Mass incarceration from one family’s perspective, a Curatorial Short with Kurt Boone

In the RBML’s continuing Curatorial Shorts programming, we feature a collection of oral histories on mass incarceration collected by Kurt Boone for the Oral History Archives at Columbia. The collection holds eight interviews by Boone. Boon is a collector and documentarian of urban culture – including hip hop, graffiti art, and street style. You can […]

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New Exhibition | Insistent Change: Columbia’s Core Curriculum at 100

In 1919 Columbia instituted a course of study known as Contemporary Civilization. It grew out of a War Issues course offered during World War I. Every student was required to take the course in order to provide a forum to analyze and discuss primary texts relevant to contemporary problems. Insistent Change shows how the course […]

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New exhibition | Mirror of Humanity: Seeing Ourselves in Playing Cards

Playing cards were once condemned as “the Devil’s picture book,” gaudy bits of pasteboard that encouraged sins such as time-wasting and gambling. Mirror of Humanity: Seeing Ourselves in Playing Cards instead approaches playing cards as mirrors which retain images of past perceptions of ourselves and others. Whether commercial products made to appeal to buyers, or […]

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