Current Exhibits
McIver Statue Centennial: 1912-2012
May 1 - October 8, 2012. Jackson Library Lobby
The Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives is pleased to announce the installation of a new exhibit to celebrate the centennial of the Charles Duncan McIver Statue.
The exhibit contains historic artifacts and photographs relating to Dr. Charles Duncan McIver and the McIver Statue. From 1891 to 1906, Dr. McIver was president of the State Normal and Industrial College, now The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He was not only the founder of this institution, the first public school in North Carolina for women, but was a nationally known educator.
The statue commemorates Dr. McIver's contributions to education and was dedicated on Founder's Day, October 5, 1912. This exhibit will be on display in the Jackson Library Lobby from May 1 - October 8, 2012.
What They Were Wearing While They Were Reading: 1930s
February 7 - April 1, 2012
Main Lobby, Jackson Library
After the years of economic prosperity, the stock market crashed on October 29, 1929, and the resulting economic depression dominated the entire decade. During this Great Depression, millions of Americans lost their jobs, their savings, and their homes. While banks foreclosed on businesses and farms, families became homeless and unemployed. Many Americans took to the road and the rails, traveling from town to town in search of a job. Shantytowns, known as “Hoovervilles” after President Herbert Hoover, began to spring up on the outskirts of town. Created with scraps of cardboard, newspaper, and anything else that could be picked up on the street, these makeshift towns housed thousand of transient families.
Americans pinned their hopes on the winner of the 1932 presidential election, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Upon taking office, Roosevelt began to establish governmental programs known as the “New Deal,” to help Americans pull out of the economic crises. Programs such as the Agricultural Adjustment Administration targeted farmers while the Works Progress Administration helped unemployment by hiring people to work on civic building projects. While these New Deal programs helped ease the hardships of many Americans, the decade continued to be plagued with economic instability.
It was the entrance of the United States into World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 that ended the Great Depression.
See the World in Postcards: Selections from the Anna Gove Collection
February - June 30, 2012
EUC Connector
Dr. Anna Maria Gove was born July 6, 1867, in Whitefield, New Hampshire. After her education at MIT and Woman's Medical College of New York Infirmary, from which she graduated in 1892, Dr. Gove served for a year in the New York Infant Asylum. In 1893 she came to the State Normal and Industrial School (now UNCG) where she served as resident physician, professor of hygiene, and director of the Department of Health until her retirement in 1937.
Fond of travel, Dr. Gove visited many parts of the world. In 1896 and again in 1914, she visited Vienna for postgraduate study. During WWI, she served with the Red Cross in the Children's Relief Division in Marseilles and Ardèche, France. In 1926, she took a leave of absence from the college to travel extensively in the Orient. She also spent many summers in study and clinical work in the United States at Cornell, Chicago, New York and Michigan. Dr. Gove died in Greensboro on January 28, 1948.
The Anna Gove Collection contains hundreds of postcards from the early to mid-20th century, reflecting Dr. Gove’s travels as well as those of her friends. This exhibit will feature, on a rotating basis, postcards from Europe, Asia and the Middle East, and the United States.
Windows to the World: The Immortal Works of Charles Dickens
January 23 2012 - March 30, 2012
Hodges Reading Room
Second Floor, Main Building
Jackson Library
Dickens Exhibit Catalog 2012
With the possible exception of Shakespeare, no English author is better known than Charles Dickens. Dickens was a household name during his lifetime, and his reputation has not dimmed with the passage of time. This exhibit, which includes twelve of his most popular books—the majority represented in first editions—illustrations from his works, and an assortment of ephemera, celebrates the bicentennial of his birth on February 7, 1812.
Dickens won the admiration and praise of his readers, critics, and fellow authors; and countless books and articles have examined and heralded his life and writings. His grave in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey represents the highest tribute paid to an English author.
This exhibit attempts to allow Dickens’s genius to speak for itself, in his own words about his work and in the words of his immortal characters.
Illustrations—most of them the original illustrations—are included for each book. Dickens was one of the first authors with the power to select his own illustrations, thus giving them a particular significance as interpreters of his characters and events. He worked with some of the most distinguished artists of his day—George Cruikshank, Hablot Browne (“Phiz”), George Cattermole, and Marcus Stone foremost among them.
The many items in the exhibit that carry his name—commemorative plates, medallions, plaques, playing cards, etc.—show that perhaps no author in history has been commercialized more than Dickens. Although Dickens would undoubtedly have railed against this exploitation,it bears testimony to his immense and enduring popularity.
It is difficult to choose a single comment to summarize this great author’s life and work, but the words of his biographer G. K. Chesterton in 1906 ring true:
“The positive argument for the permanence of Dickens comes back to the thing that can only be stated and cannot be discussed. He made things which nobody else can possibly make.”
Thanks are due to Richard Levy, Norman Smith, and Kimberly Lutz for lending items to this exhibit, and to Carolyn Shankle for devoting time to designing this catalogue and the exhibit poster.