovered during a digitization project.

Read at Harvard Gazette