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Melville’s Billy Budd at 100
September 12 – November 9, 2024 in New Y ork
November 17 – December 20, 2024 in Oberlin Melville’s Billy Budd at 100 commemorates the centenary of the posthumous and first publication of Herman Melville’s novella Billy Budd (1924), the story of a young “Handsome Sailor” impressed into the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars in the late 18th century, falsely accused of mutiny, and hanged after a drumhead trial for striking and killing his accuser. The exhibition highlights the composition, preservation, discovery, and ongoing transmission of a singular work of art – a “prose and poem concoction” – left unfinished on Melville’s desk at his death in 1891. Curated by Grolier Club members William Palmer Johnston and Valerie Hotchkiss from Johnston’s extensive Melville Collection, the exhibition features more than 50 items, including multiple scholarly transcriptions of the Billy Budd manuscript, as well as illustrations, photographs, dust jackets, movie posters, the opera libretto, playbills, a commemorative stamp, unique fine bindings for limited editions, and artwork by Barry Moser. Accompanying the exhibition is a catalogue published by the Grolier Club, and a symposium on October 9 will feature a panel of six prominent Melvillians. Oberlin hosts a symposium on December 3, a concert featuring Britten’s Billy Budd, two workshops, and a screening of the Peter Ustinov film. Visit the exhibition online, and view case images on Flickr.
Photo Credit: From Melville’s Billy Budd at 100: Billy Budd graphite drawing by Barry Moser. Copyright Barry Moser, 2023.
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Category: Exhibits
Con Library Study Break April 10 and Tiny Ref Desk Concert April 12
We hope you will be able to join us for and help get the word out about two events at the Con Library this week:
- Wednesday April 10, 4pm we have Melodies on the Menu (with Snacks!) study break. This is in conjunction with our current student-curated exhibit, “Melodies on the Menu” featuring music inspired by food or cooking. Emily Dickinson’s black cake recipe, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s pot roast recipe, and composer Erberk Eryilmaz’s “collection of love songs all using dairy to rhyme or to describe emotions.”
- Friday April 12 at noon we have a Tiny Ref Desk Concert featuring Damian Goggans, guitar, performing works by Villa-Lobos, Goggans, and Brouwer. The concert will be streamed on Instagram @obieconlib.
Con Library Events – Study Break April 10 and Tiny Ref Desk Concert April 12
We hope you will be able to join us for and help get the word out about two events at the Con Library this week:
- Wednesday April 10, 4pm we have Melodies on the Menu (with Snacks!) study break. This is in conjunction with our current student-curated exhibit, “Melodies on the Menu” featuring music inspired by food or cooking. Emily Dickinson’s black cake recipe, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s pot roast recipe, and composer Erberk Eryilmaz’s “collection of love songs all using dairy to rhyme or to describe emotions.”
- Friday April 12 at noon we have a Tiny Ref Desk Concert featuring Damian Goggans, guitar, performing works by Villa-Lobos, Goggans, and Brouwer. The concert will be streamed on Instagram @obieconlib.
Philatelist extraordinaire, January 10 at 2:00pm in Terrell
Come learn a little about stamp collecting when Michael Palazzolo gives a curator’s “highpoints” tour of his exhibition, Postage Stamps As History at 2:00pm on Wednesday, January 10 in the exhibit area of Terrell Library.
Oberlin Shorts
Check out this happy video about the new story dispenser that is coming this fall to Terrell.
I hope it inspires you to write a short piece for the “Oberlin Shorts” button!
Celebrate Black Excellence in STEM Exhibit
There is a great exhibit in the Science Center – very creative and aesthetically pleasing – put together by HHMI STEM Fellow Darian Gray, that includes 16 books from the Libraries. I was so pleased that Darian asked me to contribute to the exhibit. I’ve posted a series of photos in this Google folder, if you’d like to see the exhibit without trekking over to the Science Center.
Oberlin LIASE Collection
You may know of the Oberlin LIASE program over the last 6 years. Ann Sherif brought us her materials from the program, which occupies a new category in the Archives: Interdisciplinary Programs (Environmental and East Asian Studies). Noah Kawaguchi ’22 wrote up the administrative history and a detailed inventory. The finding guide is up.
Morgan Library Exhibit
Unearthing Rick Barton, a Boho Bard of North Beach
His drawings from the early ’60s in “craggy, neurotic, ruthlessly precise ink” are on view in a remarkable museum debut at the Morgan Library.
Review of the exhibit:
Archives collection items in AMAM exhibit
The Allen Art Museum borrowed two photo albums and a journal kept by a student in an ecology class in 1915 for the current exhibit “Objects of Encounter: American Myths of Place.” The exhibit will be up until December 23.
Enid Bancroft Sutton was in the first ecology trip out west for credit with Professor Lynds Jones. He was one of the first professors in the U.S. to offer ecology and ornithology classes. Jones hired Native Americans from the Quileute tribe to bring the group to rocky islets in Northwest Washington to study bird nesting sites. The albums contain many photos of tribal members.
The students were trained to make detailed observations of flora, fauna, geographical features and climatic conditions to describe ecological zones they encountered on the long trip, in photographs and journals. For more description of the collection materials see the finding guide to the Enid Sutton Swan collection from our home page.
Reading Girl
Seeking your input on a plan to move the Reading Girl to the area in front of where the Shansi Banner now hangs (it is going out for preservation in the next few weeks). She would also be elevated on a circular stone platform, similar to how she was displayed when she was a Spear and Carnegie. Seating would continue in this area outside the cafe.
Related to this would be a plan to move Pensarosa to the 2nd floor (site not pinned down) so as to highlight her as well.
I would want to get this done for start of semester….
Thoughts, caution, history, applause?
