This month we have a selection of books and movies on display on the first floor of the library that celebrate Black History Month.  Black History Month began as a way to remember important people and events of African diaspora, and was initially proposed by black educators and students at Kent State University in February of 1969.

When President Gerald Ford recognized Black History Month during the celebration of the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976, recognition of it took hold across the country, particularly in educational institutions.  It now incorporates important people and events of the American Civil Rights Movement as well, such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the Selma to Montgomery marches.  So come “check out” our selection of books and videos at our Black History Month display!

As you enter the Hatfield Library or walk through the Mary Stuart Rogers Music Center or Goudy Commons, you may notice new paintings on display.  These paintings are part of the collaborative exhibition, Betty LaDuke: Social Justice Revisited, presented by the Willamette University Archives and Special Collections and the Hallie Ford Museum of Art.

“Oregon artist and writer Betty LaDuke has gained an international reputation for her murals, paintings, and sketches. Her work tends to express socialist progress and life’s continuity, from images of America’s civil rights struggles, such as Play Free (1968), to women’s struggles for survival in war-ridden, spoiled lands, such as Eritrea/Ethiopia: Where Have All the Fathers Gone (1998).” – The Oregon Encyclopedia

The paintings will be on display throughout the fall semester.  The Archives holds LaDuke’s papers as a collection within the Pacific Northwest Artists Archives. The exhibition is made possible through the generous support of the Willamette University’s Green Fund provided through the Office of Sustainability. The four paintings below are on display in the Hatfield Library throughout the fall semester.

Additional information about Betty LaDuke, including events, books, videos, and websites can be found at:
http://libguides.willamette.edu/betty_laduke

	Eritrea: Dreaming Home 2002
	Eritrea: Refugees Waiting 2002
	Kosovo: War Widows 2006
	Mozambique: Vanishing Rainforests 2009

We currently have a mini-archives exhibit all about squirrels on display on the first floor of the library. There are tidbits of info about our infamous squirrels, including a petition that went to Governor McCall in the 1970s to declare the squirrels an endangered species near Willamette University and the Oregon State Capitol Building. Two separate Willamette Collegian articles are highlighted that accused Longview, Washington of stealing squirrels.  These two articles started the controversy surrounding the squirrel-napping.

Did you know that Willamette University’s squirrel population is made up of grey squirrels?  The grey squirrels were brought as a gift for the school in the 1880s.  Unfortunately, grey squirrels are an invasive species to the Pacific Northwest and displace red squirrels.  

Thank you Kate Kerns, intern in our Archives and Special Collections, for pulling this exhibit together with materials from our Archives and Special Collections. A special thank you to Sybil Westenhouse for investing in experiential learning through the Sybil Westenhouse Archives Excellence Fund.

New Exhibit Going up in the Library on March 24^th, 2017

UPDATE: The date for this mini exhibit has been delayed.  Additional information will follow as they become available.  (3-24-17)

This exhibit looks at the life and experiences of Ralph Barnes a Willamette University alumni from the class of 1922. Barnes was a foreign correspondent with the New York Herald Tribune. Ralph Barnes worked in Mussolini’s Italy, Joseph Stalin’s Russia, and Adolf Hitler’s Germany. Included in this exhibit are excerpts of Barnes foreign correspondence experience.  This exhibit has been put together by Kate Kerns, our Archives and Special Collections intern.

Our Archives and Special Collections intern Kate Kerns has put together a special mini exhibit on the first floor of the library about Rook Caps based on the materials available in the Willamette University Archives and Special Collections.  This exhibit will be replaced later this week by a new exhibit by Kate Kern, so please take a look before these items are sent back into the archives.  Below are some photos of this fun exhibit, Rook Kaps worn at Willamette, a Rook Bible, photos, and stories that center around Rook Kaps. This is a good example of some of the fun things you can find in our Archives, and what could be learned about them.

A special thank you to Sybil Westenhouse for investing in experiential learning through the Sybil Westenhouse Archives Excellence Fund.

January 21 – March 26, 2017

Melvin Henderson-Rubio Gallery

The Mark O. Hatfield Library will exhibit a few Modernism art works created by Portland artist Louis Bunce through March 26th, 2017.  Also included in this exhibit are a collection of books from our stacks on the topic of Modernism in the arts, all of which are available to check out.

(From the Hallie Ford Museum of Art’s blog post…)

The Hallie Ford Museum of Art is pleased to present a major retrospective exhibition for Louis Bunce (1907-1983), a legendary Portland painter, printmaker, and teacher who taught at the Museum Art School from 1946 to 1972 and who influenced several generations of Oregon artists. Organized by Professor Emeritus of Art History and Senior Faculty Curator Roger Hull, the exhibition will chronicle the artist’s career over a 57 year period and features 49 paintings drawn from public and private collections throughout the United States.

Hull says, “Bunce was Oregon’s archetypal modern artist of the mid-twentieth century. ‘Louie,’ as he was called, was ambitious, gregarious, fun-loving, women-loving, antic and outrageous. He was deadly serious when it came to art-making and engaged with it all: Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Post-Modernism, and at the end of his life almost operatic Romanticism.”

Born in Wyoming, Bunce moved with his family to Oregon in his youth, studied at the Museum Art School for a year, and moved to New York in the late 1920s to study at the Art Students League. At the League, he met Jackson Pollock, another Wyoming native, and they established an on-going friendship that lasted until Pollock’s death. In fact, it was Bunce who introduced Pollock to artist Lee Krasner, who would eventually become Pollock’s wife. Although Bunce returned to Portland, Oregon, he maintained strong ties with many other notable artists of the New York School throughout his career.

As a painter and printmaker, Bunce was a rising star in American art of the 1940s and 1950s. In painting, his WPA work from the 1930s gave way to inventive Surrealist forms in the 1940s, to nature-based abstract expressionist work in the 1950s and 1960s. He and his work were featured in a full-color article in Life magazine in 1957, and he was represented in New York by the John Heller Gallery and the Doris Meltzer Gallery. In the 1970s, he experimented with hard-edge geometric compositions and Pop-related imagery while his last works feature light-saturated seascapes.