Library News

Photos by VPA graduate student Jay Muhlin will be on display in the Biblio Gallery on the 4th floor of Bird Library from November 2nd into January.

The harshness of winter is best survived with comfort and humor. Jay Muhlin's photographs of the outside world are slow, chilly, and bewildering, but they show how inside, we dwell intimately in warmth and small festivities. The images on display are selected from a current body of work that will be made into a book entitled Guilty Pleasures.

Images of books are a motif in Muhlin's Guilty Pleasures, and this exhibit showcases a survey of texts that talk to winter and touch on themes within the photographs.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin on November 2, 2011 | Permalink

Syracuse University Library's fall exhibition, "Just One Word: Plastics" is on display in the Special Collections Research Center Gallery, Sixth floor, Bird Library from September 12, 2011 to January 20, 2012.

For more than a century, plastics have transformed our lives - from bathroom to battlefield; from supermarket to spacecraft. Begun as a 19th-century replacement material for billiard balls and piano keys, plastics spurred 20th century developments in industry, transportation, medicine, entertainment, and other aspects of contemporary life. The original objects of Just One Word: Plastics represent a material history of the modern world.

This exhibition features a representative sample of the Plastics Collection at the Syracuse University Library and presents an overview of major trends in the development of plastics in everyday life. The exhibit focuses on personal and household objects rather than the use of plastics in industry where they are also widely used. Approximately 250 objects divided into twelve categories will be on view. In addition, a small selection of manuscripts and printed materials will be included.

Specific objects to be featured in the exhibition are:

• ornate celluloid combs and a wide variety of plastic toiletries
• phenolic (Bakelite) objects from the 1920s and 30s including jewelry, radios, and other appliances and games
• musical instruments
• post-war toys, dishes, and household items
• original patent books of John Wesley Hyatt, inventor of Celluloid
• product catalogues from the 1930s and 1950s for popular items such as DuPont French Ivory dresser sets, Boltaware molded "stoneware" dishes, and Tupperware, and
• the Pleur-evac, a revolutionary plastic medical device for draining fluid and maintaining pressure in the lungs that helped save the life of President Ronald Reagan.

Syracuse University Library is grateful to Harry Greenwald '51 and the Greenwald-Haupt Charitable Foundation for their sustaining support of the Plastics Collection that has made possible both the Plastics Collection and this exhibit. The Library also recognizes the contributions of the Plastics Collection Advisory Committee, the Plastics Pioneers Association (PPA), the Plastics History & Artifacts Committee of the PPA, headed by Glenn Beall, and all of the contributors for their generous support.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin on August 25, 2011 | Permalink

Solace 2.0, an installation/ performance by MFA candidate Misha Rabinovich is on display on the 4th floor of Bird Library through May 2011. The transmedia installation encompasses books, movies, pictures, and video, and includes a computer running the Solace 2.0 Social Media Platform.

According to the artist,

The installation features several images representing various attempts by different entities to "make a name for themselves" and to be "masters of their domain" ranging from the monumental and permanent to the feeble and ephemeral. Among these images stands a computer monitor, framed in glossy black and gothic red. The monitor shows a grey map with red map markers specifically placed to outline the face of the user. As the points disappear and reappear over time the face exhibits a shimmering quality.

The points represent locations of actual real world venues (restaurants, businesses, etc) which have been registered in a geolocation game called Foursquare. To play such geolocation games, people 'check in' to locations they are currently at using their GPS enabled phone. Solace 2.0 checks the user into locations automatically, without the user having to go anywhere.

Social networks seek to conform individual identities into their molds in order to monetize people. The fundamental bargain presented to users of Internet-based social networks is: if you publish private information about yourself, you will reap social rewards. Those who seek attention as capital accept this bargain. But the requirement to conform one's identity into a social network's profile is a farce. The Internet--with its ability to robustly connect people across great distance--doesn't reflect our physical existence but copies, fractures, and multiplies our individual identities. The Internet's commercial power necessitates the compression of our identities into tokens of trust so that we can buy and sell. These tokens of trust are examples of our newfound disembodied, autonomous, and powerful telekinesis. Our actions online persist in time, creating our data body, which is also a shadow sometimes appearing to dance of its own volition. Each of us is in many places at once.

For more information, visit solace.micharabinovich.com

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin on April 5, 2011 | Permalink

Photographs, oil paintings, and other mixed media works contributed by artist Teboho Gladys Anoh are currently on display in the Biblio Gallery, located on the 4th floor of Bird Library. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, February 24th from 5:00-6:30 p.m. Anoh is a graduate student pursuing a dual master's degree in Economics and International Relations in the Maxwell School at Syracuse University.

Anoh hails from both Cote d'Ivoire and South Africa and has a keen interest in development economics. As a self-taught painter and photographer, she uses her art to advocate for a better quality of life among the impoverished populations of emergent nations. She believes that "Nutrition is a two-sided coin, corporal nourishment being one side of the coin. A soul that goes unfed, like the body, eventually dies. Art therefore is like food to the soul and, as such, must be consumed. If one's sole purpose is Growth, then a balance between the two must be sought."

The Biblio Gallery hours coincide with those of the 4th floor; click here for Library hours. The display will be in place through April, 2011.

For more information about exhibiting in the Biblio Gallery, see the art exhibits policy or email Ann Skiold, saskiold@syr.edu.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin on February 21, 2011 | Permalink

Paintings by artist Alex Schmitz are now installed in the Biblio Gallery, located on the 4th floor of Bird Library. Schmitz is a graduate student in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University.

In his artist statement about the exhibit, Schmitz writes, "As a child, I used to put my toys away in laundry baskets. Years later, the baskets have resurfaced in my creative practice as receptacles for contents less innocent. Simple one-point perspective and the hypnotic symmetry of a mundane object are formal tools that invite viewers to pause for contemplation. The baskets transform into tabernacles of purity wherein the contents, far from sacred, are presented as ambiguously clean or dirty. By addressing issues of repressed childhood sexuality, the work engages with societal taboos such as circle jerks, inappropriate touching, and self absorption in the form of a phallic object. The intention of the work is to create portable sanctuaries that make visible rituals of longing without fulfillment."

The Biblio Gallery hours coincide with those of the 4th floor; click here for library hours. The display will be in place through mid-November, 2010.

For more information about exhibiting in the Biblio Gallery, see the art exhibits policy or contact Ann Skiold.

Posted by Kathleen White on October 14, 2010 | Permalink

Syracuse University Library's newest exhibition, "4,000 Years and Counting," features treasures from the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) that highlight the breadth of the library's special collections--from second-century-B.C. cuneiform tablets to the papers of notable contemporary figures like Joyce Carol Oates.

The exhibition occupies the display case on the first floor of E.S. Bird Library and the gallery on the 6th floor, which is open from 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday-Friday. The exhibition will remain up until Aug. 31.

The exhibition opens with the origins of special collections at SU: the 1887 purchase of the eminent German historian Leopold von Ranke's library. In support of the acquisition, University Librarian C. W. Bennett made this assessment: "For this has always been my theory, that six thousand to ten thousand well-selected volumes are sufficient for the wants of the undergraduate, but to keep the professors from mental hunger and starvation, sources, authorities and books of a very different kind must be had in large numbers and in special collections."

Special collections was born of the Ranke library and matured in the 1960s under the leadership of Chancellor William Pearson Tolley (1901-96), a noted collector of rare books. Librarians solicited the personal papers of the best and brightest of the day, including pediatrician Benjamin Spock, architect Marcel Breuer, photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White, Nobel Laureate Albert Schweitzer and Grove Press publisher Barney Rosset. The Belfer Audio Laboratory and Archive, with its world-class collection of wax-cylinder recordings and state-of-the-art reformatting studio, was founded in 1963. These notable accomplishments gave rise to subject areas in which SU could claim to be among the best in the world, including architecture and design, popular culture, and the literary and artistic expression of radical ideology. This exhibition offers an introduction to these and other collecting areas.

SCRC continues to build upon historical strengths while new areas of collecting have emerged; for example, the history of broadcasting. Increasingly, special collections include not just print and manuscript items, but a growing number of material-culture artifacts--from clay tablets to Tupperware--and a variety of media formats, such as Edison wax cylinders. SCRC's mission is to collect and preserve the best of today for the researchers of tomorrow, and increasingly that means bits and bytes as well as paper and print.

For more information about special collections at Syracuse University Library, contact, Sean Quimby, director of special collections.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin on May 13, 2010 | Permalink

Drawings by artist Dana Brabant are now installed in the Biblio Gallery, located on the 4th floor of Bird Library. Brabant is a Master in Art Education student at Syracuse University. The display will be in place through the month of May.

In her artist statement about the exhibit, Brabant writes, "This series of drawings began at the onset of the spring semester (2010) as I explored the depth of my relationship with my first born child. The newness of motherhood and the moments with him that had come to define my days are captured in the earlier works. As the series began to flourish, the image of mother and child evolved into a metaphor for the relationship between the creator and created. Viewers may perceive that as the relationship between God and humankind or artist and artwork. In this relationship there are moments of love and attachment and moments of letting go. Tensions of energies between two individuals who are deeply connected and yet physically separate are explored through some of the works."

The Biblio Gallery hours coincide with those of the 4th floor. For library hours, see http://library.syr.edu/hours/

For more information about exhibiting in the Biblio Gallery, contact Ann Skiold at saskiold@syr.edu or see http://library.syr.edu/services/space/exhibits_policy/.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin on May 3, 2010 | Permalink

Access Services currently presents Notable Native Americans, a display featuring materials related to prominent American Indians from the past five centuries. Located on the 4th floor of Bird Library, the display contains brief biographical sketches and illustrations of key figures such as Pocahontas, Sequoyah, Sitting Bull, Jim Thorpe, Maria Tallchief, Joanne Shenandoah and many others.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin on March 29, 2010 | 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 on June 1, 2009 | 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 on May 20, 2009 | 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 on February 20, 2009 | 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 on October 1, 2008 | 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 on August 26, 2008 | 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 on May 28, 2008 | 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 on April 29, 2008 | 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 on April 25, 2008 | 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 on October 12, 2007 | 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 on April 3, 2004 | Permalink