Spotlight

Syracuse University Library's spring exhibition "The Power and The Piety: the World of Medieval and Renaissance Europe" opens with a reception on Thursday, January 26, at 5 p.m. in the Special Collections gallery on Bird Library's sixth floor. Curated by History Professor Chris Kyle with Senior Director of Special Collections Sean Quimby, it showcases the library's collection of illuminated manuscripts and early printed works, including a leaf from the Gutenberg Bible.

The title "The Power and The Piety," refers to extraordinary influence that secular monarchies and the Church had on the lives of everyday men and women. Richly illustrated late medieval psalters and books of hours exemplify the painstaking attention that the pious paid to their spiritual well-being. But the printing revolution made it possible for new ideas to spread more rapidly. Printed works like Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan" (1651) signified the increasing power wielded by kings, queens and other secular authorities. As the Protestant Reformation and Scientific Revolution took hold of Europe, the power of the Catholic Church further waned. "The Power and the Piety" includes such important works as the first King James Bible (1611) and a second printing of Copernicus' "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" (1566), which argued in favor of a heliocentric, or sun-centered, universe.

The exhibition is arranged thematically, highlighting the overarching themes of power and piety, as well as English literature, music, architecture, science and fine bindings. According to curator Kyle, "The Power and the Piety highlights the world that shaped our own--from religious martyrdom, to the politics of Machiavelli and the extraordinary prose of Shakespeare, this exhibition brings to life the rich and vibrant eras of Medieval and Renaissance Europe."

The exhibition and reception is free and open to the public. It is co-sponsored by the 2011-12 Ray Smith Symposium "Sex and Power from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment." Based in Syracuse University's College of Arts in Sciences, the symposium features seminars given by prominent visiting scholars. For more information please visit raysmithsymposium.syr.edu.

The Special Collections Research Center is a hub for primary source research at Syracuse University Library. It is devoted to collecting and preserving rare research materials in all formats and to connecting students, faculty, outside scholars and the community to its collections. For more information, visit scrc.syr.edu.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin on January 24, 2012 | Permalink

In recognition of the 50th anniversary of his first album release, Access & Resource Sharing presents a display on the exemplary career of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. The display features books, recordings, and other materials, supplemented with personal items on loan from Library staff.

Featured aspects of Dylan's career include his arrival in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, his legendary appearance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, his conversion to Christianity in the late 1970s, and his creative resurgence beginning in the late 1990s.

The display is located on the 4th floor of Bird Library and will remain up until further notice.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin on January 13, 2012 | Permalink

The latest Biblio Gallery exhibit is Winter's Breath: from Guilty Pleasures by VPA graduate student Jay Muhlin.

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.

Stay warm and enjoy.

For more information on exhibiting in the Biblio Gallery, see this form.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin on November 4, 2011 | Permalink

Selections from the Photography and Literacy Project (PAL) show "Can You See Me?" are currently on display in a new gallery space on the 6th floor of Bird Library, a collaboration between the Library and the College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA).

The show is the result of a collaboration between Adam Lutwin's 11th grade English class at Fowler High School and the Photography and Literacy Project. Fowler students were given digital cameras and journals to complete specific photo and writing assignments. Under the guidance of SU student mentors, students selected their best work for display.

Based on the ongoing work of SU instructor Stephen Mahan of VPA, PAL provides an opportunity for local students to explore their world through photography, video and sound to promote critical thinking skills, writing, visual literacy and self-esteem. Mahan started his work at SU a few years ago by collaborating with the Syracuse City School District (SCSD), CMAC, VPA, the Partnership for Better Education, the Creative Writing Program, Light Work, and other area institutions. At its core, the project encourages students to explore their world as they photograph, film, and capture sound recordings from their world and their lives, and then use their documents as prompts for verbal and written expression.

Mahan, who often quotes British author and education expert Sir Ken Robinson's line about schools 'filled with brilliant kids who think they are not,' says his passion for using photography as an educational tool began while he was a graduate student at the University of Buffalo in the 1990s. "Our educational system is set up to deal most effectively with one type of learner... so what I try to do is even the playing field by using a camera as a storytelling device that articulates and validates each individual's point of view, which builds self esteem. When the pictures are all laid out on the table, it is impossible to tell which kid has difficulties, and that is what motivates my passion, " says Mahan.

The PAL project has been featured in Syracuse Magazine, Jerk Magazine, and other articles. For more information, contact Mahan at scmahan@syr.edu.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin on October 17, 2011 | Permalink

Syracuse University Library's Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) has amassed a fine collection of graphic novels, or novels without words. Striking specimens of the genre from the 1920s and 1930s are now on view in an SCRC exhibition entitled The Silent Scream: Conflict in Novels without Words. Selections for display were made in keeping with this year's Syracuse Symposium theme: "conflict."

In addition to conflict, novels without words often portray a quest for self-fulfillment or social justice. Because of their historical context, they may also depict the struggle between the individual and the industrialized world. Similarly, the law, the police, and the armed forces may all be viewed as instruments of repression in graphic novels.

The artists represented are William Gropper (1897-1977), a caricaturist, cartoonist, book illustrator, and social activist in the causes of labor; Laurence Hyde (1914-1987), who produced wood engravings and linocuts for books, as well as pen-and-ink illustrations for various left-wing journals; Frans Masereel (1889-1972), creator of stark and moving woodcuts; Giacomo Patri (1898-1978), who helped to promote the growing labor movement through illustration of union organizing pamphlets; John Vassos (1898-1985), commercial artist and book illustrator; and Lynd Ward (1905-1985), wood engraver known for his portrayal of quests after social justice and the fulfillment of human and artistic potential.

The exhibition is free and open to the public from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, excepting holidays, on the sixth floor of Bird Library on the Syracuse University campus.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin on September 17, 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

Students in the VPA's fiber architecture class, co-taught by Janet Ambrose and Mary Giehl, have installed their final semester projects on the first floor and lower level of Bird Library's Learning Commons. The class draws students from design, architecture, sculpture, fiber arts, and other majors.

Students used the two Learning Commons spaces as their inspiration and planned their work to fit and work in these spaces. Fiber sculptures are wrapped around columns, suspended from the ceiling, and situated in some unexpected locations. By displaying in the Library, student artwork will be seen by hundreds of people. In addition, installing in a public setting like Bird provided students with the real-life experience of working in an environment where there is less control and predictability than in a critique space or gallery.

This exhibit is a result of the ongoing partnership between the Learning Commons and COLAB, which has previously installed exhibits in the lower level of Bird Library. The first phase of installations was completed in late March and additional works will be added. They will remain in place through the end of the semester.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin on April 5, 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

Syracuse University Library's spring 2010 exhibition is entitled Covering Photography: Imitation, Influence and Coincidence, by guest curator Karl Baden. Baden, a class of 1974 Syracuse University alumnus, is a Boston-based photographer and member of Boston College's Fine Arts Department. He will present a gallery talk on Tuesday, March 2nd at 5:00 p.m. in the 6th floor gallery.

In 2005, Baden founded the Web-based archive Covering Photography (www.CoveringPhotography.com), based on his own book collection. The exhibition previously appeared at the Boston Public Library in fall 2009. In his introduction to the online version of that exhibition, Baden writes, "Creative individuals from every discipline have regularly appropriated the ideas of others, at least as a foundation to build on. . . .This exhibition compares the cover art of selected books with the photographs from which they are, or may be, derived. The books were chosen not because of their content, but because the images on their jackets reference, in some way, another image . . . a photograph whose significance or popularity has earned it, or its maker, a place in the history of photography."

Among the pairings in the exhibit are the Italian edition of James Baldwin's If Beale Street Could Talk, which uses Walker Evans's "Atlanta, Georgia, 1936" as the source for its cover artwork, and the cover image of The Mammoth Book of Erotica, which calls to mind "Nude, 1919," part of Alfred Stieglitz's collective portrait of his wife, the painter Georgia O'Keeffe.

According to Baden, "The connection between book cover and photograph may be obvious--an instance of imitation or even blatant appropriation. In other cases, it is more a question of the designer or illustrator being subtly, perhaps even unconsciously, influenced by a particular photographer or photograph. Finally, there may be no direct, or even indirect, trail of influence; the idea or visual trope may just be part of our collective cultural consciousness."

The exhibition is free and open to the public and runs from January 19 to April 30, 2010 in the Special Collections Research Center gallery on the sixth floor of Bird Library. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., except holidays. The exhibit is also featured in the exhibit case on the first floor of Bird Library.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin on January 19, 2010 | Permalink

An exhibition entitled "Luminous Construction: The Photography of Howard Bond"will run through January 14, 2010 in the gallery on the 6th floor of Bird Library. Howard Bond is a renowned American photographer and former student of Ansel Adams.

Since committing himself fully to photography in 1979, Bond has been regarded as a master of large-format film photography. His signature black and photography has been featured in more than 60 single-artist and 40 group shows all over the world. He is the author of two books, Light Motifs (1984) and White Motif: The Cyclades Islands of Greece (1991), both published by Goodrich Press, and more than a hundred articles for Photo Techniques magazine. In addition to Adams, Bond studied fine art photography with 20th-century masters Imogen Cunningham and Brett Weston. The Michigan-based artist has taught workshops on photographic techniques for more than three decades.

Recently, Bond's photography was the subject of a generous donation to SU by Carl J. Armani '60 and his wife, Marcy. The gift, which includes a set of 22 portfolios of dramatic landscapes and abstract close-ups taken between 1974 and 2005, is the subject of the aforementioned exhibition in Bird Library. Curator Kelli Pennington '10, an M.F.A. student in art photography, says Bond's aesthetic echoes that of his mentors. "I see in Bond's work a finely trained gaze, an ability to render the details and spaces that make up our world," she says.

A catalog of the exhibition is available in the SU Bookstore and from Amazon.com.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin on November 5, 2009 | Permalink

In recognition of the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, a display featuring images of Lincoln gathered chiefly from SU Library materials is presently on view on the 4th floor of Bird Library. This display briefly examines some of the more familiar and affecting images of Lincoln created by painters, sculptors, printmakers, and photographers during the past two centuries, including works by Mathew Brady, James Earle Fraser, Gutzon Borglum, and Anna Hyatt Huntington.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin on October 27, 2009 | Permalink