Online Exhibits

Few women botanical illustrators or natural scientists from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were widely recognized, credited, or published under their own names. However, women permeated the natural sciences, whether they worked as independent illustrators or uncredited artists. Maria Sybilla Merian and Anna Botsford Comstock, featured in this exhibit, are two women who broke the mold and earned widespread recognition for their work.

This exhibit brings attention to women who succeeded in studying and practicing botanical art. The examples span the late 1600s to 2022, but this collection of books only partially represents women's impact in the botanical arts.

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The Travels with Wyn online exhibit features the thirty-three travel photo collages made by University of Denver Professor Emeritus Michael Pulman. In each of the collages, Wyn, Pulman's cat, is PhotoShoped into one of the photos. The collages showcase Pulman's creative approach to sharing his experience and knowledge. The exhibition aims to inspire university students to consider studying abroad.

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The No More Pios online explores a DU timeline of mascots, nicknames, and branding and the changes over its 150-year history. These changes often took place alongside related social and cultural movements. For example, "Pioneer" has not always been the nickname, and Denver Boone was not the first mascot. DU's traditions have changed considerably over time, and these changes – like the demands to remove "Pioneer" as the nickname – have largely been student-driven.

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Coloradans have been fascinated by our neighboring red planet, Mars, since the 1890s. Beginning in the 1940s, Colorado universities, companies, and individuals have worked toward reaching the planet and understanding its many mysteries. The MARS online exhibit was developed by the University of Denver Libraries, Special Collections, and it explores the different people and institutions from Colorado that have been instrumental in United States Mars missions.

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Most histories of women of color at predominantly white institutions begin and end with "firsts." Much is known about Emma Azalia Hackley (1900), but the story of Grace Mabel Andrews (AB, 1908), the second Black woman to graduate from the University of Denver (DU), is representative of the stories of many other Black women to graduate from DU during the first half of the twentieth century. The Seeking Grace online exhibit explores the story of Grace, and so many Black women like her, who appear in glimpses: a commencement program, a yearbook photograph, an entry in a census record, a mention in a newspaper. Grace's own personal records - diaries, photographs, letters - are not found in any institutional archives. This exhibit's title is deliberate; in seeking Grace's history, we also seek a measure of representation and reconciliation for her and for all who followed.

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The Woodstock West: "Build, Not Burn" online exhibit reenacts the day-to-day events of Woodstock West, including student protests, police and National Guard intervention, and the students' desire to "Build, Not Burn," the slogan that would become a rallying cry for the encampment. It also reflects on the significance of student activism and its impact on campus policies and practices.

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The Healing with Dignity online exhibit juxtaposes archival material from the Jewish Consumptives' Relief Society (JCRS) with contemporary healthcare access and equity issues. Each poster, curated by DU students, connects historical artifacts to contemporary organizations, individuals, and questions. By placing examples from the past and the present side by side, we hope to highlight the value of culturally sensitive care, celebrate successful institutions and leaders, and call attention to the work yet to be done.

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The Ira M. and Peryle Hayutin Beck Memorial Archives serve as a repository of the heritage of Jewish culture and history of the Rocky Mountain region, emphasizing Colorado. This includes the creative works of the many artists that are part of our community. The Artwork from the Beck Archives online exhibit focuses on some of the incredible artistic works from the Beck Collection and the individuals who made them.

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The University of Denver (DU) has participated in Earth Day since its inception on April 22, 1970. The year 2020 marked the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, which gave a voice to an emerging public consciousness about the state of our planet. All items featured in the DU Know About Earth Day? online exhibit were gathered from the University Libraries Special Collections and its government documents holdings.

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The Portrait Project: Child Survivors of the Holocaust online exhibit features the collection of the Ira M. and Peryl Hayutin Beck Memorial Archives by artist and University of Denver Professor Deborah Howard. The project involved drawing 25 survivors of the Holocaust. Four of the drawings are housed in the collection at Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, Israel. The remaining 21 drawings, study materials, photographs, and other associated artworks, are now part of the Beck Archives.

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In the past decade, both on the DU campus and beyond, social media has played a significant role in activist movements, providing activists with a platform to highlight injustice, build community and rally people to their cause. Where relevant, hashtags for protest actions are included in image captions. The #RESIST online exhibit features images from the University of Denver Archives and images provided by student activists on the DU campus for recent protest actions. The exhibit is necessarily limited to protest actions documented in the Archives or student activists and available to the exhibit curators.

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The Chasing the Cure online exhibit tells the story of colorado's international reputation as "The World's Sanatorium, a title earned in the 1880s because of its high altitude and sunny, temperate climate. The state's small Jewish community was the first to come forward to aid consumptives who arrived in droves to "chase the cure" for tuberculosis, or "The White Plague," as it was also known, the leading cause of death in late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century America.

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The Art of the Abecedarium online exhibit of abecedaria ("alphabet books") explores creative interpretations of letters and language. An artist's book is an artistic expression that uses the form or function of "book" as inspiration. The artistic initiative reflected in the illustration, materials, process, and design makes it an art object. Incorporating a wide variety of artistic and literary disciplines, the artists and their books challenge the idea, content, and structure of the traditional book.

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This online exhibit showcases HYLAEA, an interactive, site-specific installation created by artists Tim Weaver. HYLAEA brings together artifacts of lost ecological memory. These artifacts are the deep colors and textures of extinct birds, sonic translations of the DNA and proteins of missing species, and books containing the published records of North America's breathtaking wildlife. These sounds and images of lost habitats create an immersive sensory experience for the audience. Mining the University Libraries' Special Collections and Archives and the extinct species cabinets at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Weaver's exploration of artifacts and lost ecological memory brings records of human-induced extinctions to life.

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The The Loewenstein Family online exhibit and the historical documents in the Lowenstein Family Papers and Art collection tell the story of one Jewish family's miraculous survival amidst the horrors of the Holocaust. Two exceedingly rare documents from 1942 served as eviction notices. They order the recipients to report at a certain date and time to a government building in Berlin. In reality, the notice was a summons of deportation to death camps. If obeyed, the recipient was killed. If not obeyed, the recipient most certainly did not retain the letter. That notice led to the deaths of an estimated 60,000 Jews.

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Hanya Holm is popularly known for her innovative choreography in Broadway musicals like My Fair Lady and Kiss Me, Kate. She is also revered as one of the "big four" founders of modern dance, alongside Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman. The Hanya Holm: When Modern Dance Came to Colorado online exhibit features images of Holm throughout her career as a dancer, choreographer, and educator, as well as never-before-exhibited images of Holm in personal settings.

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