News and Exhibits

A Paul Whiteman Collection Tangent

I will spend a year working on the Paul Whiteman collection, and during that year, I will process many parts of the 582 linear foot collection. I will process everything from photographs and personal files to scrapbooks and artifacts. But the boundaries of this wide-ranging collection are not clear-cut. Some materials came from Whiteman and his family, some from other sources. At this point, I will take a step to the side and address what began as a separate collection in the archives--the Carl Johnson records. Continue reading »

Breaking Down a Large Collection: The Photographs Series

The Paul Whiteman Collection is currently estimated to be 582 linear feet. Taken all at once, processing such a collection would be a daunting and seemingly impossible task. In fact, the collection is so large (it contains not only paper files, but also a door and a small piano--more on these artifacts later), that it cannot be housed in a single location. Continue reading »

Pictures for the Season

A small display of original art for Christmas and the winter season painted by Pauline Baynes is on view through December in the Special Collections Instruction Gallery, Sawyer Room 408, Monday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Baynes (1922–2008), a prolific artist and designer, is best known as the… Continue reading »

Welcome to the Paul Whiteman Collection!

Paul Whiteman was a Denver-born musician turned international showman. His career in the entertainment industry lasted more than fifty years, and he cultivated relationships with artists from George Gershwin to Bix Beiderbecke and Bing Crosby. Whiteman’s outsized presence and natural charisma won him fans of all ages in arenas from concert halls to radio broadcasts and the silver screen. Continue reading »

Students Write on Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright in the Instruction Gallery

Students in Michael Lewis’s Modern Architecture course (ARTH 262) have written labels for a small exhibition on Frank Lloyd Wright now in the Special Collections Instruction Gallery (Sawyer 408), complementing the Wright exhibition currently in the Chapin Gallery. The student display, an exercise in how to concentrate art historical analysis,… Continue reading »

Fall intern: Remy Gates

Special Collections welcomes Remy Gates as our Simmons Archives Management intern for the Fall semester. Remy is currently enrolled in the Simmons College Masters Program in Library and Information Science, with a concentration in Cultural Heritage Informatics. He is a 2016 graduate of Williams College with a degree in Japanese. Continue reading »

Hands Up – Antigone in Ferguson

Created by Christine Tamir ’18, the display features Sawyer Library materials depicting the major themes from Antigone in Ferguson: tragedy, race-based violence, the interaction between citizens and the law, and the sentiments surrounding those themes.  The display is organized in three sections: the classic Greek tragedy, the political climate, and… Continue reading »