The @baltimoreprints Twit­ter feed alerted us this after­noon to news that many music nerds, graphic design heads, and print­mak­ers have been wait­ing and hop­ing to hear:

BREAKING NEWS: MICA will be pur­chas­ing the Bal­ti­more Globe Poster col­lec­tion. Preser­va­tion through pro­duc­tion. So very excit­ing. Please RT.

Globe Poster, known far beyond Bal­ti­more for its let­ter­press show posters with their vibrant inks and eye-grabbing design, had shut down in sum­mer 2010. As recently reported in City Paper, the Cicero fam­ily, which has owned and run Globe for nearly 40 years, had been hop­ing to keep Globe’s unri­valed col­lec­tion of let­ter­press type, print-block “cuts,” vin­tage pho­tographs, and posters together to be used and val­ued as a unique whole rather than auc­tion it off piece­meal to col­lec­tors. MICA was rumored to be among the orga­ni­za­tions inter­ested in pur­chas­ing all or part of the company’s assets.

MICA Provost Ray Allen was tem­porar­ily unavail­able for com­ment but A MICA spokesper­son con­firms that the acqui­si­tion is going for­ward, and Mary Mash­burn, who has worked to find a buyer for Globe as a mem­ber of the ad hoc orga­ni­za­tion Friends of Globe, con­firms the exis­tence of a deal.

“We got news today that MICA is going to take sub­stan­tial part of the Globe col­lec­tion,” Mash­burn says by phone. “The agree­ment isn’t inked, so the details will be have to be worked out ‚” she adds,  but a “sig­nif­i­cant rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the col­lec­tion” will relo­cate to MICA. Mash­burn, who runs Hampden-based Type­cast Press and teaches let­ter­press classes as an adjunct fac­ulty mem­ber at MICA, says that at least one MICA stu­dent who heard about the pur­chase was “lit­er­ally cry­ing with joy.”

Watch this space for details as they become available.

Tags: Globe Poster Company, letterpress, MICA