Category Archives: Exhibits

Posts about University Archives & Special Collections exhibits.

Melissa Shook: Inside and Out – Photographs on display in the University Hall and Grossmann galleries

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Melissa Shook: Inside and Out, a two-part exhibition in the University Hall Gallery and in the Grossmann Gallery on the fifth floor of the Healey Library, brings together photographs, video works, objects, and ephemera spanning six decades to honor the life’s work of artist, educator, and activist Melissa Shook (1939-2020). The exhibition is co-curated by Senior Lecturer II in Art History Carol G.J. Scollans and University Hall Gallery Director Samuel Toabe and will be on view from September 6 through October 29, 2022.

Woman stands in front of a mirror holding a camera, taking a picture of herself
Self-portrait, Melissa Shook, circa 1970s

Best known for her self-portraits and documentary-style photography representing and humanizing members of marginalized communities – including immigrants, queer people, elderly people, and people experiencing houselessness – Shook’s practice expanded throughout her career to include writing, book making, drawing, sculpture, video art, and social practice art through direct action and mutual aid projects. Shook joined UMass Boston in 1979, where she taught photography in the Art and Art History Department for thirty-one years, leaving an indelible mark on the department’s pedagogy as well as generations of students. A catalog with images of Melissa’s photographs will accompany the exhibition, including an introduction by Samuel Toabe, a contextual essay by Carol G.J. Scollans, and texts by Professor of Art Margaret Hart and Melissa’s daughter Krissy Shook. The University Hall Gallery presents the personal side of Shook’s practice, photographing and writing about her own life, as well as sculptural works and video experiments. Healey Library’s Grossmann Gallery features a large selection of her series -Streets are for Nobody, along with archival materials reproduced from the library’s collection of Melissa’s papers, as well as handmade books, sculptural objects, and a collection of her film and pinhole cameras. 

A public reception will be held on Saturday, September 17, 2022, from 2:00-4:00 p.m., starting in the University Hall Gallery.

The establishment of the Melissa Shook Documentary Photography Award in honor of the artist coincides with the exhibition. This fund will provide an annual prize to one or more UMass Boston students or graduating seniors who demonstrate exceptional skill or promise in photography, with a preference for documentary photography skills. The award will be presented this year for the first time to Chloe Tomasetta whose photographic work in 2021 documented busy street scenes in Boston’s historic Haymarket district during the height of the pandemic. 

The exhibition and catalog are supported by the Paul Hayes Tucker Fund as well as a generous gift by Caleb Stewart and Richard Snow. The Melissa Shook Documentary Photography Award is made possible with a generous gift by Nancy and Wendell Lutz. To contribute to the Melissa Shook Documentary Photography Award, please donate via this link.

For more information, please email UHGallery@umb.edu.

Melissa Shook donated her papers to University Archives and Special Collections in the Healey Library at UMass Boston. The collection contains files kept by Shook and includes correspondence, manuscripts, notes, interviews, research materials, workshop catalogs, show announcements, archival photographic prints, slides, hard drives, MiniDV tapes, DVDs, CDs, a VHS tape, and a selection of framed photographs and text from Shook’s 1994 publication Streets are for Nobody. Additional archival collections related to Shook include University of Massachusetts Boston, Art Department student photographs of the Healey Library, 1982-1984 and a collection of photographs taken by Shook for the Writers’ Workshop hosted by the William Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences.

For more information about these collections, please email library.archives@umb.edu.

Theresa-India Young exhibition at the Piano Craft Gallery

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University Archives and Special Collections is pleased to highlight an exhibition that features the artwork of Theresa-India Young and other contemporary artists. Legacy: A Continuous Thread will be held at the Piano Craft Gallery from October 1-24, 2021. A reception is scheduled for October 15 from 6:00-9:00 pm.

Postcard for "Legacy: A Continuous Thread" featuring Theresa-India Young and contemporary fiber artists

Postcard for “Legacy: A Continuous Thread” featuring Theresa-India Young and contemporary fiber artists

University Archives and Special Collections holds the Theresa-India Young papers, 1917-2011, bulk 1975-2008. This collection documents the life and work of fiber artist, interdisciplinary arts teacher, and educational consultant Theresa-India Young. The collection also contains personal papers relating to Young’s family, her early years in Harlem, and her education, travel, and genealogical research, particularly into her Gullah heritage. Young’s interest in and advocacy for multiculturalism and diversity in education is well-documented throughout the collection, with a particular focus on unearthing and preserving African and Native American traditions. Her fiber art was informed by her research into African aesthetics and traditions, particularly weaving and hair braiding. Much of her research is preserved in the collection in the form of clippings, handwritten notes, and varied publications. As a longtime resident of the Piano Factory, Young lived and worked within a dynamic local arts scene. The collection documents her relationships with other local artists, like Allan-Rohan Crite, as well as the issues they faced, such as affordable housing.

In the late 1960s Young was a student at the Harlem Youth Arts Program (Haryou Act) and studied with painter Norman Lewis and was an apprentice to Zelda Wynn, Costume Designer for the Dance Theatre of Harlem. She graduated from the High School of Art and Design in 1968 and studied at various institutions, such as Parsons School of Design and SUNY at New Paltz, where she received a degree in Arts Education and African Studies in 1973. In 1972 she studied West African Religion and Art at the University of Legon in Accra, Ghana.

In 1975 she won a scholarship to Boston University’s Program in Artisanry for Textiles. Since that time, she resided in the Boston area and maintained a home and studio at the Piano Factory artists’ building. From 1978-1983 she was Artist-in-Residence at Northeastern University’s African American Master Artist-in-Residency Program (AAMARP).

For more information on Theresa-India Young’s life and work see the finding aid for the Theresa-India Young papers.

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.

Grossmann Gallery hosts exhibition of student photographs

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Exhibit flyer on a blue background titled, “Living in the Urban Ocean,” Student Photo Essay Exhibition, October 16, 2019- January 22, 2020 in the Grossmann Gallery, 5th floor - Joseph P. Healey Library

Flyer for the Student Photo Essay Exhibition, “Living in the Urban Ocean”

The photograph essay contest exhibition Living in the Urban Ocean is now on display through January 22, 2020, in the Grossmann Gallery on the 5th floor of the Joseph P. Healey Library. The exhibition has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities, in partnership with the English Department, the Environmental Studies Department, and University Archives and Special Collections in the Healey Library at UMass Boston.

Throughout the Spring 2019 semester, students enrolled in Intermediate Seminar: Writing and the Environment (English 270G/Environmental Studies 270G) investigated the social, cultural and historical locale of Boston Harbor through archival and library resources. In addition, students developed their own urban ocean relationships through creative writing, walking, and reflection. In the era of the smartphone, creating a photo essay provided students with an opportunity to share their semester’s work through a visual language which they already use daily.

Students were asked to situate themselves in their urban ocean environment and tell an eco-story through photography. Students used iPhones and personal cameras to complete their photo essays. The winners of the photograph essay contest were selected through an online poll for best story told without words.

The Grossmann Gallery is open during library hours (posted here).

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.

Grossmann Gallery hosts exhibit documenting U.S. soldiers who opposed the Vietnam War

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Waging Peace FlyerWaging Peace in Vietnam: U.S. Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed the War, hosted in collaboration with the William Joiner Institute, is now on display through September 22, 2019, in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston. Organized by Ron Carver of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., the traveling exhibition has been exhibited in Vietnam and at the Kroc Institute for Peace Studies at Notre Dame and will visit UMass Amherst and Washington, D.C. later this fall.

During America’s War in Vietnam, tens of thousands of GIs and veterans created a robust movement in opposition to the war. The Waging Peace in Vietnam exhibition explores how the anti-war GI movement unfolded, from the numerous anti-war coffee houses springing up outside military bases, to the hundreds of GI newspapers giving an independent voice to active soldiers, to the stockade revolts and the strikes and near-mutinies developing on naval vessels and in the U.S. Air Force. Waging Peace tells this story through oral histories, photographs, documents, and the pages of the underground press written by and for active-duty GIs. The presentation in the Grossmann Gallery also includes primary source documents from Healey Library’s University Archives and Special Collections, as well as materials from the Joiner Institute.

The book, also entitled Waging Peace in Vietnam: U.S. Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed the War, is edited by Ron Carver, David Cortright, and Barbara Doherty, with an afterword by Christian G. Appy, and is published by New York University Press.  It features fourteen original essays by leading scholars and activists as well as first-hand accounts, oral histories, underground newspapers, posters, flyers, and photographs.

A reception for the exhibit opening and launch of the companion book is scheduled for Thursday, September 12, from 4:00-6:00 p.m. in the Grossmann Gallery on the 5th floor of the Joseph P. Healey Library. An inter-generational panel, hosted by Fred Marchant and featuring veterans from the Vietnam War and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and UMass Boston student veterans, is scheduled for Wednesday, September 18, from 3:00-5:00 p.m. in the Alumni Lounge (Campus Center, 2nd floor).

View the exhibition panels online at the Waging Peace website. Read articles about the exhibition in The Guardian (UK) and USA Today.

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.

Grossmann Gallery exhibit highlights the life and art of Theresa-India Young

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Black and white photo of Theresa-India Young

Theresa-India Young, circa 1972. Courtesy of the estate of Theresa-India Young.

A new exhibit in the Joseph P. Healey Library’s Grossmann Gallery highlights items from the Theresa-India Young collection. The exhibit is entitled The Life and Art of Theresa-India Young: Preserving African American Identity.

Join us for an opening reception on Wednesday, October 17, at 4:00 pm. The event is sponsored by the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston and the William Monroe Trotter Institute and will include remarks by Trotter Institute Director Barbara Lewis, Interim Dean of University Libraries Joanne Riley and by Meghan Bailey, Processing Archivist in the Healey Library and Project Director of the Research Inventory Grant Project funded by Mass Humanities.

Theresa-India Young was a fiber artist, interdisciplinary arts teacher, and education consultant working in the Boston area from 1975-2008. Young taught studio art and museum education at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where a scholarship is endowed in her name. She also taught at the Museum of Fine Arts, Roxbury Community College, Boston Public Schools, Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts, Harvard University Museum, Cambridge Friends School, Lesley University, and Wheelock College.

Young was a mentor in her community, helping her colleagues and local youth claim their identities as artists and pursue opportunities related to those roles. She served as an advocate for her fellow artists at the Piano Factory Studios when rising rent threatened to displace resident artists.

Young mentored Boston youth by developing the Kush Club, a teen docent program, and managed Primal Arts, an educational consulting business that specializes in cultural presentations, art workshops, and museum tours. As a teacher and purveyor of cultural heritage, Young worked to preserve and maintain folk art traditions in her artwork, such as the Gullah heritage of basket weaving. Her work was informed by her research into African aesthetics and traditions, particularly weaving and hair braiding. She was also prolific in ceramics, European Tapestry, and ethnic weaving.

Visit the display in the Grossmann Gallery on the 5th floor of the Healey Library at UMass Boston. The Grossmann Gallery is open during the library’s regular hours: 7:30 am–10:00 pm on Monday through Thursday, 7:30 am–6:00 pm on Friday, 9:00 am–3:00 pm on Saturday, and 11:00 am–5:00 pm on Sunday. The exhibition will run through the spring of 2019.

Additionally, there’s an exhibition of Theresa-India Young’s work and work by recipients of the Theresa-India Young Scholarship Fund in the Thompson Gallery at MassArt, which was recently featured on WBUR.

Learn more about the Theresa-India Young papers here and view a finding aid for the collection here.

For questions about the exhibition, this collection, or to schedule a research appointment, please email library.archives@umb.edu or call 617-287-5469.

University Archives & 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 & 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 & Special Collections, click here or email library.archives@umb.edu.