by Clements Library | Nov 19, 2024 | Acquisitions, Collections, Graphics, Library Work, News
The past year has been an incredibly busy time for the Clements Library’s Graphics Division, with over 80 new finding aids having been created for a variety of collections that can now be requested for use in the reading room. Let’s take a look at a few highlights!
by Clements Library | Oct 18, 2024 | Collections, Graphics, Library Work
Remember those attendance awards in elementary school? Recognition of student achievement is nothing new. Graduate student assistant Annika Dekker writes about Rewards of Merit, awards given to students or young people to recognize and congratulate them on an achievement, usually academic. These awards started in the 1600s, and have continued today. Learn more about the Rewards of Merit housed here at the Clements Library!
by Isaac Burgdorf | Sep 9, 2024 | Collections, Exhibits, Graphics
Political satire is not a gentle art—it is meant to leave a mark. Since the heyday of James Gillray and William Hogarth in 18th-century England, visual satirists have been able to “say” things about political leaders in their illustrations that would get writers censored (or worse). As such, it has played an important role in American political culture for over two centuries. Many of the qualities that we most readily associate with political leaders in our past come to us from satirical illustrations, not from things those leaders actually did. This exhibit invites you to think about how visual satire has shaped the way you think about political life in America. What can visual artists say about politics that writers can’t? What role does visual satire play in American political life in an age when most of what we read (and see) is online, rather than in a newspaper?
by Clements Library | Aug 30, 2024 | Fellowships, Graphics
Laramy Fellow Johnathon Beecher Field recounts his visit to the Clements last fall for research for his book, The Objects of Settler Innocence. In this book, he argues that “a constellation of physical objects… work to obscure the realities of settler colonialism for its present-day beneficiaries.” This includes settler kitsch – “the ubiquitous renderings of the Anglo-Indigenous encounter as something that is impossible to take seriously.”
by Chris Ridgway | Apr 4, 2024 | Conservation, Events, Featured, Graphics, Today in history
It’s been said that witnessing an event born of the natural world makes poets of scientists and scientists of poets. Americans will experience a total solar eclipse on Monday, April 8, 2024. Perhaps this will be your first? Maybe you are already an eclipse hunter and...
by Tiffani Ihrke | Jan 24, 2024 | Featured, Graphics, Library Work, Maps, News
In January 2024, Sierra Laddusaw joined the University of Michigan community as the Curator for Maps and Graphics at the Clements Library. Sierra comes to Michigan from University of Arkansas – Fort Smith where she was the Scholarly Communication Librarian....
by Jakob Dopp | Aug 7, 2023 | Collections, Graphics
One of the most rewarding aspects of working at a place like the Clements Library is that you never know what you might stumble across on any given day. For instance, last summer I noticed a box out of the corner of my eye with the word “Autochromes” scribbled in...
by Clements Library | Nov 10, 2022 | Featured, Graphics
Claire Danna is the current Joyce Bonk Fellow at the Clements library and a graduate student at the University of Michigan’s School of Information. Their primary work at the Clements has involved scanning the Tinder postcard collection and helping to shape the...
by Clements Library | Aug 30, 2022 | Acquisitions, Featured, Graphics, Manuscripts, News
In October 2021, the Clements Library obtained a cabinet card portrait of one of the famous late-19th-century “Oregon Long-Haired Wonder” horses. It is a beautiful photograph, showing this chestnut-colored Clydesdale with his hair braided and done up with...