A rich and vibrant collection created and compiled by a Montana artist while working as an art teacher in Cincinnati in the 1920s.

Included are five notebooks filled with hundreds charming illustrations, paper collages, and woodblock prints, many of which demonstrate popular arts and crafts motifs of the era. There are also hand-drawn or hand-painted examples of artistic building blocks, such as color gradients and font styles, which Ballantyne probably used as a teaching tool. One notebook is devoted to costume design. Another, likely created when Ballantyne was a student herself, begins with about twenty five pages of notes on different art movements and theories. A highlight of this section are notes from "Talks on Taste" given by the artist Arthur W. Dow.

Madolyn Ballantyne Lange Love was born near Des Moines, Iowa, in 1902 but her parents resettled in the Gallatin Valley near Bozeman when she was an infant. Ballantyne wished to attend Berkeley but the depression kept her from that and she opted instead to get a teaching degree from what is now Montana State University in Bozeman.

While at school, her artistic endeavors were encouraged and she went on to take art courses at the Teachers College department at the University of Chicago. In 1923, she relocated to Cincinnati after being elected Supervisor of the Arts for city schools. She lived there for a year, amongst fellow artists, before returning to Montana and marrying her college beau Herbert Lange. Lange, a fire insurance inspector, extensively traveled the country for work and during these trips Lange visited a number of Native American reservations, accumulating an extensive collection of art and artifacts that she bequeathed to the Montana Historical Society after she passed away in 2000 at the age of 92.