Over time, due to fires and natural disasters, conflicts and wars, as well as attrition, many manuscripts and other cultural treasures of Slavic Eastern Christianity were lost. Those that remain, together with a shared heritage of alphabets, literature, religious practice, iconography, music, architecture, among others, unite many of the Slavic peoples and nations.

This exhibit celebrates the approaching 30th anniversary of the founding of the Hilandar Research Library and Curator Predrag Matejic’s 40th year of preservation and research of medieval Slavic manuscripts.

In honor of his accomplishments and in conjunction with OSU’s celebration of his Olympic achievements, The Ohio State University Archives has created a display of Owens’ artifacts, photographs, and documents that highlight each stage of Owens’ life: his youth in Cleveland, his relationship to OSU as a student and life-time Buckeye, his record as an Olympian, and his service as an ambassador to the world.  Students, faculty, staff, and the public are invited to come see the exhibition which includes artifacts such as Owens’ Olympic diary, his bronzed shoe from 1935, and his Congressional Gold Medal.

The exhibition is located in the Thompson Library, 1858 Neil Ave., in the display area on the first floor outside the Gallery.  The Thompson Library is open Monday-Thursday, 7:30 a.m. -2 a.m.; Friday, 7:30 a.m. – 10 p.m.; Saturday,  8 a.m. -10 p.m.;  Sunday,  11 a.m. -2 a.m.

This exhibition documents the Curtiss Show Print Collection, a remarkable record of the beautiful letterpress work done by the company for its show business clients. The more than 1,200 printing blocks, as well as photographs, correspondence, job tickets, ledgers, and colorful print materials tell not only the story of the show printer, but also the history and legacy of traveling companies in the early to mid-20th century.

Ladies and gentlemen, you’ll see posters, window cards, heralds, tickets, ads, letterhead stationery, and much, much more. Want to know what entertained America “back then”? Step right up!

Check out the projects produced for the 15th Annual Denman Undergraduate Research Forum.  The Forum is an opportunity to showcase outstanding student research and encourage all undergraduates to participate in research as a value-added element of their education.  The Forum was created in 1996 and is a cooperative effort of The Ohio State University’s Honors & Scholars Center, The Undergraduate Research Office, and The Office of Research.

This exhibit features artifacts and printed materials from the collections of the Polar Archives and the Goldthwait Polar Library, illustrating the history of the Byrd Center from its inception in 1960 and its continuing research in the polar and global arena. The substantial contributions to polar research by members of the Center, both past and present, are highlighted.

As we celebrate the Center’s 50th anniversary, we also acknowledge the heroic polar explorers who paved the way for our scientists and explorers. Included in this exhibit are rare books, published narratives, and artifacts selected from the Polar Archival Program and the Goldthwait Polar Library, representing our favorite icons of polar exploration. Through these special collections, the Archival Program and the Library bring the struggles and human endeavors unique to thehistory of polar exploration to life in vivid detail.

Through 50 years of research excellence, the Byrd Polar Research Center (formerly the Institute of Polar Studies) has earned an international reputation as a premier polar and alpine research center with an expanding focus on global environmental issues. Its mission is to conduct multidisciplinary research, offer enhanced educational opportunities, and provide outreach activities that build and strengthen The Ohio State University’s program in polar processes, earth system sciences and environmental sciences.

Over the years, the scope of research at the Byrd Center has broadened significantly and now encompasses geological sciences, glaciology, paleoclimatology, meteorology, paleoceanography, satellite hydrology, remote sensing and mapping, and geochemistry. These scientific foci are complemented by the Byrd Polar Research Center Archival Program and the Goldthwait Polar Library.

Though the techniques and tools of conducting research have changed significantly over the years, the goal remains the same: quality interdisciplinary research in the world’s polar, alpine, and tropical regions.

Exhibit Curated by Laura Kissel, Polar Curator, Byrd Polar Research Center Archival Program, and Lynn Lay, Librarian, Goldthwait Polar Library

Sports Cartoons the Subject of Exhibition at OSU’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum

More than 50 sports cartoons will be on display as part of the exhibition Let the Games Begin: A Century of Sports Cartoons, on view at The Ohio State University’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum through April 9. The exhibition features original drawings by some of the most prolific and influential cartoon artists of the past century and includes likenesses of a wide variety of sports figures including Jack Dempsey, Dizzy Dean, Ted Williams, Willie Shoemaker, as well Ohio State athletics.

Editorial cartoons have a long history but the sports cartoon, as we know it now, evolved as a fixture on the sports page as athletic endeavors became more and more of a ubiquitous form of popular entertainment. Before television and higher-speed photography, sports cartoons were an important way for a commentator to communicate to the public the personalities on the field or to sum up an achievement or brewing controversy.

The cartoons featured in Let the Games Begin: A Century of Sports Cartoons span the 20th century from a time when boxing and horse racing captured the nation’s undivided attention to the end of the century and beyond, long after any remaining shreds of purity and innocence had been stripped from the public’s collective perception of the athletes it followed and admired. Drawn from several of the Cartoon Library’s collections, the works featured in this exhibit were published in newspapers from all over the United States. Artists featured in the exhibition include Willard Mullin, Arnold Roth, William Summers, Karl Hubenthal, the Columbus Dispatch’s Jeff Stahler, and more.

“Historic sports cartoon provide a wonderful window into the past. We are fortunate to have such rich holdings of these works in the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum,” stated Lucy Shelton Caswell, Professor and Curator of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum.

Let the Games Begin: A Century of Sports Cartoons was co-curated by Caswell and David Filipi, Curator of Film/Video, at the Wexner Center for the Arts. The exhibition was funded in part by the operating endowment of The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. A free exhibit brochure featuring an essay by David Filipi is available upon request. Caswell and Filipi co-curated the exhibition Jeff Smith: Bone and Beyond at the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2008.

Let the Games Begin: A Century of Sports Cartoons is in conjunction with Hard Targets, an exhibition at the Wexner Center for the Arts from January 30 through April 11, 2010.

Opening Event
Thursday January 21, 2010, 7 p.m.
Steve Clay, Granary Books’ founder and editor, will be present and give a short presentation.

For over 20 years, Granary Books has brought together writers, artists, and bookmakers to investigate verbal/visual relations in the time-honored spirit of independent publishing. Granary’s mission to produce, promote, document, and theorize new works exploring the intersection of word, image, and page has earned the Press a reputation as one of the most unique and significant small publishers operating today.

Granary’s project has been strengthened by a growing involvement in the organization, preservation, and sale of archives, manuscripts, and rare books by important contemporary writers and artists. While publishing remains central to Granary’s purpose, Granary is also deeply involved with a widespread and local community of writers, poets, and artists. For years Granary occupied a gallery space in Soho, hosting countless public events, lectures, and readings while curating exhibits related to books, book art, poetry, and writing. We believe that Granary’s publishing, preservation, and community outreach has significant long-term implications for the fields of writing and book art. Since the mid-’90s, Granary has sought to produce, promote, and contextualize scholarship investigating an emerging history of small press publishing, poetry, and artists’ books. Many of the books we have produced in this vein, including Johanna Drucker’s essential The Century of Artists’ Books, Jerome Rothenberg and Steve Clay’s A Book of the Book: Some Works & Projections About the Book & Writing, and Steve Clay and Rodney Phillips’s A Secret Location on the Lower East Side are now being used as textbooks at the college level, further opening and legitimizing the field for a new generation of scholars and practitioners.

Granary Books remains committed to publishing innovative written and visual work, observing progressive scholarship, and supporting adventurous bookmaking while exploring the relationships between seeing and reading, reading and seeking.

The Ohio State University’s Rare Books & Manuscripts Library is proud to own a nearly complete collection of all of Granary Books’ publications.

Steve Clay
Granary Books
www.granarybooks.com

Hours:
Wednesday and Thursday:
11 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Friday and Saturday:
12 – 4 p.m.
Also open by appointment

The exhibit celebrates the beauty of botanical images, and the value of botanical materials in artifacts of dress and adornment. Flowers, plants, ferns, vines and leaves, have long served as the design inspiration for textiles, garments, hats, gloves, shoes, purses, jewelry and buttons. An amazing array of plant fibers, stems, woods, nuts, fruits and berries provide substances from which clothing and accessories are fabricated.

The Historic Costume & Textiles Collection is a rich trove of such artifacts, many of which have never been displayed. We’ve delved into our gloves, shoes, hats, purses and jewelry, as well as our textiles and garments, to find the antique, the modern, the rare and the beautiful – all of which will be represented in this show.

A special feature of Flora in Fashion will be the display of a large selection of buttons from the Rudolph Button Collection. For the past two and a half years, volunteers from the Central Ohio Button Collectors Club (who provided the title for this exhibition) have sorted, identified, cleaned, repaired, cataloged and mounted buttons. A significant portion of the Rudolph Collection is now ready for public viewing.

“F in F” Special Events
In addition to our exhibition opening January 20, several special events are planned in conjunction with the exhibition:

Button Show, April 17-18, Presentation: The theme for the Annual Spring Show of The Buckeye State Button Society, April 17-18, is “Flora in Fashion” (the group generously offered to share that theme with this exhibition). Hosted by the Central Ohio Button Collectors, Friends of the Collection are invited to join the Button Collectors in Campbell Hall Auditorium on Saturday evening, April 17, for a lecture and reception in Campbell Hall Auditorium, with guest speaker, Dr. Mary Kathryn Whitson, Chair of the Department of Botany at Northern Kentucky University.

HCTC Spring Symposium, Saturday, May 22: The Historic Costume & Textiles Collection will again host a Symposium, with guest speakers from a variety of academic areas who will share their expertise on topics related to Flora in Fashion.

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was born on February 12, 1809 in Hardin County, Kentucky. Two hundred years later, communities across the country celebrate his life and remember his great legacy of redefining and initiating a path toward greater freedom and equality for all Americans.

The Ohio State University Libraries recognizes Lincoln in his bicentennial year with a selection of resources from its circulating collection. The exhibit serves as a learning tool that illustrates examples of biographical works from 1865 to recent times, contemporary photographs and political cartoons, paintings and sculpture. Selected primary sources from Lincoln documentary collections are shown, including a facsimile of his handwritten words spoken at Gettysburg and the opening paragraphs of his speech in Columbus, Ohio on September 16, 1859. Each piece is accompanied by brief information to enhance the viewer’s knowledge and enjoyment of the exhibit.

Exhibit curator: David Lincove, Librarian for History, Political Science and Philosophy

More information about the Lincoln bicentennial can be found at a web site created by the Library of Congress: http://www.lincolnbicentennial.gov/ .

Winsor McCay was an unusually prolific cartoonist. More than 30 comic strip titles and ten animated films are credited to him. The decade between 1903 and 1913 was his most creative period. His biographer, John Canemaker, states, “…when the American comic strip was in its infancy, McCay became the first master of the form with two unsurpassed works of genius: Dream of the Rarebit Fiend … and Little Nemo in Slumberland.” In addition, McCay was an important pioneer animator and a popular vaudeville performer.

The date and place of McCay’s birth are unknown. He grew up in Michigan and was self-taught. He created his first comic strip, A Tale of the Jungle Imps by Felix Fiddle, for the Cincinnati Enquirer in 1903. McCay soon left for New York City where he worked for James Gordon Bennett and later for William Randolph Hearst. Although his comic strips were formulaic, the sureness of his hand and the beauty of his drawings continue to delight. McCay’s interest in depicting movement is apparent throughout his comic strips, so it is not surprising that he found the new medium of animation intriguing.

In 1913 William Randolph Hearst ordered McCay to draw nothing but editorial illustrations. This constraint leaves contemporary students of McCay’s work puzzled. What might he have accomplished if he had devoted the last 20 years of his life to animation or comic strips? Winsor McCay: Legendary Cartoonist invites visitors to consider this question as they enjoy superb examples of McCay’s work that span his career.