Angelica Schuyler Church, the daughter of a general in the Continental Army and the wife of a prominent British businessman, traveled in social circles that included the most prominent figures of her time. The Church archive contains correspondence from the period of the founding of America, including letters from George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and the Marquis de Lafayette.
The history of the Jewish community of Charlottesville shares much in common with the broad sweep of the Jewish experience in the South and throughout America. It is a story of colonial-era Sephardic Jews and of nineteenth-century immigrants first from Bavaria and Wurttemberg and then from Kovno and Minsk. It is a story of peddlers and merchants, and of involvement and leadership in local government, the arts and education. It is a story of the commitment of a few to the creation and maintenance of local civic and religious institutions.
"The Book in Tibet" is a mini-exhibition curated by Ben Nourse with the assistance of Christie Kilby and Natasha Mikles, all current or former Ph.D. students in Tibetan studies at the University of Virginia. The exhibition is an adjunct to the Symposium on the Tibetan Book being held at UVA Nov. 6-8, 2014.
The fire of October 27, 1895, was a disaster: only the shell of the Rotunda remained standing; the Annex was a smoldering ruin; and two-thirds of the University Library's collection was destroyed. But the University did more than simply reconstruct the Rotunda. In the wake of the destruction emerged a rebuilt Rotunda, designed by Stanford White; three new buildings at the south end of the Lawn; a revitalized University Library; and a University with a growing national reputation.
"Nothing from Something" is a new series of work by artist R. Mertens influenced by minimal and post-minimal art from the 60s and 70s and Minimal Music Visualization. Emphasizing the role of process in fiber arts and minimal music, this work addresses ideas of (mis)communication, spirituality, interconnections, repetition, post-structuralist aesthetics, and art history. R. Mertens is a Visiting Professor in Art at James Madison University where he is an artist and recording engineer. He owns and operates "The Weaving Room," a textile and audio recording studio.
#Carbonfeed is a soundscape/data visualization installation. Through sonifying Twitter feeds and correlating individual tweets with a physical, data visualization in public spaces, #CarbonFeed directly challenges the popular notion that virtuality is disconnected from reality.
The ardent abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe had a specific intent for readers of her blockbuster novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin: she wanted her readers to “Read, weep, and reflect” as they read about the plights of Uncle Tom and his fellow slaves. Tie-in products for children demonstrate how Stowe, her publishers, and others seeking to get in on the lucrative Uncle Tom phenomenon envisioned extending the power of the novel to every part of children’s lives. Shown here are rare examples of toys, games, and other products from the years just following the novel’s publication in 1852.
"Quantum Levitation" is an exhibit of photographs that gives the viewer a rare glimpse into the unusual world of superconductivity, where some materials brought to very low temperatures create a quantum wave that expels magnetic fields, allowing for the amazing property of levitation. The exhibit is part of a greater endeavor to foster a new kind of dialogue between physicists, designers, and graphic artists.
A collaboration between Brown Library and the Department of Environmental Sciences, the exhibit is an outgrowth of a recent movement to link Art, the Humanities and place-based science in an effort to increase public awareness of the natural world, the environmental issues that impact our surroundings, and the complex interactions between human societies and the ecosystems in which we live.
In celebration of the 150th anniversary of the first publication of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, undergraduate Wolfe Docent Susan Swicegood curated the mini-exhibition “Happy 150th Birthday, Alice!” The exhibit focuses on how illustrators have envisioned the figure of Alice over the course of the book’s publishing history.