CHICAGO (December 12, 2007) - Do you ever wonder how the Newberry Library acquires books that have been out of print for centuries, maps that were once in a private collection, or the personal papers of a famous writer? This spring, you will meet five of the luckiest people at the Newberry -curators, librarians, and archivists - who build the collections. Stop by the Library from March through May to view 30 recent new acquisitions in a free exhibit.
The Newberry Consort completes its twenty-first season with a musical trip to medieval France. You'll relish The Play of Robin and Marion even more if on February 9, the Saturday before the concerts, you join David Douglass at 10 am for a preview seminar (free for Consort subscribers). Then walk south on Dearborn to the Alliance Française to hear troubadour poetry and learn how to distinguish troubadours from trouvères.
Novelists Geraldine Brooks, the author of the Pultizer-prize winning March, and National Public Radio's Scott Simon are the two best-known authors you will meet in this season's Meet the Author series, co-sponsored by the Newberry Library's A.C. McClurg Bookstore.
For a complete schedule of events, please visit www.newberry.org or view a sampling of events below.
General information:
Location: 60 West Walton Street, Chicago IL 60610
Public Information: Call (312) 255-3700 or visit www.newberry.org
Exhibit Hours: Monday, Friday, and Saturday, 8:15 am - 5:30 pm
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, 8:15 am - 7:30 pm
Admission is free unless otherwise noted.
January 2008
Exhibition: Mapping Manifest Destiny: Chicago and the American West
November 3, 2007 - February 16, 2008
Mapping Manifest Destiny draws on the Newberry's renowned map collections to examine the role
of maps in envisioning the American West - documenting its terrain, fixing its boundaries, exploiting its natural resources, and developing its land. The exhibition, featuring almost 60 historic maps and views from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries, offers a fresh lens through which to understand the crucial role maps played in the building of a nation.
Exhibition: Ptolemy's Geography and Renaissance Mapmakers
November 3, 2007 - February 16, 2008
Ptolemy's Geography and Renaissance Mapmakers features the Newberry's internationally renowned collection of Renaissance printed editions of Geography by Claudius Ptolemy, the famed second century Greek astronomer and father of modern geography. Learn how Renaissance mapmakers slowly transformed Ptolemy's work from an ancient text to the foundation for Renaissance atlases.
Orson Welles: Tragic Genius of Stage and Film
Wednesday, January 9
Reception, 5:30 pm; Presentation, 6:15 pm ($9/includes wine, beer and soft drinks)
Speaker: Michael Wilmington, Film Critic, Author, Instructor
Orson Welles was an acknowledged genius of American film and theater. In 1941, at the age of twenty-five, he directed, co-wrote, and starred in Citizen Kane, regarded by many as the greatest movie ever made. Yet he almost vanished from American studio sound stages after Kane, having only four more studio directorial assignments for the rest of his career. What is the true measure of the man and of his movies? We'll explore this question while viewing clips from Welles classics.
Mapping Paradise: A History of Heaven on Earth
Saturday, January 19
11:00 am
Speaker: Alessandro Scafi, The Warburg Institute, University of London
When early Christians adopted the Hebrew Bible with its story of Genesis, the Garden of Eden became for them a paradise on earth, situated in real geography and indicated on maps. In Mapping Paradise, Alessandro Scafi explores medieval intellectual conditions that made mapping paradise possible. He also accounts for the transformations in theological doctrine and cartographic practice that eroded belief in a terrestrial paradise and led to historical and regional mapping of the Garden of Eden, beginning in the Reformation and continuing today.
People of the Book: A Novel
Wednesday, January 23, 6:00 pm
Speaker: Geraldine Brooks
If you enjoyed Robert Hellenga's The Sixteen Pleasures and its sequel, The Italian Lover, and Audrey Niffenegger's best-selling novel The Time Traveler's Wife, you will love People of the Book. An actual book, the Sarajevo Haggadah, is the central figure in Pulitizer-prize winning novelist Geraldine Brooks' People of the Book. Her fictional account builds imaginatively upon known facts about this precious illuminated, fourteenth-century Passover codex's journey from medieval Spain to Bosnia's National Museum. The Sarajevo Haggadah is a treasured symbol of Jewish presence and survival in the Balkans.
A book signing follows the talk.
The Art of Mapping the Heart
Saturday, January 26
11:00 am
Speaker: Ruth Watson, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Ruth Watson is a New Zealand/Australian artist and a prizewinning scholar in historical geography. For more than fifteen years, her art has focused on how maps construct our ideas of the globe. In an illustrated talk, she will discuss how she has used salt, images of her tongue, and other unconventional media to create works of art based on the cordiform, a heart-shaped projection of the globe developed in the sixteenth century.
Winter: A Time of Telling
Thursday, January 31, 6:30 pm
The traditional storytelling season for many American Indians falls between the first and last frosts. Join us as Stockton Elementary School students perform Ho-chunk trickster tales. Welcome back Larry Lockwood (Northern Cheyenne), a perennial "Winter" favorite with his energetic presentations of traditional and not-so-traditional stories.
February 2008
Love's Messenger: Victorian Valentines
Wednesday, February 6
Reception, 5:30 pm; Presentation, 6:15 pm ($9/includes wine, beer and soft drinks)
Speaker: Debra N. Mancoff, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Few men today-and even fewer women-would wish to return to the strictly regulated rituals of Victorian romance. But nostalgia surrounds the Victorian legacy, and in a world of mass-produced and disposable cards, many long for handmade and heartfelt keepsakes of the past. Don't be deceived by the whimsical appearance of Victorian valentines: these confections of paper lace and scraps and silk and artificial flowers were serious symbols of honorable intentions. Join author and exhibit curator Debra Mancoff to explore Victorian valentines and the traditions that made them "Love's Messenger."
Troubadour Poems from the South of France
Saturday, February 9, 1:30 pm
Speakers: William D. Paden and Frances Freeman Paden, Northwestern University
(Note location: Alliance Française de Chicago, 54 W. Chicago Ave.)
Troubadour poetry conjures up romantic images of medieval knights and ladies, but the English verse translations by William and Frances Paden will surprise and delight you. For one thing, quite a few troubadour poems were written by women. As you might expect, the Padens will recite love songs, but the tenth-, eleventh-, and early fourteenth- century verses also include satires, invectives, debates, laments, and religious songs.
The Dance COLEctive's Written on the Body
Tuesday, February 12, 6:00 pm
Choreographer: Margi Cole, Artistic Director, with Ken Daley, Columbia College
Margi Cole is not the first fan of the Brontë sisters to make a pilgrimage to Haworth, their isolated home on the Yorkshire moors. But what she came away with is unique: inspiration for Written on the Body, a dance about the three Victorian women who published under male pseudonyms. See the company perform movements from the piece, and join Margi Cole in conversation with Brontë scholar Ken Daley about masculine and feminine duality in the works and lives of Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Brontë.
Newberry Consort: The Play of Robin and Marion
February 14-17
In the spirit of Valentine's Day, we present a medieval debate on the subject of love. Like the troubadours, trouvères sang the stories of their lives in elegant and touching verse. The centerpiece of this poetic debate is Le Jeu de Robin et Marion by trouvère Adam de la Halle. This first account of the romance of Robin and Marion is semi-staged and set to the improvised accompaniment of lutes, fiddles, flutes, recorders and percussion.
Thursday, February 14, 2:00 pm
Open rehearsal
Ruggles Hall, Newberry Library
Friday, February 15, 8:00 pm
Pre-concert lecture, 7:00 pm
Ruggles Hall, Newberry Library
Saturday, February 16, 8:00 pm
Pre-concert lecture, 7:00 pm
Fulton Hall, University of Chicago
Sunday, February 17, 3:00 pm
Lutkin Hall, Northwestern University
Picturing Common Ground: Mapmakers and Artists in the Nineteenth-Century American West
Saturday, February 16, 1:30 pm
Speaker: Diane Dillon, Newberry Library
To chart the vast reaches of the American West in the nineteenth century, the Federal government sponsored a series of scientific expeditions. As part of the surveys, mapmakers, photographers, and painters worked alongside scientists to document the landscape. Team members often influenced one another, producing topographical paintings and photographs and artistic maps. The co-curator of Mapping Manifest Destiny explains how these images worked together to create a comprehensive picture of the region, to plan military campaigns and transportation routes, to exploit natural resources, and to promote settlement, commerce, and tourism.
March 2008
Exhibition: Newberry Recent Acquisitions
March 15 - May 3
Viewing new acquisitions, such as those on display in this exhibition, is like opening holiday presents. Every year the Newberry adds to its holdings materials such as the medieval liturgical manuscripts, printed books of the Renaissance, colonial Americana, Latin American fine press volumes, and the contemporary calligraphic pieces you see displayed. They span 800 years, the earliest items being from the thirteenth century, the most recent, twenty-first century.
How does the Newberry Library acquire these remarkable things? Some are purchased, many are gifts. Some are even "time shares" thanks to an innovative Joint Acquisitions Program through which seven Midwestern institutions pool resources. Without generations of generous donors dating back to the Library's founding benefactor, Walter L. Newberry (1804-1868), none of these treasures would have come to the Newberry Library, where anyone 16 or older may consult them.
Amassing Treasures, Building the Newberry's Collections in the Twenty-First Century
Saturday, March 15, 1:30 pm
Speaker: Paul Saenger, The Newberry Library
Why was the Union Army's 7th Iowa called the "Grey Beard Regiment"? How can you recreate a dance from the Court of Louis XIV? Why would the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies partner with the Newberry Library to acquire a book written by a Franciscan friar in the middle ages? How did a collection of colorful Pennsylvania baptismal records end up in Germany? The George A. Poole III Curator of Rare Books and Collection Development Librarian answers these and other questions in an illustrated overview of the Newberry Library's acquisitions since 2001.
At 2:00 pm on the following Saturdays, tours of the Newberry Recent Acquisitions exhibit will be presented by the curators, librarians, and archivists who build the collections:
March 22, Jack Simpson, Curator of Local and Family History
March 29, Martha Briggs, Lloyd Lewis Curator of Midwest Manuscripts
April 19, Paul F. Gehl, Custodian, John M. Wing Foundation on the History of Printing
April 26, John Brady, Director of Reader Services - Bibliographer of Americana
Sixteenth Annual Mystery Book Fair
Friday, March 14, Noon - 6:00 pm
Saturday, March 15, 9:00 am - 2:00 pm
The Newberry Library offers two days of sleuthing to find all the hard cover and paperback mysteries you can handle, including true-crime, mystery classics, mysteries of the heart (a.k.a. romance), and science fiction.
Grey Owl, Long Lance, and Honoré Jaxon: Prairie Pretenders
Saturday, March 15, 11:00 am
Speaker: Donald B. Smith, University of Calgary (Alberta)
Honoré Jaxon: Prairie Visionary (2007) is the final volume in a biographical trilogy of three men who re-invented themselves as North American Indians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Jaxon book follows Smith's biographies of Long Lance (1982) and of Grey Owl (1990). Don Smith will make the case that, by reinventing themselves, these three "pretenders" on the fringes of the mainstream contributed to society by championing Aboriginal peoples in North America when few in the mainstream society did so.
Windy City: A Novel of Politics
Tuesday, March 18, 6:00 pm
Speaker: Scott Simon, National Public Radio
In his second novel (researched and written in part at the Newberry Library), the host of "Weekend Edition with Scott Simon" returns to his roots with an uproarious tale of his native city's rough-and-tumble politics. Sonny Roopini, a Chicago alderman and South Asian American from Devon Avenue, is thrust into the spotlight when the mayor dies at his desk one evening of an apparent heart attack. The spotlight turns into the hot seat, as Roopini begins to suspect that the mayor's death was not due to natural causes.
A book signing follows the talk.
The Seldoms' Monument: A Preview and Discussion
Thursday, March 20, 6:00 pm
Choreography by Carrie Hanson, Artistic Director
Text and dramaturgy by Doug Stapleton, Artistic Associate
The Seldoms, a Chicago-based dance and performance company, presents a preview of Monument, a new work inspired by a landfill that can be seen from space. The largest man-made object in the world is an "accidental monument." Through choreography, sound, and image, the Seldoms' new contemporary dance work considers the acts of preservation, creation, and destruction in balancing short term concerns with long-term prosperity and survival.
British and American Elections in Perspective
Wednesday, March 26
Reception, 5:30 pm; Presentation 6:15 pm ($9/includes wine, beer and soft drinks)
Speaker: Martin Meenagh, Member of Middle Temple, Inns of Court (London)
The United States and the United Kingdom both consider themselves democracies. However, the process and theory of elections, and the practical business of electioneering, are remarkably different in the two countries. Advertising, the media, electoral law, the personal appeal of candidates, and the outcome of electoral strategies, are all marked by their distinct cultures. In this American election year, and with a new British administration in place, a former Oxford Tutor will illuminate the differences between, and throw a light on, the continuing relationship of two hubs of the English-speaking world.
April 2008
Newberry Consort: Españoletta
April 10-13
Body language, like music, can tell a story in the most immediate and visceral way. A thrilling finale to the Newberry Consort's 2007-2008 Series, this program presents diverse music from seventeenth-century Spain and Latin America. Dancers in full Baroque costume tell their tales of seduction in tarantelas, canarios, folias and more in this unique program full of dazzling rhythms and Latin spice.
Thursday, April 10, 2:00 pm
Open rehearsal
Ruggles Hall, Newberry Library
Friday, April 11, 8:00 pm
Pre-concert lecture, 7:00 pm
Ruggles Hall, Newberry Library
Saturday, April 12, 8:00 pm
Pre-concert lecture, 7:00 pm
Fulton Hall, University of Chicago
Sunday, April 13, 3:00 pm
Lutkin Hall, Northwestern University
Caxton Club / Newberry Library 2008 Symposium on the History of the Book
Rare Books and the Common Good: American Perspectives
Saturday, April 12, 9:00 am - 4:00 pm
What is the role of rare books and special collections libraries in a digital age? The term "rare" suggests costly and inaccessible, but symposium participants assert that research materials in specialized libraries are important to the preservation and development of our common intellectual heritage, and, as such, are of enduring public value and use. What will collectors and collections look like and where will rare books stand in a hierarchy of public priorities for the still-new twenty-first century?
Admission is free but registration is required. Please call (312) 255-3700 for reservations.
The Foreign Correspondent: Connecting Chicago and the World
Wednesday, April 16, 6:00 pm
Speakers: John Maxwell Hamilton, Louisiana State University, and Richard C. Longworth, Chicago Council on Global Affairs
Edward Price Bell (1869-1943) invented the job of foreign correspondent when he opened the London bureau of the Chicago Daily News in 1900. The autobiography of this once widely-known and highly respected foreign correspondent lay unpublished in the Newberry Library until John Maxwell Hamilton and Jaci Cole edited and published it as part of a series of memoirs and books by pioneering foreign correspondents. Following remarks on Bell, Hamilton will join Richard C. Longworth, prize-winning Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent for 20 years, for a conversation about how the roles and responsibilities of the foreign correspondent have changed from Bell's time to ours and what, if anything, has remained the same.
This program is co-sponsored by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
May 2008
The Wobblies as Memory and Model
Thursday, May 1, 6:00 pm
Speaker: David Roediger, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana
Followed by a conversation with Penelope and Franklin Rosemont, Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company
Can you imagine any better way to spend May Day than with the Industrial Workers of the World, the storied radical labor organization founded in Chicago in 1905? The Franklin and Penelope Rosemont Collection of IWW Publications and Ephemera, 1905-2005, a treasure trove of Wobbly literature, records, and ephemera acquired by the Newberry in 2006, is open for research. Historian David Roediger will revisit the IWW's legacy and then discuss with the Rosemonts the remarkable stories of how they assembled the collection over four decades.
Sweet Swan of Avon: Did a Woman Write Shakespeare?
Wednesday, May 7
Reception, 5:30 pm, Presentation, 6:15 pm ($9/includes wine, beer and soft drinks)
Speaker: Robin P. Williams, Author, Lecturer, Instructor
The question of whether William Shakespeare penned the works that bear his name is perennially popular. Robin P. Williams, an associate member of the Shakespearean Authorship Trust in London, considers a woman as author of the sonnets-most of which are love poems to a younger man-and of the plays. She argues that the authorship question is legitimate and lays out evidence for Mary Sidney (Herbert), the Countess of Pembroke, as the author of works attributed to William Shakespeare. Literary gifts certainly ran in the family. Mary Sidney's niece Mary Wroth is author of Urania, the first novel in English written by a woman-which the Newberry Library holds in manuscript.
A book signing will follow the talk.
ABOUT THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY
The Newberry Library, a preeminent humanities research and reference institution, is home to a world-class collection of books, manuscripts, maps, music, and other printed materials related to the history and culture of Western Europe and the Americas. The collections span many centuries. The Newberry offers research fellowships for scholars, exhibits based on its collections, and a broad array of programs and activities. The Newberry has been free and open to the public since 1887.