Library News

Howard Bond, a renowned photographer and former student of Ansel Adams, will give a free lecture at Syracuse University. The lecture, “Photography as Art: Trends Since 1839,” is Thursday, September 10, at 5 p.m. in the Peter Graham Scholarly Commons on the first floor of Bird Library (222 Waverly Ave., Syracuse). The event kicks off the SU Library Associates 2009-10 lecture series. It coincides with an exhibition, entitled “Luminous Construction: The Photography of Howard Bond” in the Special Collections Research Center at Bird Library, running September 8, 2009 - January 14, 2010. Free parking for the lecture is available in Booth Garage, on the corner of Waverly and Comstock avenues. The event is followed by a reception, during which Bond will sign copies of his exhibition catalog. Lecture sponsors include the SU Humanities Center, as well as the SU Library and its Special Collections Research Center.

For more information, contact Pamela McLaughlin at (315) 443-9788 or pwmclaug@syr.edu.

Continue reading "Photographer Howard Bond kicks off 2009 Syracuse Symposium, SU Library Associates lecture series" »

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin at 9:00 AM | Permalink

The Pop and Circumstance: The Development of a Twentieth Century Style display features Library and private materials related to Pop Art, the style that largely defined American and British aesthetics during the 1960s. Books, quotations, and brief analyses of key works are included to highlight the major ideas associated with the style and to convey some of the impact of Pop Art on contemporary art. Pop and Circumstance is located on the 4th floor of Bird Library.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin at 1:18 PM | Permalink

For many years, the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University Library has collected examples of upstate New York printing from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. A selection of items from this collection is now on display in the 6th floor of Bird Library. The exhibition, entitled New York Imprints: Well beyond New York City, is open between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday (excepting holidays) until September 4, 2009.

In the late 18th century, when impenetrable forests covered much of upstate New York, communities formed near the Hudson and Mohawk rivers and, later, the canals. As these communities grew, they established schools, businesses, churches, and other institutions, all of which created a demand for local printing. The relatively simple and portable printing presses then available were transported along those same waterways; and through their products one can trace the cultural and technological development of upstate New York.

Newspapers were typically the first items brought to a new locale. In order to supplement their income from newspapers, however, printers undertook other printing, such as business and legal forms; blank books; and pamphlets of a religious, educational, or even a sensational nature. These were followed by full monographs on a wide range of topics. All of these forms are represented in the exhibit.

The exhibit features some of the earliest newspapers printed in the state; scarce pamphlets about sensational murders; a broadside concerning the development of salt works in Syracuse; textbooks on spelling, geography, elocution, and logic; the first edition of The Book of Mormon; and the second iteration of Frederick Douglass’s memoir, My Bondage and My Freedom. This 1855 book was printed in Auburn, New York, then the fourth largest printing location in the United States. Other upstate cities and towns represented include Catskill, Hudson, Albany, Troy, Lansingburgh, Balston Spa, Caldwell, Salem, Saratoga Springs, Schoharie, Cooperstown, Hartwick, Hamilton, Cazenovia, Manlius, Onondaga, Syracuse, Auburn, Geneva, Plattsburgh, Watertown, Potsdam, Canandaigua, Palmyra, Rochester, and Bath.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin at 1:43 PM | Permalink

Syracuse University Library's Biblio Gallery on the 4th floor of Bird Library is now featuring artwork by Maire Kennedy, a graduate student studying Fiber Arts and Material Studies in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. In her artwork, Maire creates and documents installations of highly exaggerated repetitions. The show will run through June 30, 2009.

For more information, contact Melinda Dermody at 443-5332 or mderm01@syr.edu. To learn more about the Biblio Gallery, visit http://library.syr.edu/information/finearts/bibliogallery.html.

Posted by Kathleen White at 11:56 AM | Permalink

Syracuse University Library, in partnership with Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts and the Syracuse City School District, is now presenting “An Alphabet in Your Own Backyard”, an exhibition of handmade accordion books.

The exhibition is currently located in the new display case on the first floor of Bird Library until the end of the February. It will then move to the sixth floor exhibition space where it will remain until the end of spring semester. The exhibit is free and open to the public.

The exhibit showcases books created by students from Henninger High School and Syracuse University. In the fall semester, VPA professor Gail Hoffman's freshman ‘Foundation 2-D Creative Processes' class worked with Henninger High School art teacher Lori Schneider's class of advanced design students. SU students were paired up with Henninger students and the teams used cameras to capture natural images resembling letters, such as a ladder resembling an “A”, to create the alphabet in images. Students used the images to create an accordion book.

“An Alphabet in Your Own Backyard” exhibition is the first stage of a two-year collaborative community project. Funded by SU's Enitiative with funds from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the project will connect Syracuse University with the broader Syracuse community, educate both Syracuse University and Syracuse City School District students about the book arts, and teach Syracuse University students entrepreneurial skills related to creating, marketing, and managing a new product. From this exhibition of handmade books, a jury of design faculty will select twenty six letters to create a final alphabet accordion book that will be professionally printed.

For more information on this exhibit, please contact Peter Verheyen, pdverhey@syr.edu or 443-9756

Posted by Kathleen White at 4:24 PM | Permalink

Syracuse University Library's Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), in conjunction with this year's Syracuse Symposium and its theme of "migration," will present a fall exhibition titled "Dawn of a New Age: The Immigrant Contribution to the Arts in America."
The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, runs Sept. 8-Jan. 20 in the SCRC gallery on the sixth floor of E.S. Bird Library. Gallery hours are Monday-Friday from 9 a.m.-5 p.m., except holidays. For more information, call (315) 443-2697.

"Dawn of a New Age" tells the story of five artists who immigrated to the United States during the first half of the 20th century: Adolph Bolm, a Russian dancer and choreographer who performed with the Mariinsky Ballet and Ballets Russes; William Lescaze, a Swiss architect who was one of the pioneers of modernism; Louis Lozowick, a Russian printmaker known for his Art Deco and Precision lithographs; Miklós Rózsa, a Hungarian composer of more than 100 film scores, including "Ben Hur"; and John Vassos, a Greek illustrator and industrial designer. The exhibition draws from the rich holdings of SCRC and showcases more than 50 of the artists' personal papers, manuscripts, photos and artifacts.

"In keeping with the theme of 'migration,' the exhibition traces each person's humble beginnings and the process by which he immigrated to the United States and later shaped modern culture," says co-curator Nicolette A. Dobrowolski. "These artists, individually and collectively, created a dynamic new vision for America."

With more than 100,000 printed works and 2,000 manuscript and archival collections, SCRC is home to some of SU's most valued treasures, including early printed editions of Gutenberg, Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton, as well as the library of 19th-century German historian Leopold Von Ranke. Twentieth-century holdings are particularly strong and include the personal papers and manuscripts of such luminaries as artist Grace Hartigan, inspirational preacher Norman Vincent Peale, author Joyce Carol Oates, photojournalist Margaret Bourke White and industrial designer Walter Dorwin Teague, as well as the records of organizations including avant-garde publisher Grove Press. SCRC regularly hosts exhibitions, lectures and classes, and offers fellowships and internships in library instruction and conservation. More information is available at http://scrc.syr.edu.

Syracuse Symposium is a semester-long intellectual and artistic festival about interdisciplinary thinking, imagining and creating, presented by The College of Arts and Sciences for the Syracuse community. More information on lectures, performances, exhibits and other special events is available at http://syracusesymposium.org.

Posted by Kathleen White at 8:36 AM | Permalink

A fascinating collection of memorabilia associated with presidential campaigns from 1824 to 1972 is now on display on the 6th floor of E.S. Bird Library. Drawn from the artifactual collections of Syracuse University Library’s Special Collections Research Center, the exhibition of buttons, banners, bumper stickers, brochures, apparel, and other items provides a historical overview of the images and slogans candidates have used to position and advertise themselves in their quest for the White House. The exhibit is open to the public from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday - Friday through January 20, 2009.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin at 1:38 PM | Permalink

Arts & Humanities Services presents Inner Selves, a collaborative display created by participants in Enable (an individualized service center for people with disabilities) and Writing 205 students from Syracuse University. In this display, the students help articulate the thoughts and emotions of the Enable participants, who describe their lives and interests as they theatrically transform into a role model of their choosing. Photographs of the participants in character accompany text co-authored by the participants and the students. The display is located in the Biblio Gallery on the 4th floor of Bird Library, and will remain up until July 11th.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin at 2:24 PM | Permalink

The Syracuse University Library and Renée Crown University Honors Program are presenting Invasion! The Culture of Fear in America, a student-curated exhibition of books, manuscripts and art from the Special Collections Research Center. A gallery reception will be held on Tuesday, April 29, at 5 p.m. on the sixth floor of E.S. Bird Library. The exhibition runs through Sept. 5. It is free and open to the public.

During the Spring 2008 semester, students from the Renée Crown University Honors Program taking the course American Fear, taught by Sean Quimby, director of the Special Collections Research Center, explored the history of fear in American life by immersing themselves in the Library’s primary resource collections.

The students worked diligently to produce an exhibition that accurately illustrates the concept of fear in the United States. They felt that the theme of “invasion” underlies many of our historical anxieties relating to race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and a host of other issues. The idea that different people, aliens or even epidemics, like the AIDS virus during the 1980s, might infiltrate society and bring about sweeping change has been cause for extreme fear in the American experience. Fundamentally, the exhibition raises questions of identity, and the class hopes that visitors will “understand their differences and be less discriminating in their actions.”

Among the exhibited works that illuminate the roots of our culture of fear are a 1651 edition of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, Cotton Mather’s 1693 account of the Salem Witch trials, the literature of the Red Scare, a variety of pulp science fiction magazines and Werner Pfeiffer’s sculptural tribute to the victims of 9/11, Out of the Sky.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin at 9:14 AM | Permalink

The Syracuse University Library and Renée Crown University Honors Program are pleased to present Invasion! The Culture of Fear in America, a student-curated exhibition of books, manuscripts, and art from the Special Collections Research Center. A gallery reception will be held on Tuesday, April 29 at 5 p.m. on the 6th floor of E.S. Bird Library. The exhibition runs through September 5, 2008. It is free and open to the public.

During the Spring 2008 semester, students from the Renée Crown University Honors Program taking the course “American Fear” taught by Sean Quimby, Director of the Special Collections Research Center, explored the history of fear in American life by immersing themselves in the library's primary resource collections.

The students worked diligently to produce an exhibition that accurately illustrates the concept of fear in the United States. They felt that the theme of “invasion” underlies many of our historical anxieties relating to race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and a host of other issues. The idea that different people, aliens, or even epidemics, like the AIDS virus during the 1980s, might infiltrate society and bring about sweeping change has been cause for extreme fear in the American experience. Fundamentally, the exhibition raises questions of identity, and the class hopes that visitors will “understand their differences and be less discriminating in their actions.”

Among the exhibited works that illuminate the roots of our culture of fear are: a 1651 edition of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, Cotton Mather's 1693 account of the Salem Witch trials, the literature of the Red Scare, a variety of pulp science fiction magazines, and Werner Pfeiffer's sculptural tribute to the victims of 9/11 Out of the Sky.

Posted by Kathleen White at 11:47 AM | Permalink

Syracuse University Library’s Biblio Gallery on the 4th floor of Bird Library is now featuring artwork by Joshua Kaplan, a painting major in the School of Art and Design. The show will run through November 2, 2007.

The Biblio Gallery web site is located at http://library.syr.edu/information/finearts/SULibraryArtExhibits.html.
For more information, contact Melinda Dermody, head of Arts and Humanities Services at 443-5332 or via email at mderm01@syr.edu.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin at 11:14 AM | Permalink

"On the Spot" with Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist Marguerite Higgins, 1920-1966. The exhibition features correspondence, writings, photographs, and other memorabilia from the Marguerite Higgins Papers housed in the Special Collections Research Center.

The exhibition is on display from April 6 through August 13, 2004, Monday - Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the 6th floor gallery of E.S. Bird Library.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Peter D. Verheyen
Preservation & Access Librarian / Conservation Librarian
Special Collections Research Center
pdverhey@syr.edu

Posted by at 1:19 PM | Permalink