"Hemingway Writing Home: Letters to His Family, 1917–195"
The exhibition presents a selection of unpublished and heretofore unseen letters of Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961), part of an acquisition by the Penn State University Libraries of the last sizeable and significant known collection of the author’s letters in private hands. The collection, amassed by his sister Madelaine ("Sunny") Hemingway Mainland and passed on to her son, Ernest Hemingway Mainland, includes more than 100 letters, telegrams, and notes from Ernest Hemingway to his family, dating from 1917 to 1957.
Posted from northern Michigan, Kansas City, Milan, Toronto, Paris, Pamplona, the village of Schruns in the Austrian Tyrol, from Valencia, Montana, Key West, Bimini, Cuba, and Nairobi, Hemingway's letters home not only chart his movements through his eventful life and career, but track the course of his relationships with his parents, siblings, wives, and sons.
This important collection of Hemingway's letters to his family reveals new facets and enriches our understanding of these primary personal relationships. Most surprising to some will be the extent to which these letters contradict the common image of Hemingway the solitary artist, adventurer, and tough guy, unencumbered by if not estranged from his family. To be sure, the relationships were complicated and at times contentious. But despite the strains, the ties did bind. These letters show Hemingway's less familiar but no less honest faces: as loving husband, proud father, affectionate and devoted brother, and as caring and ever dutiful son.
The exhibition displays approximately a third of the letters in the collection, which will be cataloged and open to researchers later in the year. Also on display are selected pages of photographs from the "baby books" kept by Grace Hall Hemingway for her daughter Madelaine. The photo albums are a recent gift from Ernest Hemingway Mainland.
The exhibition was organized by guest curators Sandra Spanier, Professor of English and General Editor of the Hemingway Letters Project, and Verna Kale, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English; and Sandra Stelts, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts. A catalog, with an introduction by Sandra Spanier and exhibition text by Verna Kale, is in preparation. If you wish to receive a copy, please let us know.
Copyright restrictions prohibit the taking of photographs.
Press release
"The Photographed Pet: Selections from the B. & H. Henisch Photo-History Collection"
Animals have been a subject in photography since its invention in 1839. Early photography coincided with the beginning of the dog’s position as a household pet in Victorian society, and dogs were for the first time pampered and shown as members of the family in studio portrait art. But daguerreotypes, the earliest of the photographic processes, required subjects to remain motionless for several minutes, which meant that wagging tails often resembled fans when the plates registered the exposure.
Later in the century, such technical problems were solved by faster lenses. By the 1850s, with the introduction of the small carte-de-viste image, it became a popular custom to have the likeness of the family pet (most often dogs) made along with other family members. Meant to look proper and often posed on ornate chairs, every sort of friendly mutt appears. These charming studio poses were displayed with all of the other family portraits in albums made especially for preserving them. Near the end of the 19th-century, amateurs also took up photography, and thousands of photos produced an intimate view of daily life, immortalizing family groups where dogs show up with regularity.
The exhibition features daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, cabinet cards, tintypes, and carte-de-visite albums, showing dozens of images of dogs and the occasional cat, bird, pony, raccoon, and snake.
The B. & H. Henisch Photo-History Collection Exhibition Room is located in 201A Pattee Library. The exhibition will run through January 31, 2008.
"Imaginary Cities"
The exhibition opened for a brief time in the Special Collections Library Exhibition Hall in conjunction with a symposium, “Imaginary Cities: Fictions of Space in the Early Modern World,” hosted by Penn State’s Committee on Early Modern Studies, held on April 13 and 14 in the Foster Auditorium. (See (http://www.earlymod.psu.edu/) for information.) The exhibition will be reinstalled in the summer, from July 1 through August 31.
The publication in 1516 of Thomas More's Utopia brought a new literary genre into existence, and by 1611 the word "utopia" made it into an English dictionary. After More's Utopia, writers throughout Europe wrote similar novels about idealized communities that were nestled in the distant reaches beyond the known world.
Implicit within all utopian novels is a critique of the political and moral organization of cities. As many scholars have noted, a utopia presents an idealized community that is supposed to stand in sharp contrast to the reader's experience of city life and represent a possible alternative world. The fictional claim of most utopian novels is that the city depicted in the story actually does exist-for example, on a distant island.
Utopian literature is also allied with discourse on city planning. As writers described the internal structure and operation of their ideal cities, they relied on treatises on architecture and city planning, such as the one surviving Roman treatise written by Vitruvius. Architects, like novelists, composed imaginary cities that never left the paper on which they are drawn.
The materials on display include a selection of the holdings of the Arthur O. Lewis Utopia Collection in the Special Collections Library.
Celebrating Our Roots: 100 Years of Home Economics at Penn State
“Celebrating Our Roots: 100 Years of Home Economics at Penn State," is on display in the Special Collections Library, 104 Paterno Library, April 25 through July 25, 2007. The exhibit contains over 100 photographs and items from the collections of the Penn State University Archives.
The exhibit explores the history of home economics at Penn State, from the establishment of the Department of Home Economics in 1907 through the 1960s when it was a College of Home Economics, offering multiple degree options. It celebrates the people, places, and programs that were a part of home economics at Penn State through photos and memorabilia representing various aspects of the home economics curriculum, including home art, clothing and textiles, foods and nutrition, hotel and institutional administration, commercial consumer services, child development, and home management. The display also includes home economics faculty and administration, buildings and places, and the "early years" of home economics.
The exhibit is part of the Home Economics Alumni Reunion and 100-Year Celebration, which is sponsored by the College of Health and Human Development. The reunion is scheduled for April 27-28, 2007. "Because the College of Home Economics is a forerunner of the College of Health and Human Development, the reunion will celebrate our roots," said Fred Vondracek, interim dean of the College of Health and Human Development. "The College of Health and Human Development's focus—improving the quality of life of individuals, families, and communities—was of utmost importance to the home economics faculty and students who came before us."
“Collegian Chronicles”
The recently-published Collegian Chronicles: A History of Penn State from the Pages of the Daily Collegian, 1887-2006, compiles over a century's worth of reporting to serve as an historical account of Penn State as told by the student reporters and editors. The book explores how world events impacted campus life and how students impacted the world around them. More than 90 former Collegian writers, editors, and business managers from eight decades contributed new, original stories to The Collegian Chronicles. It also draws from hundreds of photos from the newspaper and within the collections of the Penn State University Archives and presents a colorful account of shared Penn State community experiences unrivaled in collegiate journalism.
To complement the release of this memorable book, the University Archives created an exhibition of words and images highlighting the 120 years of University history that figure so prominently in this compilation. The exhibit, curated by Alston Turchetta, Archives Assistant, captures selected headlines, bylines, and events that have proven memorable for all Penn State alumni.
Bellefonte Central Railroad Key to Local Development
Online Exhibit
University Park, PA—An exhibition charting the growth and significance of the Bellefonte Central Railroad from the turn of the twentieth century until its demise in the 1980s will be displayed in the Pattee Library main exhibit area from June 4 to August 24. The exhibition is being held in conjunction with the newly published Rails to Penn State by Michael Bezilla and Jack Rudnicki. The authors will give a presentation about the book, followed by a book signing on July 12, at 3:30 p.m. in the Foster Auditorium, 101 Pattee Library.
Bezilla and Rudnicki, both Penn State alumni, made extensive use of vast resources on the railroad in Penn State's Historical Collections and Labor Archives, within the Special Collections Library. The library acquired Bellefonte Central corporate records in 2001 and has a total of 122 boxes of cataloged archival materials in its holdings. Images from the collection comprise the current exhibition. "The Bellefonte Central corporate archive is one of the most detailed and comprehensive collections of its kind anywhere," Bezilla noted. "It's likely to be a tremendous asset for other researchers interested in the history of railroads, the University, and some of the other customers the BFC served, such as the lime and limestone industry."
The 19-mile-long rail line was Penn State's primary passenger and freight transportation link to the outside world for several decades. It began life in 1886 as the Buffalo Run, Bellefonte, and Bald Eagle Railroad and was reorganized as the Bellefonte Central in 1892. Hard-pressed by competing modes of transportation and changes in the regional economy, the Bellefonte Central ran its last train in 1982 and was abandoned in 1984.
At Bellefonte, it connected the campus and the surrounding State College community to the vast Pennsylvania Railroad system. "As a passenger hauler, the Bellefonte Central carried thousands of undergraduates and faculty members, along with such notables as steel magnates Andrew Carnegie and Charles Schwab and U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower," Bezilla said. "As a freight railroad, it carried virtually everything that Penn State and State College needed to function and to grow—bricks, office furniture, food, home appliances, paper, coal, gasoline, even new automobiles for the town's dealerships. Plus mail and express."
Bezilla, who is a director in University Relations, has authored many books on the history of Penn State. Rudnicki, a supply chain management graduate, is in sales management for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad Railway. "The Bellefonte Central corporate archive is one of the most detailed and comprehensive collections of its kind anywhere," Bezilla noted. "It's likely to be a tremendous asset for other researchers interested in the history of railroads, the University, and some of the other customers the BFC served, such as the lime and limestone industry."
Rails to Penn State will be available for sale at the book signing on July 12. Sponsored by Penn State University Libraries, the event is free of charge and open to the public.
For more information, contact James Quigel, head of Historical Collections and Labor Archives, at 814-863-3181.
