Island Mountain Glacier - Photographs by Anika Steppe opens at TCPL January 9, 2015

TCPL's first exhibit during a Year of Art at Your Library, 2015 will be Island Mountain Glacier:  Photographs by Anika Steppe.

This exhibit is curated by Danielle Mericle, Coordinator Digital Media Group, Digital Scholarship and Pereservation Services, Cornell University Library and showcases  Anika Steppe’s photographic meditations from a winter stay in Iceland.  Steppe, an Ithaca College alumnus, explores, through her photographs, the poetries and possibilities of Iceland’s harsh, yet beautiful terrain and searches for a trace of what the Iclandic people refer to as huldufólk “hidden folk.” 

Steppe explained that her photographs became a type of metaphor for her stay in Iceland—showcasing the contrast between natural beauty and uninhabitable tundra, real and mythical.

“When the weather was bearable, Iceland seemed like the most expansive and forever-surprising place, yet on the windy days, it couldn’t have seemed smaller,” Steppe said.  “Being in a country known for its acceptance of mythical beings, such as the huldufólk, I felt compelled to search for traces of another’s existence; for a subtle energy that can’t quite be placed. It wasn’t exactly a search for mystical creatures prancing around; it became about confronting our limited ability to understand reality - about allowing myself to not immediately write off something that is considered outlandish - about earnestly entertaining the belief that there is something else.”

An opening reception will be held from 5 to 8 p.m. during Downtown Ithaca’s Gallery Night, Friday, January 9. Both Steppe and Mericle will be available to discuss the exhibit with participants.

After-hours access to the Library is available through the BorgWarner Community Room entrance, adjacent to TCAT’s Green Street bus shelter.

This exhibit is made possible in part through grant support from the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County and the Tompkins County Public Library Foundation.

A New Year of Art at Your Library starts January 2015

Once again, TCPL will showcase five major art exhibits during 2015.

January, February, March - Island Mountain Glacier - Photographs by Anika Steppe

The first exhibit of the year is curated by Danielle Mericle, Coordinator Digital Media Group, Digital Scholarship and Pereservation Services, Cornell University Library.
An opening reception will be held in conjunction with Gallery Opening Night on Friday, January 9, from 5 - 9 PM.

April, May, June - Cornell in the Community
Curated by Julee Johnson, this exhibit will reflect in images the role Cornell has played in the community and honors the founding of Cornell University in 2015. TCPL will be participating in Cornell Charter Day Sesquicentennial Celebrations with a Community Lunch in the BorgWarner Community Room on Friday April 24.

July, August, September - Surreal and Fantastic Art
Curators of this exhibit are members of State of the Art Gallery Frances Fawcett and Margaret Nelson.

July, August - Visual Culture at Ithaca High School 

Curated by Ithaca High School Art Faculty, this annual exhibit features the work of students created during the 2014-15 school year.  This year the work will be displayed in the Teen area of Youth Services.  
3-dimensional work will be displayed in the cases in the Avenue of the Friends.


October, November, December - Streetscapes Revisited 
This exhibit, curated by Jay Potter, once again brings inside the Library art more often found outside on our streets.  
In addition, TCPL will join with "Cap Matches Color," and "Ironlak AVT Paints," to celebrate the second anniversary of "Hip-Hop: Unbound from the Underground" with Get-Up STATE Again! and three days of live mural painting on the Cornell University Press Building by some of the world's leading graffiti artists, Friday September 25, 26, and 27.

Join TCPL at Gallery Night on Friday, December 5

Montage Histories: Tompkins County, through Photographs 1864-2014 is the Library's featured exhibit at Gallery Opening Night this Friday. 

Join us between 5 and 8 PM for a final opportunity to see these spectacular photo montages.  After 5 PM enter the Library through the BorgWarner Community Room Door behind the bus shelter on Green Street.

Special catalogs with historical text by Cornell PhD students Bret Leraul and Xine Yao as well as 34 photomontages will be available for sale for $17.25

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Don't miss the opportunity to purchase one. They make great Christmas gifts.

Montage Histories: Tompkins County, New York, through Photographs 1864-2014

Montage Histories: 
Tompkins County, New York, through Photographs 1864- 2014, illustrates significant buildings, places, and landscapes of Tompkins County from 1864 to 2014. The exhibit will be on display in Tompins County Public Library through December 2014.

N. Aurora St. by Sierra Davenport

A collaboration between the Library, the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University, Tompkins Cortland Community College Department of Photography and the History Center in Tompkins County, this exhibit brings together historical research and photographic montage to demonstrate “that architecture and life of Tompkins County is not a static thing, but something that grows, changes, evolves, just as any living thing.” (Laurie Snyder). 

N. Cayuga St. by Michelle Alex

The photographers have used the practice of re-photography, in which historic images are merged with new photographs of the same site, to create montages that capture life in Tompkins County since the Civil War.  

S. Cayuga and Green Sts. by Michelle Alex

An accompanying catalogue which features all the photographs in the exhibit and additional ones created during this project, with essays and explanatory text panels by PhD students Bret Leraul and Christine Yao, will be available for sale during the exhibit.

N. Tioga and E. Seneca Sts. by Cassidy Backus

Newfield Covered Bridge by Heather Dzikiewicz

Twenty three images are on display in the Library with another fourteen included in the full color catalog.

This exhibit and accompanying catalog were made possible with funding from the New York Council for the Humanities, The Society for Humanities, Cornell University, The Tompkins County Tourism Program, Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County, Tompkins Corland Community College Photography Program and the Tompkins County Public Library Foundation.

Mightier Than The Sword: The Impact of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin

This exhibit, curated by Julee Johnson, is displayed  in conjunction with our Sesquicentennial Celebration and Freedom to Read/Banned Book Week, and is made possible with material on loan from the Seward House Museum in Auburn and the Friends of the Tompkins County Public Library.

Called the most popular and influential novel of the 19th century – and Sunday School fiction by her literary critics –Uncle Tom’s Cabin was intended by Stowe to change minds and inspire the abolitionist movement. An unexpected runaway bestseller when it was published in 1852, it is one of the few novels of any era to evoke an entire genre of fiction written in protest, the pro-slavery plantation novel where masters are kind and slaves are happy. 

The sway Uncle Tom’s Cabin held on Northerners and Southerners alike lit a fuse that culminated in the Civil War. The novel was misinterpreted by promoters of minstrel shows, who used exaggerated characters from the novel to amuse their audiences and demean African-Americans. Attitudes toward Uncle Tom’s Cabin have always been conflicted, which this exhibit of books, artifacts and posters explains. 

Special opening reception is being held on Friday, September 26 at 7PM, and on Sundary, September 28 at 2 PM Elmira College Professor Charlie Mitchell will present “Re-reading Uncle Tom's Cabin after Django Unchained and Twelve Years a Slave,” an illustrated lecture.  This program will be held in the Library’s BorgWarner Community Room.

Tompkins County in a Time of War: Life on the Home Front and on the Battlefield

The exhibit Tompkins County in a Time of War: Life on the Home Front and on the Battlefield opens on Friday, September 26 and will be on display in the Avenue of the Friends through December 30.

Artifacts from The History Center in Tompkins County and the Seward House Museum in Auburn tell the story of local residents as they experienced life at home and on the battlefield. See the medical bag carried by Nurse Sophronia Bucklin as she ministered to the wounded and Groton resident Doctor Tarbell’s diary, open to the first page where he describes events on the first day of battle at Gettysburg. Also included are photographs illustrating the war-time lives of little Charlotte Seward and her parents, Lt. Col. and Mrs. William Seward Jr., who lived in a 2-room log cabin at Ft. Mansfield, where their encampment was named “Camp Nellie” in her honor. Rifles, swords, books, dresses, hats, flags, banners and much more are on display in this colorful, thought-provoking exhibit.

Following are excerts from some of the text panels incorporated in the exhibit.

Life On the Battlefield

From the beginning of the declaration of war in April 1861, Tompkins County residents were intimately involved in efforts to restore the Union. The young men who enlisted at the start of the war – some of whom were members of the DeWitt Guards – were the most recognizable outcome of local patriotism. Later, after the initial fervor waned and casualties mounted, a draft was instituted in 1863 that required service by all single men between the ages of 20 and 45. The Ithaca Journal listed draftees in its July 27, 1863 issue – over 1,000 young men from Ithaca, Groton, Ulysses, Caroline and all the surrounding towns in the county were named. In addition, after passage of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, colored regiments were formed to swell the ranks of the infantry.

Some of the most durable remnants of war time are armaments and the collection at The History Center in Tompkins County is no exception. Rifles and swords were, in the instance of members of the DeWitt Guards, provided by the State of New York. Other enlistees and drafted soldiers were armed by the U.S. Army. Regardless of origin, there are fine examples of rifled muskets, single edge swords, and a bayonet on display.

Most fabrics aren’t sturdy enough to last decades, let alone centuries, so uniforms are difficult to find in collections. The two Civil War-era hats on display include a traditional soldier’s cap, or kepi, and a knitted cap worn by G.R. Williams while serving at the Elmira Prison Camp. It is easy to picture this cap being made by a loving mother or sister.

The History Center is fortunate to have been given the Sophronia Bucklin collection, items related to her time as a nurse with the Hospital Service from 1863 to 1865. This includes a partial manuscript of her book, In Hospital and Camp: A Woman’s Record of the Thrilling Incidents among the Wounded in the Late War, published in 1869. Bucklin was one of several local women who volunteered to nurse soldiers on and near the battlefields. Many women contributed to the war effort at home through the Volunteer Aid Committee and other societies but women at the front were less common. 

Janet Seward of Auburn, New York lived with her husband, Lt. Col. William Seward Jr., at Fort Mansfield and Fort Foote, near Washington, D.C., while he aided the defense of the capital. 

Accounts of war time experiences are rare, many having been written afterwards like those of Sophronia Bucklin and Janet Seward. Groton resident Doctor (his first name) Tarbell’s diary is an eye-witness account; on the first page he describes what took place on at the battle of Gettysburg, July 1, 1863. Promoted several times, Capt. Tarbell was a prisoner of war in 1864-65, held in Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia for five months under intolerable conditions. His telegram home contained the following message: “Out of prison, Purgatory has no terrors.”

Life on the Home Front

In 1863 Ezra Cornell asked his friend and lawyer, Francis M. Finch, to help him prepare a charter for a Library Association. The “Cornell Public Library” was incorporated on April 5, 1864 and a handsome brick three-story library building was constructed at Tioga and Seneca Streets, completed and dedicated on December 20, 1866.

It is to Ezra Cornell’s credit – and our county’s lasting benefit – that while he was taking care of business affairs, serving in the New York State Senate, and remaining involved in local charities, he could spare the time to establish a public library. All while Ithaca and the surrounding towns were actively engaged in supporting the war effort.

Hundreds of local young men enlisted after President Lincoln called for volunteers in April, 1861, when Fort Sumter surrendered to Confederate forces. One of these was Doctor Tarbell of Groton, who joined the first military unit to leave Tompkins County. Ezra Cornell himself headed a citizens’ committee to organize aid for the dependents of volunteers, contributing $1,000 to that effort. And his wife, Mary Ann Cornell, was president of the Ladies Volunteer Aid Association, which, like the Ladies Aid Society of Auburn, New York, sewed clothes, knitted socks, and purchased blankets for local men serving at the front.

Those left behind continued their daily lives but in an atmosphere of anticipation, doom and sorrow as war news made its way onto the front pages of the Ithaca Journal and into the homes of local families through personal correspondence. Mary L. Conant, Doctor Tarbell’s childhood sweetheart, heard no news of him while he was held prisoner by Confederate forces, and feared he was dead. Their story is one of the happy ones: Doctor was released and was granted leave to return home, where they were married, a union that would last for 30 years.

As the artifacts in these cases illustrate, beautiful dresses were worn to parties, patent medicines were taken, spices were ground by mortar and pestle, 14-year-old girls embroidered banners in support of the Lincoln-Johnson ticket, and the Peculiars played the Forest City team in baseball. These items are what remain of the everyday lives of Tompkins County residents during the 1860s; it is as fascinating to speculate about what is missing as what was preserved.  

This is exhibit is made possible through the generosity of the History Center in Tompkins County and the Seward House Museum in Auburn in loaning the artifacts on display.

Technology and Mental Health: a table exhibit November 10 - 28, 2014

On Friday, November 21, 2014 9:00 am - 3:30 pm the Finger Lakes Independence Center presents the 21st Annual Conference on Depression: Technology and Mental Health in the BorgWarner Community Room at Tompkins County Public Library.

In conjunction with the Conference there will be a small table exhibit on display in the Avenue of the Friends from Monday November 10 until Friday November 24.

This is a free conference with an interactive piece by the Community Role Players of Suicide Prevention Service, a panel, workshops, and a book talk; all of which focus on technology and its impact on mental health.

For more information and to register, contact David Bulkley, The Mental Health Association in Tompkins County, dbulkley@mhaedu.org or 607-273-9250.  To request an ASL interpreter or accommodations for a disability, please contact Larry Roberts, Finger Lakes Independence Center, 607-272-2433 by Tuesday, November 18 at 5pm.

The Conference is co-sponsored by Cayuga Addiction Recovery Services; Family and Children’s Service of Ithaca; Finger Lakes Independence Center; FLGEC at Ithaca College Gerontology Institute; Longview; The Mental Health Association in Tompkins County; the Multicultural Resource Center; Suicide Prevention and Crisis Service; Tompkins County Mental Health Department; Tompkins County Office for the Aging; and the Tompkins County Public Library. 

Tompkins County Public Library presents "The Language of War" October 22 - 7 PM

Tompkins County Public Library presents The Language of War, a dramatic reading of letters, diary entries and newspaper accounts that illustrate what residents of Tompkins County said and wrote during the Civil War.

Members of the Tompkins County Civil War Commission representing different historical characters will read the script which is by Carol Kammen, co-chair of the Commission and Tompkins County Historian.

Join us a 7 PM on Wednesday, October 22 in the BorgWarner Community Room at Tompkins County Public Library for what promises to be an informative and enjoyable evening.

Also view Tompkins County in a Time of War:  Life on the Home Front and on the Battlefield an exhibit featuring artifacts on loan from the History Center in Tompkins County and the Seward House Museum in Auburn and vividly telling the story of life in Tompkins County during the time of the Civil War and highlighting the founding of Tompkins County Public Library by Ezra Cornell in 1854.

Professor Edward Eugene Baptist speaks at TCPL on October 14, 2014 at 6 PM

Edward E. Baptist, associate professor in Cornell University’s Department of History, will give a presentation on Lincoln, the Constitution and the Civil War, at 6 PM on Tuesday, October 14.  

Baptist is a noted scholar and speaker on the enslavement of African Americans in the southern United States.  He teaches courses on the Civil War, slavery, the American South, masculinity, modernity and modernization, the first half of the American survey, and 19th century U.S. History. His recently-released book, “The Half Has Never Been Told:  Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism,” has received critical acclaim and sparked debate over its radical interpretation of American history.”

This program is being held in conjunction with the Library’s current exhibit, “Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War,” a nationally traveling exhibition exploring Abraham Lincoln’s struggle to meet the constitutional challenges of the Civil War.


This 1,000 square foot, thematic exhibit offers an intriguing perspective of the challenges America’s much-heralded 16th president faced during the Civil War and describes his use of the Constitution as a guide for tackling the major issues of the war—secession of Southern states, slavery and wartime civil liberties. It is on display in the Avenue of The Friends.

The exhibit, which runs through October 30, and its corresponding programs and exhibits are being held in conjunction with Tompkins County Public Library’s year-long Sesquicentennial Celebration, “150 Years and Counting.”

Baptist’s talk is free and open to the public.  For more information, contact Sally Grubb at (607) 272-4557 extension 232 or sgrubb@tcpl.org.

“Lincoln:  the Constitution and the Civil War,” a traveling exhibition for libraries, was organized by the National Constitution Center and the American Library Association Public Programs Office. The traveling exhibition has been made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.   “Lincoln:  the Constitution and the Civil War” is based on an exhibition of the same name developed by the National Constitution Center.

TCPL offers after-hours access to exhibits during Gallery Night Friday, October 3

If you missed our special 150 Years and Counting celebration last weekend, join us on Friday, October 3, when TCPL participates in Gallery Opening Night from 5 to 8 PM.
Entry to the Library after 5 PM is through the BorgWarner Community Room door behind the Bus Shelter on Green Street.

Four exhibits are on display: Lincoln, the Constitution and the Civil War, an ALA traveling exhibit which will be at the Library through the end of October; Tompkins County in a Time of War: On the Home Front and on the Battlefield, which features artifacts used by members of the local community during the time of the Civil War and now loaned from the collection of the History Center in Tompkins County; Mightier than the Sword: The impact of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, the Library's featured book during Banned Books week; and Montage Histories: Tompkins County, New York, through Photographs 1864-2014 which illustrates the changes experienced by significant buildings, places and landscapes during the 150 years since the Library was founded in 1864.

View these exhibits after hours when quiet voices are not required and the Library acts as an Art Gallery and not as a Library.  Purchase a copy of the exhibit catalog for Montage Histories, available for $17.25 while stocks last.  When all copies are sold, additional copies can be obtained via "print on demand". Go to MagCloud and search for Montage Histories.  Individual copies cost $17.29 plus shipping.

150 Years and Counting: TCPL Continues Year-long Sesquicentennial Celebration

TCPL continues its year-long sesquicentennial celebration with a series of exhibits and related programs.

September 26 - 28 2014 A weekend-long exploration of Abraham Lincoln’s struggle to meet the constitutional challenges of the Civil War.

Friday, September 26,  5 – 7 pm
After-hours access to the traveling exhibit which inspired the Library’s celebration for an evening of art featuring self-guided tours of Lincoln:  The Constitution and the Civil War and its three companion exhibits, Montage Histories:  Tompkins County, New York, through Photographs 1864-2014, Tompkins County in a Time of War:  Life on the Home Front and on the Battlefield and Mightier than the Sword: The Impact of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

5:30 pm 
Cornell University’s Glee Club, under the direction of Robert Isaacs, will perform Toby Twining’s “Lincoln the Musician,” a dramatic and compelling interpretation of the Gettysburg Address.

7 pm  
Cinemapolis will present Civil Warriors, an original  film produced by PhotoSynthesis Productions about the first African American regiment and the Ithaca men who registered to fight in the Civil War.  A panel discussion moderated by Eric Acree, featuring narrator Professor Sean Eversley-Bradwell and co-producers/directors Che Broadnax and Deborah Hoard will be held immediately following the screening.

Saturday, September 27, 11 am - 2 pm 
A representative of TCPL’s Teen Advisory Group, portraying Abraham Lincoln, will serve as a docent providing mini tours of “Lincoln:  The Constitution and the Civil War.”

4 pm
Excerpts from  Uncle Tom’s Cabin, TCPL's featured book during Banned Books/Freedom to Read, will be read during the Tompkins County Public Library Foundation’s  Second Annual Readathon.

Sunday, September 28, 2 pm 
Elmira College Professor Charlie Mitchell will present “Re-reading Uncle Tom's Cabin after Django Unchained and Twelve Years a Slave,” an illustrated lecture.  This program will be held in the Library’s BorgWarner Community Room.

October - date to be decided
Edward E. Baptist, associate professor, Department of History, House Professor and Dean, Carl Becker House, Cornell University, will talk about Lincoln and the Civil War.

Wednesday October 22, 7 pm
“The Language of War,” an original dramatic reading presented by the Tompkins County Civil War Sesquicentennial Commemoration Commission will offer a local perspective on life in Tompkins County during the Civil War and capture the drama of the era.

Separate blogs about each exhibit will follow.

Screening of Civil Warriors at Cinemapolis part of Sesquicentennial Celebration

150 Years and Counting: Tompkins County Public Library Continues Year-long Sesquicentennial Celebration with presentation of Civil Warriors at Cinemapolis at 7 PM on Friday, September 26, after the opening reception for Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War.

TCPL is proud to present the premier screening at Cinemapolis of Civil Warriors, a documentary film by Deborah C. Hoard and Che Broadnax that brings to life the true story of the 26 black men from Tompkins County who enlisted in the Civil War’s first regiment of African American soldiers.  

Their story begins on December 24, 1863 and unfolds as the rhythm and energy of contemporary spoken word performances mix with historical images and music. The film’s narrator, Sean Eversley-Bradwell, Ithaca College assistant professor, Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity, provides historical and personal perspective 150 years after these men stepped up to wear the uniform of a country that called them “boy.”

A panel discussion moderated by Eric Acree, director of Cornell University’s Africana Library featuring Professor Bradwell and co-producers/directors Hoard and Broadnax will take place immediately following the screening.

Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War

As 2014 comes to an end, TCPL continues the celebration of its Sesquicentennial. 

The Library was founded during the upheaval of Civil War. Tompkins County sent volunteers, including 26 black men, to join the Union army and Ithaca was designated by New York State as a training and embarkation point.  Despite the uncertainties the economy flourished. Ezra Cornell proposed the creation of a free library in 1862, and legislation was passed on April 4, 1864 authorizing him “to found a public Library and Literary Institution in the village of Ithaca.” At the Library’s inauguration, Cornell stated “Fellow Citizens of Ithaca, this library belongs to you and to the other residents of the county of Tompkins.”

In honor of Ezra Cornell’s commitment to and recognition of community amidst the uncertainties of war, TCPL presents the American Library Association’s traveling exhibit Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War, a thematic display that offers an intriguing perspective of the challenges America’s much-heralded 16th president faced during the Civil War. This timely exhibit describes Lincoln’s use of the Constitution as a guide for tackling the major issues of the war—secession of Southern states, slavery and wartime civil liberties.  

Secession vs. Union Illustration from Harper's Weekly1864

A series of panels placed in the Avenue of the Friends depict important themes: 
LINCOLN: his second inauguration and taking of the Oath of Office; 
DIVIDED: are we a single nation or a confederacy of sovereign and separate states?; BOUND: can slavery be uprooted by constitutional means?;  
DISSENT: the crisis of civil liberties: must civil liberties give way to save the nation?; ENDURES: leaves us with the question, “Has America lived up to the ideals Lincoln fought for -  Equality, Freedom, Democracy?”

Two New Exhibits and an Art Installation are featured at Gallery Opening Night, Friday, July 11

 A COMMON THREAD: To Sew or Not to Sew a Fashion Exhibit Curated by Elizabeth Mount opens in the Avenue of the Friends. This intriguing exhibit explores recent changes in the way clothes are made from the traditional, painstaking needle and thread and home sewing machine method, to fast fashion and creating garments with glue and tape and laser cutters. Beautiful and traditional garments created by local artists, are displayed side by side with funky creations made with recycled materials and one-of-a-kind designs from students in Cornell’s Fiber and Design Apparel Department, and presents the amazing fibers now used to create protective clothing as well as glues and tapes that avoid the use of sewing at all.

Visual Culture at Ithaca High School: the Annual Student Art Exhibit sponsored by the High School Art Deprtment; features some extraordinary images created by students during the past school year.


I Look Silly an Art Installation outside and inside the library created by abstract artist Ryan McGuire will bring a smile to your face.  This whimsical installation features portraits of sixty local Ithacans wearing Groucho Marx disguises displayed on the windows of the Library facing onto Green Street and inside in the North Reading Room. Prints of the whole series of portraits will be available for order and the net proceeds from their sale will be donated to the Library. 

Curators, participating artists and Groucho Marx look alikes will be present to talk about the exhibits.  During the evening a special video of the Cornell University Fashion Runway Show will be shown in the BorgWarner Room and will be available for viewing on a dedicate computer near the Avenue of the Friends throughout the exhibit.


Join us for a very special evening, Friday, July 11 from 5:00 to 8:00 PM. Refeshments will be served in the BorgWarner Room. 

Visual Culture at IHS returns to TCPL June, July & August

Visual Culture at IHS, the annual art exhibit curated by the faculty and featuring the work of Ithaca High School students returns to the Library for a two part exhibit during June, July and August.

During June this exhibit has featured the work of students in Ceramics & Sculpture displayed in the Avenue of the Friends.

During July and August the exhibit will feature artwork created this past year by IHS students in Drawing & Painting, Studio Art, Digital & Film Photography, and AP Studio Art.

The art students at Ithaca High School want to talk about what they know, see and feel through their art.  Their images are personal portraits and perspectives of their environment, their friends, their lives and their imaginations.  Text and image, faces and places are presented as a visual dialogue of these young artists’ lives.

This exhibit is made possible support from the Fine Arts Booster Group & IPEI.

An opening reception will be held during Gallery Opening Night on Friday, July 11, 2014.

TCPL's Sesquicentennial Exhibits are still on display throughout the Library

Diary of a Library: A Community Card Catalog of Pictures, Memories and Stories will continue on display in the Avenue of the Friends through the end of 2014. 

Have you checked out our Sesquicentennial card Catalog Diary of a Library yet?  Come to TCPL to see this wonderful, creative card catalog which has new cards added to it almost daily. Check the drawer of Library Stories for some fascinating memories. Or look at the cards created by our many young patrons who are totally uninhibited about what they will put on paper.  Many new artists books have been added too and the Histories of the Friends of the Library as well as TCPL keep growing. You can also add your own card.  Tell us what the Library means to you.  What is your favorite book or favorite Library activity. Add to our 150th Anniversary Card Catalog and be a part of our history. 

You still have time to view the fascinating display of Artists in the Archives – A Collection of Card Catalogs which will remain at the Library until June 1.  Feel free to browse the two card catalogs and write your comments in the book provided with the "Alternet."

Our third Sesquicentennial exhibit Talk Tompkins An audio visual installation of portraits of and interviews with, members of the Tompkins County community will be on display through the end of June.  This is proving a very popular exhibit which you can view/listen to at the Library. You may download an exhibit brochure here.  You may also view the exhibit and listen to the interviews on your smartphone or personal computer by going to http://benaltmanphotographs.com/talk.html.

Sesquicentennial Exhibit Opens April 4, 2014

 

TCPL's Sesquicentennial exhibit "150 Years and Counting..." which opens at Gallery Night on Friday, April 4, 2014 has three parts:

Artists in the Archives –A Collection of Card Catalogs :
“Book Marks” by Barbara Page – One Artist; one card catalog; The “Alternet” by Carla Rae Johnson – Over 70 artists; one card catalog; and “The Call to Everyone” by JoAnne Wilcox – Everyone, even YOU; one card catalog.

Talk Tompkins by photographer Ben Altman – An audio visual installation of portraits of and interviews with, members of the Tompkins County community who talk with Altman about their lives here and the Library.

Diary of a Library: A Community Card Catalog of Pictures, Memories and Stories: This 15-drawer card catalog, an ongoing project created by Barbara Page and Sally Grubb, has been filled with cards contributed by library patrons, trustees, friends, students and community members.  The cards contain photos, stories, drawings, memories, original art work, artists’ books, our history, and represent 150 years of library service.

The opening reception for this exhibit is being held on Friday, April 4, from 5:00 – 8:00 PM, and is the first event in a weekend of Sesquicentennial Celebrations taking place at TCPL.  Check 150th Anniversary for a calendar of events.

More information about the three exhibits will follow in future blogs.

Talk Tompkins - part of the exhibit 150 Years and Counting - opens on Friday, April 4

TALK TOMPKINS, an audio visual installation by photographer Ben Altman, shows and records some of the rich variety of people and communities in Tompkins County. Large portrait photographs show the participants, who also speak in audio recordings about their lives, histories, communities and the public library.  It is part of TCPL's Sesquicentennial exhibit 150 Years and Counting ...




Carl Seamon, Highway Superintendent, Town of Danby

In the creation of TALK TOMPKINS Altman decided to explore the many diverse communities he had discovered on moving to Ithaca that exist in the town and surrounding areas and which he finds often have little contact with or even awareness of one another.  His focus has been on those who are not university or college faculty, or students from elsewhere.

Altman's inspiration for this installation was his work for Peekskill Project V, organized by the Hudson Valley for Contemporary Art, which became a solo show Say Peekskill in January 2013.

TALK TOMPKINS is funded by an Artists in the Community Grant from the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County and the installation at TCPL is made possible by a grant from the Gannett Foundation.

A special opening reception will be held during Gallery Opening Night on Friday, April 4 from 5 - 8 PM. Entry to the Library after 5 PM will be through the BorgWarner Community Room door behind the bus shelter on Green Street.