J.M. Edelstein; Getty Museum Bibliophile

J.M. “Mel” Edelstein, 71, a Getty Museum bibliophile who helped build a collection of Italian Renaissance and Baroque festival books. Edelstein became a senior bibliographer and resource coordinator for the Getty’s Center for the History of Art and the Humanities in 1986. He returned to the East Coast in 1994 but remained a Getty consultant until his death. Born in Baltimore, Edelstein earned a bachelor’s in history from Johns Hopkins and a master’s in library science from the University of Michigan. After serving in the Navy in Italy during World War II, he studied Italian history and literature on a Fulbright fellowship at the University of Florence. Before his work at the Getty, Edelstein taught history, literature and library courses at Johns Hopkins, UCLA, the Catholic University of America and Brown University. He was a scholar of American poet Wallace Stevens and published several works about him and about book collection. On June 16 in Bristol, R.I.