November 12, 2014 Meeting of University Library Exhibitions Committee

Agenda not yet available.

Anna Chen, Kasie Janssen, Pat Miller, Jody Waitzman (chair)

Graduate Student Exhibit Contest

Email update from Pat Miller on 11/13/14 reviewing discussion of the Grad Student Contest decision:

Hi everyone. We had a productive meeting yesterday and were able to come to consensus on two winners,
“Assemble: How Protests Have Shaped University History, 1927-present,” and “Words into Music.”

One of the strong points about the first entry was its timeliness.
Another strong point was that The Student Life and Culture and the Champaign County Historical Archives will be hosting an event in the Town and Gown Speaker Series in April of 2015, which is when this exhibit will be up.

We had some concern about the general description in this entry, which cites five protest movements, but only seems to address four. This exhibit may incur some costs for reproductions.

The second winner, “Words into Music,” was selected for its originality and for a pleasing design. Although we found the labels pretty, they were also difficult to read and we will be suggesting a clearer font in at least 14 point type. We also hope they will be willing to substitute black linen for crushed velvet backdrops. We will offer this entry the March time slot.

I’ll be checking with the winners to see if any are foreign nationals.

In that case, they need to meet with Kathy Veach before accepting the prizes. Each winning entry will receive $200.

We spent some time discussing the other three entries, and while we did not feel they were as outstanding as the other two, we will be suggesting some time slots that are available in the Marshall Gallery, where they might be able to mount their exhibits, even though they did not win the prize money. There are openings in May, July, August, September, and October.

“Beyond! Bienvenido! and Bienvenue!” suggested that graphic novels could be part of learning a foreign language. We were disappointed that the exhibit design was limited to a display of books and that the labels submitted lacked much interpretation.

The exhibit entry, “Innovation in Instruction: The University Library and Teaching Students,” did not seem to have strong appeal for students outside the library curriculum. We found the labels wordy and the concepts hard to convey in a visual manner. We liked the fact that the exhibit will have online access.

“The Gods Who Became Immortal: Greek Mythology in Western Children’s and Young Adult Literature” was also limited to a display of books, without other items to add interest. The labels were quite wordy. We felt there was a lack of clarity about the point of the exhibit.

We appreciated having input from our members who were not able to join us for the discussion. I hope I have presented the gist of our deliberations. If you have any strong feelings about our choices, please let us know right away. We value your opinions and would listen to your views. We are charged to notify everyone tomorrow by 5:00 p.m.. and I’d actually like to do it in the morning. So, if you have any thoughts, please try to get to me by the end of today.