Category Archives: Exhibits

Posts about University Archives & Special Collections exhibits.

The Frederick Middle School exhibit now on view in the Grossmann Gallery

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In Between Middle: Where Stories Reside, an exhibition opening June 10, 2025 in the Grossmann Gallery on the fifth floor of the Healey Library, features photographs by Lisa Kessler, and artwork and textual narratives collaboratively created by students and staff of the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School in Dorchester, MA. Exhibit hosted by the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston.

In Between Middle: Where Stories Reside, an exhibition opening June 10, 2025, in the Grossmann Gallery on the fifth floor of the Healey Library, features photographs by Lisa Kessler, and artwork and textual narratives collaboratively created by students and staff of the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School in Dorchester, MA. The exhibit is hosted by the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston. The Frederick, the last standalone middle school in the Boston Public School system, will close this year as part of a broader district-wide restructuring. This project captures the final year of the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School, a community located in the Grove Hall neighborhood of Boston.

The exhibition will be on display through December 5, 2025. A reception will be held in the Grossmann Gallery of the Healey Library on Tuesday, June 10, 2025, from 4:00-5:30 p.m. Members of the university community and the general public are welcome to attend.

As a restorative justice school, the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School is rooted in community and collective responsibility. Its foundation rests on the five pillars of PRIDE: Personal Responsibility, Respect, Integrity, Determination, and Empathy. Students and staff have long strived to embody the values championed by the school’s namesake, Ms. Lilla Frederick—a Grove Hall resident, tireless community advocate, and passionate believer in the potential of every child.

While the Frederick will no longer serve as a middle school, the community views this transformation with cautious optimism. The shift to a more unified K-6 and 7-12 school model represents an opportunity to address the long-standing systemic inequities and create more equitable access for all of Boston’s children. The building will continue to serve the children and families of Grove Hall as an elementary school—and it will continue to carry the name Lilla G. Frederick, a lasting tribute and a powerful reminder that “someone you never knew believed fiercely in you.”

This project was made possible with support from Unity Circles whose commitment to centering communities most impacted by carceral systems and for their leadership in cultivating intergenerational networks grounded in the principles of Restorative Justice and Transformative Justice. Their support has been instrumental in helping Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School document and archive the powerful community and justice efforts taking place across our learning community. This work reflects our shared vision of supporting young people in developing to their full potential in a welcoming and nurturing environment and creating positive connections to the larger community and the world they will lead.

The Grossmann Gallery is open during Healey Library hours.

University Archives and Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston collects materials related to the university’s history, as well as materials that reflect the institution’s urban mission and strong support of community service, notably in collections of records of urban planning, social welfare, social action, alternative movements, community organizations, and local history related to neighboring communities.

University Archives and Special Collections welcomes inquiries from individuals, organizations, and businesses interested in donating materials of an archival nature that that fit within our collecting policy. These include manuscripts, documents, organizational archives, collections of photographs, unique publications, and audio and video media. For more information about donating to University Archives and Special Collections, click here or email library.archives@umb.edu.

Denim Day display now on view in the Grossmann Gallery

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Denim Day: Sexual Violence Prevention and Education Campaign. A series of events will occur across the month of April on the UMB campus hosted by the Title IX Office for Students.

The Denim Day display is currently on view in the Grossmann Gallery on the fifth floor of the Healey Library. This display features a collection of denim jeans that serve as an example of what survivors were wearing when they were sexually assaulted. The Denim Day campaign is an opportunity for survivors of sexual assault to raise awareness of rape myths and rape culture, where victims are often blamed for what they were wearing. The stories in the display cases were sourced from the Susan B. Anthony Project’s What Were You Wearing? exhibit. The Denim Day display is featured as part of a series of campus events for Sexual Assault Awareness Month hosted by UMass Boston’s Title IX Office for Students. For more information, email Brikitta O. Hairston, Title IX and Civil Rights Investigator for Students, at brikitta.hairston@umb.edu. The display will be on view through May 31, 2025.

The Grossmann Gallery is open during Healey Library hours.

University Archives and Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston collects materials related to the university’s history, as well as materials that reflect the institution’s urban mission and strong support of community service, notably in collections of records of urban planning, social welfare, social action, alternative movements, community organizations, and local history related to neighboring communities.

University Archives and Special Collections welcomes inquiries from individuals, organizations, and businesses interested in donating materials of an archival nature that that fit within our collecting policy. These include manuscripts, documents, organizational archives, collections of photographs, unique publications, and audio and video media. For more information about donating to University Archives and Special Collections, click here or email library.archives@umb.edu.

“Artists in the Archive” exhibition now on view in the Grossmann Gallery

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Image of artwork by Margaret Hart, featuring materials pulled from the Thompson Island Farm and Trade School collection at UMass Boston. Includes a collage of text beneath a drawing of Thompson Island, a photograph of a building, and outlines of students.

Thompson Island Boys School, Margaret Hart, from the Scrapbook of Thompson Island Farm and Trade School 1921-1928, inkjet prints and watercolor on rag paper collage, 2024. 

Artists in the Archive, an exhibition opening this week in the Grossmann Gallery on the fifth floor of the Healey Library, features original work by members of the Endpoint Collective–Deborah Carruthers, Gabriel Deerman, Margaret Hart, and Mark Roth–as well as multi-disciplinary and Indigenous artist Erin Genia. All artists worked directly with materials from the University Archives and Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at the University of Massachusetts Boston to address issues of climate change and social justice in this region.

The exhibition is curated by Carol Scollans, Professor of Art and Art History at UMass Boston, and will be on display through January 17, 2025. A reception will be held on Friday, October 25, 2024, from 4:00-5:30 p.m. Members of the university community and the general public are welcome to attend.

The Endpoint Collective is a group of research-based artists from around the world who have found value in challenging traditional subjects and processes in their artmaking practices. One of the central questions they posit is the transition toward a posthuman existence exacerbated by the looming environmental issues we face. Their work explores non-hierarchical positioning of human and non-human beings (such as animals, fauna, and the earth). By means of traditional and inventive research, group discussions, and the creation of artworks, the collective has found a distinct vocabulary for their originative endeavors. Through exhibitions of their shared work, the collective invites the public into a conversation about these thought-provoking concepts as well.

Through their respective works, each of the five artists investigates issues of connection, replication, and structure via process-based mechanisms including printmaking, collage, photomontage, painting, and textiles. The works present a fascinating investigation into these complex issues with multi-layered and process-centered resources while boldly engaging the viewer through rich imagery and provocative methodological approaches.

Image of artwork by Gabriel Deerman showing various images of printing blocks and blue lines.

Looking for Light Under the Ground (diptych), Gabriel Deerman, block printing ink on paper, 2024.  

Gabriel Deerman is a painter, printmaker, and draftsman exploring figurative and landscape based art.  Working from observation, his approach addresses globalization and climate change triggered by scientific and cultural human relationships to time and place. His distinctive approach questions traditional aesthetic experiences of the natural world as a way to bridge the human and nature divide.

Image of artwork by Margaret Hart showing a collage that includes a yellow jewel beetle, outlines of islands in the Boston Harbor, and text.

Boston Harbor Islands Jewel Beetle, Margaret Hart, inkjet print on rag paper collage, 2024.

Margaret Hart is a mixed media artist, using principally photography and collage as a way to investigate climate change, gender, technology, and personal narratives. Her work examines the philosophical potential of a post-human era questioning what the world is and what it could look like where humans are no longer the central characters of existence.

Photograph of various round artwork pieces by Deborah Carruthers hanging on a wall.

Re-Viewed, Deborah Carruthers, Circular birch panels, acrylic paint, 2024.

A Montreal native Deborah Carruthers is an interarts painter, installation artist, and composer who collaborates with scientists and activists around the world exploring environmental issues; particularly the distress caused by the lived experience of environmental change and human intervention called “solastalgia.”

Photograph of artwork by Erin Genia on a wall. Includes a face or facemask with various text statements in blue starts.

Call to Consciousness 3 Erin Genia, Ceramic, MDF board, acrylic paint beads, mixed media, 2024. 

Erin Genia, Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and community organizer specializing in Native American and Indigenous people’s arts and culture. Her work is focused on amplifying the presence of Indigenous peoples and seeks to invoke an evolution of thought and practice aligned with the natural world and the potential of humanity.

Group Gather Around Group after “Group Gathers Around Fir Tree” photograph from the Boston Urban Gardeners Collection, Mark Roth, acrylic on canvas, 2024.  

Painter and curator Mark Roth is based in New York and studies human behavior from a biological perspective. Using formal painting practices, Roth aspires to discover stories resonant to the Anthropocene or the current geological age during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.

This exhibition is held in conjunction with the Thinking About Climate Change: Art, Science, and Imagination in the 21st Century conference which will be held in the UMass Boston Campus Center Ballroom on October 25-26, 2024.

 

The Grossmann Gallery is open during Healey Library hours.

University Archives and Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston collects materials related to the university’s history, as well as materials that reflect the institution’s urban mission and strong support of community service, notably in collections of records of urban planning, social welfare, social action, alternative movements, community organizations, and local history related to neighboring communities. University Archives and Special Collections welcomes inquiries from individuals, organizations, and businesses interested in donating materials of an archival nature that that fit within our collecting policy. These include manuscripts, documents, organizational archives, collections of photographs, unique publications, and audio and video media. For more information about donating to University Archives and Special Collections, click here or email library.archives@umb.edu.

“Boston’s Little Syria” exhibition on display in Grossmann Gallery

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Author: Sabrina Valentino, Archives Assistant and graduate student in the Public History MA Program, UMass Boston

Boston’s Little Syria, an exhibition currently on view in the Grossmann Gallery on the fifth floor of the Healey Library, takes viewers on a journey through Boston’s little-known first Arab neighborhood. Located in what is now Chinatown and the South End, Little Syria became home to immigrants fleeing blight and violence in Ottoman-controlled Syria and Mount Lebanon. The exhibition will be open through May 31, 2024. 

The Boston’s Little Syria exhibition uses property maps, photographs, interviews, and memoirs of Syrian and Lebanese Americans who lived in this neighborhood to build a map of the creation and eventual migration of Little Syria, blending the history of the modern Middle East and Boston’s urban history. The items on display not only tell individual stories of the lives of immigrants, but also shed light on a rich cultural center in Boston that has been pushed aside and largely forgotten. 

In the 1880s, immigrants from Ottoman-controlled Greater Syria chose to leave their homes to escape war, famine, and the collapse of the silk industry, leading many to build new homes in Massachusetts. Starting in what is now Ping On Alley, the community grew and created a thriving life for themselves, reaching 40,000 people expanding south down Shawmut Avenue by the 1930s. However, despite the community’s growth and success, the residents of Little Syria faced hardships such as being denied citizenship status, and eventually began to relocate due to the Boston Redevelopment Authority uprooting urban blocks. 

Syrians sitting on a front step on Hudson Street, black and white photograph, photographer unknown, 1909. Courtesy of the Trustees of Boston Public Library.

The exhibition originated from a larger project that began with walking tours in 2022, and eventually grew to include an interactive digital map and a bilingual article published in the online journal Al-Jumhuriya as well as exhibitions at both MIT’s Rotch Library (2022-2023) and the Massachusetts Historical Society (2023). 

The exhibition is curated by Lydia Harrington and Chloe Bordewich. Lydia Harrington received her PhD in Art and Architectural History from Boston University in 2022 and was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT in 2022-2023. She is currently the Senior Curator at The Syria Museum, which is one of the sponsors of this exhibition. Chloe Bordewich is a postdoctoral fellow at the Jackman Humanities Institute and Critical Digital Humanities Initiative at the University of Toronto and  received her PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University in 2022.

Boston’s Little Syria is sponsored by the Syrian American Council, the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library, and the University of Massachusetts Boston.

For additional information on Boston’s Little Syria, visit bostonlittlesyria.org.

The Grossmann Gallery is open during Healey Library hours.

University Archives and Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston collects materials related to the university’s history, as well as materials that reflect the institution’s urban mission and strong support of community service, notably in collections of records of urban planning, social welfare, social action, alternative movements, community organizations, and local history related to neighboring communities.

University Archives and Special Collections welcomes inquiries from individuals, organizations, and businesses interested in donating materials of an archival nature that that fit within our collecting policy. These include manuscripts, documents, organizational archives, collections of photographs, unique publications, and audio and video media. For more information about donating to University Archives and Special Collections, click here or email library.archives@umb.edu.

Connecting Ties: A Transatlantic Friendship on Display in the Grossmann Gallery

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Connecting Ties: A Transatlantic Friendship and the Northern Ireland Peace Process, an exhibition opening next week in the Grossmann Gallery on the fifth floor of the Healey Library, illustrates through textile language the human dimension to the relationship between the United States, Ireland, and the Northern Ireland peace process.

A collage featuring three arpilleras at the core of this exhibition; 'Pat Hume', 'Tip O’Neill' and 'John Hume, Peacemaker'. (Design and photo: Leisa Duffy, Copyright Conflict Textiles)
A collage featuring three arpilleras at the core of this exhibition: Pat Hume, Tip O’Neill, and John Hume, Peacemaker. (Design and photo: Leisa Duffy, Copyright Conflict Textiles)

The exhibition is co-curated by Conflict Textiles, a unique transnational collection of textiles focused on conflict and human rights abuses, in partnership with John Hume & Thomas P. O’Neill Chair in Peace, INCORE, Ulster University, and the Joseph P. Healey Library at the University of Massachusetts Boston. It will be on view from November 17, 2023 through May 2024. Prior to the exhibition opening, the Tip O’Neill textile will be unveiled at the Golden Bridges 2023: Conference Luncheon, where John Hume, Peacemaker and Pat Hume will also be displayed.

A reception with refreshments will be held in the Grossmann Gallery on Friday, November 17, 2023, from 4:30 pm – 6:30 pm, during which the exhibition will be officially opened by Dr. Tom O’Neill. RSVP at the following link to the invitation: Official launch of the Conflict Textiles Exhibition (Boston) Tickets, Fri 17 Nov 2023 at 4:30 | Eventbrite.

The Northern Ireland Conflict (“The Troubles,” 1969-1994), which focused on the division of the island of Ireland, left more than 3,600 people dead, many more injured, and impacted all sectors of society. From the mid-1970s, key individuals from the United States, including Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and Massachusetts Congressman Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, were involved in discussions and negotiations during the peace process, culminating in the Good Friday Agreement signed in April 1998. In supporting peace in Northern Ireland, Tip O’Neill worked closely with John Hume, the Nobel Peace Prize winner from Northern Ireland. This unique friendship and the contribution of John Hume’s wife Pat are illustrated in the exhibition.

Tip O’Neill, by Lisa Raye Garlock, 2023. Recycled, hand-printed, and hand-dyed fabrics (cotton, linen, silk, wool), Irish linen, felt, and neckties (provided by the O’Neill family), Conflict Textiles collection. (Photo: Lisa Raye Garlock)
Tip O’Neill, by Lisa Raye Garlock, 2023. Recycled, hand-printed, and hand-dyed fabrics (cotton, linen, silk, wool), Irish linen, felt, and neckties (provided by the O’Neill family), Conflict Textiles collection. (Photo: Lisa Raye Garlock)

The exhibition showcases three specially commissioned textiles highlighting the interconnections and work of these essential people in the peace process. The three textiles entitled Tip O’Neill, Pat Hume, and John Hume, Peacemaker are accompanied by several Northern Ireland textiles depicting the conflict and search for peace in the late twentieth century. Four of these pieces, on loan from Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council Museum Collection, were created in workshops in Northern Ireland in 2012 and 2013, during which two Northern Ireland communities explored the legacy of the conflict through textile language.

These textiles and many others on display draw their inspiration from early Chilean arpilleras, which are appliquéd picture textiles, handsewn from scraps of fabric onto hessian or burlap. Three Chilean arpilleras from the 1980s and 1990s narrate ordinary peoples’ experiences of the oppressive seventeen-year-long Pinochet dictatorship, which seized power in September 1973. An arpillera from neighboring Argentina
articulates the human rights violations of the Videla regime (1976-1983) and the enduring, courageous protests by the Abuelas (Grandmothers) de Plaza de Mayo.

Selected highlights from the Disappeared Children in Argentina: Rita Arditti’s Interviews with the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo collection and the Padraig O’Malley papers held at UMass Boston are also featured.

The Grossmann Gallery is open during Healey Library hours.

University Archives and Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston collects materials related to the university’s history, as well as materials that reflect the institution’s urban mission and strong support of community service, notably in collections of records of urban planning, social welfare, social action, alternative movements, community organizations, and local history related to neighboring communities.

University Archives and Special Collections welcomes inquiries from individuals, organizations, and businesses interested in donating materials of an archival nature that that fit within our collecting policy. These include manuscripts, documents, organizational archives, collections of photographs, unique publications, and audio and video media. For more information about donating to University Archives and Special Collections, click here or email library.archives@umb.edu.