Category: Exhibit

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Curating Illinois Quaker History – An Interview with Sofia Caruso and Emily Gutknecht

Banner for exhibit. Exhibit title is The Quakers of Illinois: Social Concerns and Westward Migration. It is located in the Main Library in Room 324. The open hours ae Monday through Friday, 9am to 12pm, and 1pm to 5pm.

This spring, the IHLC opened The Quakers of Illinois: Social Concerns and Westward Migration, an exhibit exploring the history of the Religious Society of Friends, or the Quakers, in Illinois throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Read about graduate student Sofia Caruso and undergraduate student Emily Gutknecht’s experiences and insights researching and curating the exhibit.

Two glass exhibit cases displaying The Quakers of Illinois: Social Concerns and Westward Migration. The cases contain photographs, documents, and books. Between the cases is a poster with a photo of a house and some text about the exhibit.

How did the idea for the exhibit come about?

SC: In the fall of 2023, I began processing new additions to the Illinois Yearly Meeting papers in our Religious Society of Friends collection (MS 960). I was surprised by how involved the Religious Society of Friends had been with social movements of the 19th and early 20th centuries, especially for a religious group that is relatively small.… Read More

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From Free Soil to Free Silver: US Political Parties of the 19th Century

The exhibit, as displayed in the IHLC Reading Room, Main Library 324.

The 19th century was a period of substantial party instability in American politics. New parties emerged, vanished, merged, and succeeded, altering the shape of the American political discourse. The Illinois Historical and Lincoln Collections has a special pop-up exhibit on display that highlights some of these political parties. Drawing on several of our archival collections and cataloged material, the exhibit contains pamphlets, election tickets, broadsides and other items produced by the parties of the 19th century, their partisans, and their opponents. The exhibit will be on display for the remainder of the Fall 2022 semester.… Read More

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Curating Utopia – An Interview With Jessie Knoles

 

Exhibit flyer featuring house and sign from Brook Farm, the site of a previous communitarian colony.

This month IHLC opens its newest exhibit, Constructing Utopias: Examining Communitarianism Efforts in America, 1825-1940, which explores the promotion and study of communitarian colonies in America through research collections and personal papers at IHLC.

This exhibit was originally set for installation in March 2020. Due to COVID-19 pandemic responses and library closings, the exhibit materials have been patiently waiting in crates in the IHLC vault. We are excited to have this exhibit finally installed and available available for viewing during our open reading room hours, Monday-Friday 9am-12pm and 1-5pm (please see our website, library.illinois.edu/ihx, for up-to-date hours).

Read more about the research and curation process in the interview below with Jessie Knoles, who curated the exhibit as a graduate student at the University of Illinois iSchool, and is currently the Lincoln Collection Research Specialist at IHLC.… Read More

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Curating the Land of Lincoln – An Interview with Austin Justice

This month the IHLC opened Here I Have Lived: Recreating the Land of Lincoln, an exhibit that explores the histories of two historic Lincoln sites: Lincoln’s New Salem State Historic Site and Lincoln Home National Historic Site. Read about senior undergraduate student Austin Justice’s experience and insights researching and curating this exhibit.

How did the idea for this exhibit come about?

As a native of southeastern Kentucky, I often get the question “how did you end up here?” Part of my answer is that my interest in history growing up spurred several family visits to sites around Central Illinois like New Salem, the Mt.… Read More