Three ongoing exhibitions on Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus – Open / Plan: Launching the Frank Lloyd Wright Digital Archive at Avery Library, Forms of Care, and Contact: Community and Collaboration across Five Centuries of Printmaking – feature materials from Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library.
Open / Plan: Launching the Frank Lloyd Wright Digital Archive at Avery Library
On view in the 200-level display cases outside of the Drawings & Archives department at Avery Library is an exhibition titled Open / Plan: Launching the Frank Lloyd Wright Digital Archive at Avery Library. Curated by Katherine Prater, Digital Project & Outreach Librarian, the exhibition marks the beginning of the Frank Lloyd Wright Digital Archive project, in which more than 13,000 of Wright’s residential drawings held in Avery Library’s Drawings & Archives department will be digitized and made accessible online over the next three years. Organized in four sections, the exhibition illustrates both the archival content and hands-on processes of this large-scale digital project. The first display case introduces the project via four of Wright’s most recognizable residential projects, each recently designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The second case provides a behind-the-scenes look at the digitization process in Avery Library’s imaging studio. Critical themes of social justice and climate justice are explored in the third case, both in terms of Wright’s contributions to the discourse and the capacity for the Digital Archive project to support contemporary users in furthering the conversation. The final case proposes possibilities for subsequent phases of the Digital Archive project, such as non-residential drawings, the photograph and correspondence collections, and other parts of the Wright archives relevant to his career and architectural legacy. The exhibition is on view through January 2023 and is open to Columbia students, faculty, staff, alumni, and retirees during the library’s open hours.
Forms of Care
On view in the Rotunda of Low Library is an exhibition titled Forms of Care, showcasing the artistry of ten Inuit sculptors from the Canadian territory of Nunavut, with work made between 1966 and 1997. This exhibition was curated by students in Barnard and Columbia art history professor Elizabeth Hutchinson’s seminar, “Exhibiting Modern Inuit Sculpture,” part of the Mellon Foundation-sponsored Barnard Teaches program, which enabled students to interact with Inuit scholars and artists and two Indigenous curators in their preparation of the show. The exhibition highlights how the carvings embody and communicate Inuit traditional knowledge and values and interprets them in light of changing historical and environmental conditions in the Arctic. The sculptures in the Art Properties collection were donated by Robin Wagner (BC’80) and Jerome Grossman (CC’61). The exhibition is on view through February 2023 and is open to students, faculty, and staff through the Low Library Security entrance on Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. All other visitors must contact artproperties@library.columbia.edu to schedule access in advance. For additional information, visit the exhibition website with a land acknowledgment composed in collaboration with Columbia’s Native American Council and a supplementary digital timeline offering additional context for the works on view.
Contact: Community and Collaboration Across Five Centuries of Printmaking
On view in the Judith Lee Stronach Center on the 8th floor of Schermerhorn Hall is an exhibition titled Contact: Community and Collaboration Across Five Centuries of Printmaking. This sixth-annual exhibition, curated by candidates in the M.A. in Art History program, under the direction of Frédérique Baumgartner, Director of the M.A. in Art History program, and Roberto C. Ferrari, Curator of Art Properties, highlights 17 prints from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries in the Art Properties collection. The exhibition is organized around ideas of community and collaboration, both as working methodologies that characterize printmaking – a print is the product of the combined skills of a designer, engraver, printer, and publisher – and also the curatorial process of students coming together in-person again after the COVID-19 pandemic. The exhibition is on view from October 6 to December 16, 2022. Open to students, faculty, and staff on Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. All other visitors must contact fb214@columbia.edu to schedule access in advance. For additional information, visit the exhibition website.
