|
Organized to accompany the library’s fall
fundraiser, the exhibition Unstacked: Treasures
of the Godine Library took on a life of its own.
On November 18th the library joined with Kay Sloan
in hosting a lunchtime reception for the college
community to meet with the President and view Unstacked.
The exhibition, which was originally slated to close
on November 23rd, was extended through December 3rd, so
that it would be up for several of the college’s early
winter meetings.
While not entirely surprising, the library staff
is pleased with the accolades the show received.
We hope that this good press will mean that we are
invited to curate more exhibitions, not just because
we are committed to promoting our collections, but also
because putting up the show was a lot of fun.
With works ranging from artists’ books by Ed Ruscha
to Paul Strand photographs to early 20th century Japanese
prints, the show had something for everyone. I wish I could
say we methodically selected works to appeal to a large
number of people, but in reality the selection for the
show was not nearly so
|
calculated. In fact, the process consisted of putting
forward personal favorites and combing through the Special
Collections to find new favorites. We knew we had a limited
amount of space and we each had a definitive agenda: Paul
wanted to tell the story of art education in Massachusetts
through letters, photographs and other artifacts; Rachel B.
insisted on including gorgeously illustrated books that we
discovered while doing research for the show; and I had
been eager to show off our collection of conceptual artists’ books.
One fortuitous result of curating as a team is that our diverse
interests resulted in the inclusion of an expansive assortment
of material. Something of interest for each of the college’s
eight academic departments, really.
|