Image series created by Lafayette printmaker Curlee Holton with commentary by Shakespeare scholar Ian Smith re-imaging Othello in the context of contemporary awareness of issues of race, identity, and culture. Together Professors Holton and Smith explore the effects of cross-cultural encounters and the challenge of reconciling multiple interpretations, their own included.
As part of the 2011 Roethke Humanities Festival on “The Renaissance Spirit,” Skillman offers a photographic tribute to the city of Venice with the exhibition vedute di venezia. The photographs are the work of Ewa Monika Zebrowski, a Montreal photographer, who has been photographing Venice for many years.
The title of the exhibition makes reference to 18th and 19th century landscapes (vedute) of Venice by painters such as Canaletto, Monet, Sargent, Turner, and Constable. “And yet,” says Zebrowski, “my photos are not landscapes. They are details suspended in time: fragments and moments. They represent a portrait of a city threatened by water, the portrait of a city whose very existence is endangered because of its geography.”
Zebrowski’s photographs capture the haunting beauty of Venice—its brilliant lights, dark waters, and frescoed hues. Also on display is her 2006 artist’s book, also called vedute di venezia, which has the feel of a small jewel box, filled with exquisite, tiny images and an essay about Venice’s precarious future.
Zebrowski turned to photography in 1997 after a long career in the film industry. Since then she has had ten solo shows and been awarded numerous grants and residencies. In 2007, her Ode A Venice was named best photo essay by the Quebec Magazine Association. Her photographic artist’s books are in the collections of numerous libraries, including the National Library of Canada, Brown University, Smith College, the University of Pennsylvania, Wellesley College, Yale University, the University of California Berkeley, and Lafayette.
January 24 - June 30, 2011: Lass Gallery
Spilling out of the Simon Room onto the Library’s main floor is In Retrospect, an exhibit of vibrant artists’ books and other works on paper by three accomplished artists—Maureen Cummins, Ann Lovett, and Nava Atlas. At first glimpse, it may be hard to find common threads among the vintage comic books, modern photographs, and old documents that appear in these works. However, all three artists use elements from the past as a way to make sense of contemporary culture. By rearranging and combining historical images, text, and ephemera with new material, they create provocative new works that challenge assumptions about race, gender, and memory.
The work of Maureen Cummins is inspired by old letters, documents, and photographs that she collects from flea markets. She creates quilts, photo albums, and ledgers that deal with wrenching subjects (slavery, insanity, torture), subverting the traditional values and gentility usually embodied in these ordinary objects. Ann Lovett draws source material from historical archives and museum collections, as well as from her original photography. Her work explores individual and collective memory, the culture of memorials, and institutional control of sites of war, trauma, and loss. Nava Atlas collects everyday ephemera—pinup photos, advice columns, vintage food images, old comic books—and arranges them in ironic juxtapositions that question traditional assumptions about gender.
All three artists will be on campus during Women’s History Month to participate in a panel discussion about their work. Professors Mary Armstrong and Curlee Holton will moderate. The program will take place on Thursday, March 3, at 4:15 p.m. in the Gendebien Room. The exhibit will be on view through March 11 from 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. daily. Exhibition catalogs are available for sale.
January 24 - March 11, 2011: Simon Room Gallery
For twenty-five years, Ninja Press in Sherman Oaks, California, has turned out some of the finest work to be found in the contemporary artists’ books scene. The press was founded in 1984 by Carolee Campbell, who continues to be its sole proprietor and who designs, prints, and binds every volume of each edition produced by the press. Specializing in contemporary poetry, Campbell has printed the works of such poets as Breyten Breytenbach, Robert Bringhurst, Michael Hannon, W.S. Merwin, José Montoya, and Nathaniel Tarn. The limited-edition books and broadsides produced by Ninja Press are avidly collected by institutions that specialize in artists’ books.
Skillman Library is honored to help celebrate the 25th anniversary of Ninja Press with this exhibition. On view are all of the sixteen book productions of the press, as well as chapbooks and nearly thirty broadsides. Realia from several of the editions include binding and presswork notes, binding jigs and stencils, printing plates, and various states of binding materials. Photographs taken by Campbell for three of the works are also on display. On November 11, Campbell gave the third annual Schlueter Lecture, "Poetry & the Artists' Book."
November 8, 2010 - January 7, 2011: Simon Room Gallery
A selection of quilts by Liza Lucy, a quilt, needlepoint, and knitting designer and expert quiltmaker, who has collaborated with celebrated textile designer, Kaffe Fassett, on four major quilt design books. She is the owner of Glorious Color, Inc., in New Hope, Pennsylvania, a source for fabrics designed by Fassett and others. The exhibit is in honor of the 40th anniversary of the arrival of Lafayette's first women students in the fall of 1970. Lucy is a member of this distinguished first class of women, the Class of 1974, and she has created a quilt to commemorate her classmates, which is on view. A selection of quilts by Liza Lucy, a quilt, needlepoint, and knitting designer and expert quiltmaker, who has collaborated with celebrated textile designer, Kaffe Fassett, on four major quilt design books. She is the owner of Glorious Color, Inc., in New Hope, Pennsylvania, a source for fabrics designed by Fassett and others. The exhibit is in honor of the 40th anniversary of the arrival of Lafayette's first women students in the fall of 1970. Lucy is a member of this distinguished first class of women, the Class of 1974, and she has created a quilt to commemorate her classmates, which is on view. Lucy spoke about her work on October 6.
Fall 2010: Lass Gallery
“The Poet’s Eye: Literary Broadsides from Special Collections” is the spring 2010 exhibit in the William E. Simon Room in honor of National Poetry Month in April. Broadsides are one-sided, single-sheet publications, usually combining text and image. They are often quite beautiful, with letterpress printing, original artwork, and handmade paper. Literary figures represented in the exhibit include: William Blake, Lucille Clifton, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Yusef Komunyakaa, Theodore Roethke, Jerome Rothenberg, W.D. Snodgrass, Wallace Stevens, Henry David Thoreau, and William Carlos Williams. The exhibit continues through July.
Spring 2010: Simon Room Gallery
For three days each year, the population of the west African city of Touba in Senegal swells from its normal 900,000 inhabitants to more than four million people. Mouride pilgrims from all over Senegal and beyond pour into Touba for the annual Islamic pilgrimage “Le Grand Magal de Touba.” The Mouride brotherhood was founded in 1883 by Cheikh Amadou Bamba, a Sufi mystic and religious leader, who taught the virtues of pacifism and hard work, and established the city of Touba in 1887 as the spiritual center of his movement. Exiled by the French colonial government between 1895 and 1907 because of his growing influence, he was eventually embraced by the French and awarded the French Legion of Honor. Bamba died in 1927 and is buried in the great Mosque at Touba. His descendants have continued to lead the movement, which is now one of the fastest-growing religious communities in Senegal, with increasing political influence. Mouride communities have also flourished in major cities with large Senegalese immigrant populations, particularly New York and Paris.
The many faces of the Magal—teeming streets, overloaded trains, ecstatic celebrations, and contemplative moments—have been captured in the color and black-and-white photographs by David Katzenstein currently on display in Skillman Library’s Lass Gallery through June. Katzenstein is a New York-based photographer, who has traveled the world, either on assignment for publications or on personal journeys. His extensive body of work includes magazine essays on “The Master Musicians of Jajouka in Morocco,” “Johnny Clegg and Zulu Music and Culture,” “The Music and Culture of Bali,” “President Aristide and the Future of Haiti,” and “Arabs in America and the Gulf War.” His photographs have been exhibited at numerous galleries in New York City, as well as at Phillips Exeter Academy and Temple University.
Spring 2010: Lass Gallery
Photographs by Marguerite Nicosia Torres document an immigrant community’s devotion to Mexico’s patron saint, Our Lady of Guadalupe. The exhibition explores the preservation of this religious and cultural heritage through the rituals and traditions honoring the Virgin of Guadalupe in Marshalltown, Iowa. Marguerite Nicosia Torres is an award-winning photojournalist, who has been photo editor and photographer at the Ithaca Journal and an artist-in-residence at St. Lawrence University.
Fall 2009: Lass Gallery
The winter of 2008 marked the publication of Promised Land: Thirteen Books that Changed America by poet, novelist, critic, and distinguished Lafayette alumnus Jay Parini ’70. According to Parini, these are “works that helped to create the intellectual and emotional contours of this country.” The exhibit looks at the publication history of Parini’s thirteen, and includes early and later editions of the works, coupled with Parini’s commentary. Some of the choices will seem obvious, such as The Federalist Papers, Walden, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but others less so, for example The Promised Land, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. Jay Parini will deliver the 2009 Schlueter Lecture in the Art and History of the Book on October 14.
Fall 2009: Simon Room Gallery
On July 4, 1917, General John J. Pershing, commander of the newly-arrived American Expeditionary Force in Europe, made a special pilgrimage to a small cemetery on the outskirts of Paris. There the General and his staff stopped beside a simple grave. It was Pershing's aide, Colonel Charles E. Stanton, who actually uttered the ringing words: "Lafayette, we are here!"
Memories of Lafayette's contributions to the American Revolution resonated with the many Americans who sympathized with France and her allies during World War I. This exhibit explores ways in which Americans acknowledged their debt to Lafayette as they came to France's aid during World War I.
(September 5 - December 31, 2007; Lass Gallery)
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