Current and Forthcoming Exhibits
Color Enhanced: Use of Color in Scientific Books
June 16 - September 14, 2008
Using inexpensive digital cameras, photo-editing software, and inkjet technology, 21st-century consumers can readily experiment with color printing. Authors, illustrators, printers, and publishers of an earlier age did not have it so easy: they incorporated color into illustrations of science and natural history at considerable cost and with mixed success. The exhibit “Color Enhanced: Use of Color in Scientific Books” explores the results from the 15th through the 20th century, drawing on strong holdings of illustrated books of science and natural history in the Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The exhibit looks at the physics of color through works like Newton’s Opticks (1704), famous for the experiment on the composition of white light. Ironically, diagrams of color phenomena used in the Opticks, like most illustrations in early scientific books, were in black and white. Illustrations in color were more likely to appear in books of natural history, usually result of hand-coloring applied to engravings or lithographs; and both amateurs and specialists seemed willing to pay a premium for illustrations that teemed “with Nature’s lively hues.“ The phrase comes from George Dyer’s verses as included in R. J. Thornton’s Temple of Flora, one of the works on exhibit.
Tasks of identification and classification demanded accuracy and consistency, and naturalists and serious collectors struggled with the definition (and reproduction) of color standards against which to measure a valuable mineral or a rare bird. For armchair explorers, the exotic in nature held particular appeal; for readers seeking relief from the gray world of coal-powered industrialization, the brighter the better. Ambitious publishers and authors in the 19th century could offer subscribers a regular dose of color mixed with learning, thanks to less expensive publishing technology and a stable of hand-colorists.
The exhibit also explores the use of color to convey abstract concepts from chemistry to geometry, early manuals for hand coloring, and innovations in color printing. Taking advantage of the riches of the Library’s holdings, multiple copies of hand-colored illustrations can be compared side by side, showing inconsistencies in the application of color and the effects of time on specific hues.
This exhibit is designed to complement The Culture of Print in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine, a conference organized by the Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America, to be held September 12-13, 2008, in Madison, Wisconsin.
The Art of College Humor
Mid-September through December 2008
This exhibit will feature the extensive and lively collection of campus humor magazines assembled and donated to the Department of Special Collections by John and Barbara Dobbertin. The magazines on display, from the Harvard Lampoon to the UW’s own Octopus, are part of what may be the largest collection of college humor magazines in the United States. The collection ranges from the late 19th century to the 21st, and addresses topics both light-hearted and controversial. Some of the humor stands well the test of time, while other jokes and cartoons make today’s readers cringe.
The exhibit in Special Collections will complement an exhibit of cover art from campus humor magazines (in Memorial Union, August 1 - September 16, 2008) and an exhibit (in the Kohler Art Library, August 2008) focused on the work of James Watrous. “Jimmy” Watrous produced cover art for the Octopus in his student days; he later held the title Oskar Hagen Professor of Art History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
A lecture and gallery tour for the exhibit in Special Collections will be scheduled for fall semester.
For more about the Dobbertin gift, see the cover article, “The wit and wisdom of campus humor,” in the Friends of the Library Magazine (2007), pp. 12-13.
Recent Exhibit
WorkBooks
February 18 - May 19, 2008
Workbooks — seen as places for inventing, sketching, and reflecting — offer raw and unmediated views of taking notes and shaping information. This exhibit explored the history of workbooks and focuses on the book as an active “site.” It drew on the workbooks and sketchbooks of UW-Madison faculty and staff and other invited artists, complemented by related holdings of the Department of Special Collections. Guest exhibit curator was Derrick Buisch, associate professor of art, UW-Madison. An exhibit at the Kohler Art Library featured other titles that speak to the theme of sketchbooks and workbooks.
An online illustrated checklist of the exhibit is in preparation.
Some of the worksbooks and sketchbooks loaned for the purpose have since traveled to the University of Minnesota, where they appeared in an exhibition entitled WorkBook at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery in the Regis Center for Art, on the West Bank campus of the University of Minnesota.
Appearing Elsewhere
Images from rare books in Special Collections appear in such new publications as
- Matthew H. Edney, “Mapping parts of the world,” in Maps: Finding our place in the world, ed. James R. Akerman and Robert W. Karrow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007) — featuring the title page of Aaron Rathborne, The surveyor (1616) from the Thordarson Collection.
- Tara E. Nummedal, Alchemy and authority in the Holy Roman Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007) — with an illustration from Stephan Michelspacher, Cabala, Spiegel der Kunst und Natur, in Alchymia (1615) on the dustjacket. Special Collections holds three editions of Michelspacher's work, two in the Duveen Alchemy and Chemistry Collection.