When you want books, you go to the library. When you want art, you finger-paint your wall, make a silly putty sculpture, or maybe even pay a visit to the DUMA.
But if you?re a frequenter of the Perkins computer cluster, you know that some of the best art on campus is found not in a museum, but in the library. A year and a half ago, the otherwise sterile hallway between the cluster and the main entrance was an appropriately foreboding descent into the dark depths of the 24-hour computer lab. Since spring 2001, however, the photographs and other visual artifacts gracing its walls have served as a pleasant distraction for passersby, as well as a live space for professors and local teachers who bring their classes to examine the art.
Karen Glynn, who coordinates the exhibits, said that the corridor was an obvious choice for gallery space. "Because it is a heavily travelled, rather narrow hallway, the students literally come face-to-face with the work," she said. "That immediacy, that proximity, fuels the vitality of the gallery."
The exhibits, which change three times a year, are drawn from the Visual Materials Archives in the Special Collections Library. The archives contain boxes upon boxes of documentary photography, antique advertisements, motion picture footage and memorabilia, such as the movie posters exhibited in January?s Local Color installment, which hung in conjunction with the Film and Video Program?s conference on moviegoing in the American South.
The current exhibition, Jesse Andrews' Thirteen Month Crop: One Year in the Life of a Piedmont Virginia Tobacco Farm also focuses on themes in the South. In black and white photographs, Andrews captures the history and current state of small family tobacco farms from all angles?the growth of agribusiness, the national campaign against tobacco use, the role of family and farmworkers and the process of growing. Powerful excerpts from oral histories collected by Charles Thompson of the Center for Documentary Studies enhance the images. Andrews, Thompson and Tom Rankin, also of the CDS, will present their work at the opening Oct. 8, and the exhibit will hang for the remainder of the fall semester. Next up: A collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center of black college student newspaper coverage of the Civil Rights movement.
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