MIT Libraries News

Exhibit in Rotch Library – Urban Studies/Random Views

Urban Studies/Random Views, on view from May 5th to July 18th, is a collection of recent oil paintings by Carol Schweigert of Dewey Library.

The paintings were initially inspired by the dynamic views of the ongoing construction surrounding the Library. The focus expanded to include other views in Cambridge and Charlestown, reflecting the coexistence of the natural and the architectural.

These are traditional plein air paintings with an underlying graphic composition of more modern sensibilities.

A reception is planned for 4:00PM - 6:30PM, Friday, May 9, 2008 in Rotch Library, 7-238.

This month the Institute Archives and Special Collections focuses on some of MIT’s early energy research. Robert J. Van de Graaff came to MIT in 1931, where he worked on the development of the high-voltage generator that bears his name. May’s Object of the Month describes the apparatus and includes photographs from the 1933 “Progress Report on the M.I.T. High-Voltage Generator at Round Hill.” The exhibit includes a link to a demonstration of the Van de Graaff generator by Professor Walter Lewin.

The Archives holds several collections that contain materials about the Van de Graaff generator: the Papers of Robert J. Van de Graaff (MC 45), the Records of the High Voltage Energy Corporation (MC 153), and the Records of the MIT President (AC 4). All are available for research, with 24 hours’ notice, in 14N-118, Monday to Thursday, 10 am to 4 pm.

Interest was high in 1861 as the proposed Institute of Technology moved through the Massachusetts legislative process. But among those opposed was the secretary of the Board of Education. In March, Governor John A. Andrew invited William Barton Rogers to a meeting of the board to persuade them of its advantages for education and industry. “Be thou the advocate,” wrote Massachusetts Governor Andrew in a letter exhibited as the Object of the Month by the Institute Archives and Special Collections. The proposal was finally approved by the Massachusetts legislature, and on April 10, 1861, Governor Andrew signed the Act to Incorporate the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Celebrate MIT’s anniversary month, and the countdown to MIT’s sesquicentennial in 2011, by learning more about the Institute’s beginnings and William Barton Rogers, the extraordinary man whose vision made it happen. Rogers’s papers and many documents concerning MIT’s early years are available for research in the Institute Archives, 14N-118, Monday - Thursday, 10:00 am - 4:00 pm.

Sofia Ponte will be giving a brief presentation in the Reading Room from 12:00 to 1:00 Friday, April 11.

The Dreaming Lounge is displayed at Barker Engineering Library from December 2007 to April 2008. It is a device created for resting and studying in libraries reading rooms while creating a performative space for day-dreaming. It brings evidence to a day-sleep situation while discussing ways for humanizing the experience of relief, rest and survival in the public domain. Libraries reading rooms are places where we often see communal resting, sleeping and dreaming, all mental conditions that affect and influence our behavior in the private and public sphere. The Dreaming Lounge encourages this situation in public as a way to generate a social space for reflection. After resting, one is more able to recognize changes, to continue to relate ideas, and to learn more about them. Barker reading room is situated under the MIT dome, which has served as a reading room since 1916. The design of the Dreaming Lounge blends into the landscape of this room while creating a self-discovery experience for the user and its relation to this space.

On Friday, April 18, from 1-3pm the MIT Libraries will host a community celebration in honor of the opening of the Maihaugen Gallery. The newly constructed exhibit space will showcase some of the extraordinary items from the MIT Libraries’ collections.

The first exhibit: A Celebration of Gifts will feature rare and unique items donated to the Libraries by MIT alumni, faculty, and friends. Among the treasures that will be exhibited to the public for the first time are items from the collection of the Institute’s founder, William Barton Rogers. The exhibit will also include original notebooks from Harold “Doc” Edgerton, several rare books including a first edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and a book of illustrations from the 1553 volume Historiae animalium by Konrad Gesner. Also featured will be items from the personal library of architect Charles Bulfinch, balloon prints from the Vail Collection, books by architect Santiago Calatrava with original artwork, works from the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, and other items given to the Libraries.

The new facility is located adjacent to the Institute Archives (14N-118). The celebration will begin at 1pm with remarks by Ann Wolpert, director of the Libraries. Refreshments will be served. Please join us!

Photos by: L. Barry Hetherington, Bottom photo: Copyright Harold E. Edgerton 1992 Trust

The subject of the Archives’ March Object of the Month exhibit is MIT’s wind tunnels, beginning with an early improvisation in 1896. The focus of the exhibit is a photograph and description of a wind tunnel in use from 1914 to 1921, which was built on Vassar Street in Cambridge two years before MIT moved from Boston to Cambridge.

The photograph is from the MIT Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel Records (1914-1963) in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. These and other records concerning aeronautics and aeronautical engineering are available for research in the Archives in Building 14N-118.

For its February Object of the Month the Institute Archives and Special Collections focuses on snow removal, exhibiting a 1948 letter from Mayor James M. Curley to MIT President Karl T. Compton, and Compton’s reply. Curley communicates his concern about snow removal and possible spring floods, makes a few tentative suggestions on methods, and expresses his hope that Institute researchers will tackle the problem.

The letters exhibited are from the Records of the Office of the President, 1930-1959 (AC 4) which span the tenures of Karl T. Compton and James R. Killian, a period of enormous change at the Institute and in the world. The subjects documented in this rich collection range from MIT administrative history, through scientific research during World War II and the postwar period, to science policy. The records are available for research in the MIT Institute Archives and Special Collections, Building 14N-118, Monday - Thursday, 10:00 am - 4:00 pm.

The Rotch Library is proud to present the IAP Film Series, held on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the month of January. The week of January 14 is Urban Week!

Films will be shown in the Rotch Library Conference Room (enter through 7-238) starting at 11:30AM and ending no later than 2PM. The schedule for the upcoming week will be:

Monday, January 14

• Drowned Out / Franny Armstrong
• Lost City of New Orleans / a BBC/Discovery Channel co-production

Wednesday, January 16

• Cities / directed and produced by David Springbett, Heather MacAndrew
• Subdivide and conquer : a modern western / Red Oak Films

Friday, January 18

• Farmingville / a film by Carlos Sandoval and Catherine Tambini
• Designing a great neighborhood : behind the scenes at Holiday / produced by the Sustainable Futures Society

The week of January 21 is Potluck Week! More films from Rotch on a variety of topics.

Please forward this information to interested parties! If you have any questions, please contact Heather McCann at (617) 253-7098 / hmccann@mit.edu OR Jennifer Friedman (617) 258-5595 / jrfried@mit.edu.

Thank you very much and we hope to see you!

IAP Rotch Library Film Series:

• WHEN: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, January 7, 2008 through February 1, 2008

•  WHERE: showing in 7-134A (Rotch Library conference room; enter via 7-238)

• Hosted by Ann Whiteside, Jolene deVerges, Jennifer Friedman, and Heather McCann

Did you know that Rotch Library of Architecture and Planning maintains an impressive DVD collection, with new titles added regularly? Join the library staff as we explore the scope of the collection. Each week of IAP, we will highlight a different theme in the collection, including video art, architecture and urban development & planning. Brief, informal discussion will follow each each day’s films.

Rotch Library Film Series, Week 1

The Rotch Library is proud to present the IAP Film Series, held on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the month of January. The week of January 7 is Video Art Week!

Films will be shown in the Rotch Library Conference Room starting at 11:30AM and ending no later than 2PM. The schedule for the upcoming week will be:

Monday, January 7

• Bill Viola: The Eye of the Heart
• William Kentridge: Art from Ashes

Wednesday, January 9

• Expressing the Inexpressible: Shirin Neshat
• The Body as Matrix: Matthew Barney’s “Cremaster Cycle”

Friday, January 11

• HC Gilje: Cityscapes
• Gary Hill: Transcending the Senses

The week of January 14 is Urban Planning Week!

Please forward this information to interested parties!

If you have any questions, please contact Heather McCann at (617) 253-7098 / hmccann@mit.edu OR Jennifer Friedman (617) 258-5595 / jrfried@mit.edu.

The January Object of the Month exhibit by the Institute Archives and Special Collections highlights watercolors painted by Eleanor Manning O’Connor (B.S.in Architecture, MIT, 1909). The watercolors are from the Archives’ collection of the Records of Howe, Manning & Almy, an architectural firm started by Lois Lilley Howe (MIT, 1890) and later joined by O’Connor and a third MIT alumna, Mary Almy. The collection includes reports, paintings, drawings, blueprints, photographs, diaries, notes, and correspondence illuminating the lives and work of the three MIT alumnae. The materials are available for research in Room 14N-118, Monday through Thursday, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, with 24 hours’ advance notice.

Ana Sofia Lopes Da Ponte, a graduate student in MIT’s Visual Arts program, has just installed the “Dreaming Lounge.” This interactive piece of art will be on exhibit through January 11.

In her own words, “I designed a daybed for Barker so that the users of the space can experiment with their physical relation with the space. The design of the Dreaming Lounge considers the situation of a researcher that is in a library setting daily. It offers him/her the possibility to continue the research activity while dreaming. Attached to the seat of the bed is a canopy that smoothly unfolds above the dreamer’s body. When the back of the seat is manually pulled down by the user, a canopy situated in the upper part of the daybed rises, protecting the user’s head from exterior elements such as sound and light of the space.”

Lanai: Living in the Landscape, a photo book by graduate student Stephanie Hsu (M.Arch), will be on display in Rotch Library (Rm 7-238), from December 10, 2007 through January 13, 2008. Funded in part by the Council for the Arts at MIT.

Once the largest pineapple plantation in the world, the island of Lanai is now 98% privately owned, home to two Four Seasons resorts, and known as the most exclusive of the Hawaiian Islands. Revealing life on Lanai from the perspective of the local population, architecture graduate student Stephanie Hsu documents the island during its transition from a plantation to a world class vacation destination.

The Object of the Month exhibit of the Institute Archives and Special Collections is about the three men who received MIT’s first Ph.D.’s, their supervisor, and the lab he founded in 1903—the Research Laboratory of Physical Chemistry. Left to right in the photograph are Robert B. Sosman, Morris A. Stewart, and Raymond Haskell.

Browse more highlights of MIT’s history on the Archives web site, or visit the reading room, Building 14N-118, Monday through Thursday, between 10 am and 4 pm.

Place, Sense, Time: The Summer 2007 Veneto Experience
by Najiyah Edun, Shun Kanda, and Mio Uchida
October 22nd - November 16th, 2007, in Rotch Library

‘Space is real for it seems to affect my senses long before my reason. The materiality of my body both coincides with and struggles with the materiality of space. My body carries in itself spatial properties, and spatial determinations…unfolding against the projections of reason, against the absolute Truth’

-Bernard Tschumi

The exhibit aims to present the investigations, journeys and discoveries of eleven students in the Veneto Experience Program during the summer of 2007. The program is month-long architecture course that immerses students in the city of Venice and in the work of Carlo Scarpa (1906-1978), focusing on the intricate and profound relationship between the life-work of Venetian architect and Venice, each embodied in the other.

The exhibit purports to express and embody the heightened visual, acoustic and tactile senses that are stirred by Venice and by Scarpa’s work. It aims to stimulate and enhance visitors’ awareness of their bodily movements in space, enabling people to uncover and rediscover how our body reacts to space and how space and the senses can promote an enhanced perception of the body.

For its November Object of the Month the Institute Archives and Special Collections displays a sonar chart and other records of Harold “Doc” Edgerton’s search for a Spanish Armada wreck of 1588 in Tobermory Bay, Scotland. Earning an Sc.D. in electrical engineering at MIT in 1931, Edgerton spent the rest of his life at the Institute as teacher, researcher, and head of the Stroboscopic Light Lab. His papers, which include documentation of his development of high-speed photography techniques and equipment for underwater exploration, are available for research in the Institute Archives, Building 14N-118.

Andrew Shea, employee of Barker Engineering Library, has photographs currently on exhibit at Sydney Pacific through the end of October.

In his own words, “I am a photographer who reframes familiar environments. I prefer to immerse myself in the caveats of common spaces and challenge myself to redefine them by layering their distinctive elements.

As I approach each space that I photograph, I consider its texture and expressiveness, what others would notice about the space and how it might be photorealistically represented. My goal is to create images that resuscitate the visual expressiveness of each space by combining the unique features that tell its story.

To do this I use old cameras that function as layering devices and compose images on top of each other in sequential order before advancing the film. These multiple exposures include two or more vital elements such as the bark of a tree, the architectural feature of a building, the contours of an expanse, or a face of someone in the environment. Though one element usually dominates the composition, together they create self-containing narratives that speak beyond any of their singular elements. In this way, each photo becomes a unique portrayal of its environment.”

View more of Andrew’s work on his website or email him with questions/comments.

In celebration of the written word of E. Cary Brown, former Head of the MIT Economics Department, Dewey Library for Management and Social Sciences (E53-100) is hosting an exhibit of his selected writings from October 10th through October 22nd.

E. Cary Brown, a leading expert on fiscal policy and the economics of taxation, passed away in June of this year. He was a member of the Economics Department from 1947-1986 and its Head from 1965-1983.

The exhibit includes selections of Brown’s work, including books, book chapters, journal articles, and working papers. Highlighted are two of his most influential papers, “Business Income Taxation and Investment Incentives” and “Fiscal Policy in the `Thirties: A Reappraisal.” Come see this work alongside archival items documenting his time here at MIT.

For more information on Brown, see the memorial statement on the Economics Department web site.

Come visit the video art installation of revamped films from the 1960s, Studies in Fluid Mechanics. The videos will be on display from Tuesday, October 09 through Friday, October 12 in the Barker Engineering Library Reading Room.

These videos were created by nine MIT students, instructors and staff. Their task was to use some of the raw footage from Barker Engineering Libraries’ collection of fluid mechanics film loops to create their own video art. Though this may not seem too difficult, the process proved to be a complicated one as they simultaneously learned how to convert film footage into finished videos using sophisticated digital editing software to digitize and edit the film, all the while thinking about how to creatively resuscitate footage that is almost 50 years old.

The film footage in question (Barker Media Collection, call # QC145.2.F5) consists of recently discarded 8mm films from Barker Engineering Library. In total, 148 films were created between 1961 and 1967 by members of National Committee for Fluid Mechanics Films, a group started by former MIT professor Ascher Shapiro in 1961. Ascher’s efforts revolutionized the teaching of fluid mechanics, and Barker Engineering Library continues to circulate these films as DVDs.

Comments and suggestions are welcome at the accompanying suggestion box, or email the Project Coordinator, Andrew Shea. More of Andrew’s work can be seen at his website.

The 50th anniversary of Sputnik is observed in the October Object of the Month exhibit of the Institute Archives & Special Collections. After the surprise launch of Sputnik by the USSR in 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed MIT’s James R. Killian the first Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology. Killian chaired the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC), which was instrumental in initiating national curriculum reforms in science and technology and in establishing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Sputnik 1 mockup - NASA image

Between Spaces, A project by Wendy Jacob

Between At 6:45 and 6:46 PM on September 20, 2007, a performer will walk across a high wire installed between the Wolk Gallery and the Rotch Library stacks.

Wendy Jacobs, an Associate Professor of Visual Arts at MIT created this project for the Wolk Gallery.

This exhibit will be on view September 20 through December 21, 2007

The opening reception will be Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 5:30 PM.