Special Collections

An audio recording of a speech given by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., has been donated to the University Libraries, further documenting the civil rights leader’s 1959 visit to the UI campus.

The speech, entitled “The Future of Race Relations,” was presented by Dr. King at the Iowa Memorial Union on November 11, 1959. The 42-minute recording includes an introduction by Prof. Robert Michaelson of the UI School of Religion. King’s appearance was co-sponsored by the School and by the University Lectures Committee.

Charles Silliman, a Coralville resident, donated the recording to the University Archives earlier this year. Silliman had purchased it from the University’s audiovisual service, which recorded the speech, less than a week after the event. A circulating copy on CD will be available in Media Services, and a digital copy has also been preserved, with the original tape, in the University Archives.

The image at left of King on campus is taken from the 1960 Hawkeye yearbook.

The exhibition From Monks to Masters: The Medieval Manuscript and the Early Printed Book is now open at the University of Iowa Musem of Art. The exhibition is a collaboration of UI Libraries Special Collections, the Hardin Library’s Martin Rare Book Room and the UIMA. It was organized by David Schoonover and Greg Prickman of Special Collections & University Archives, and Kathleen Kamerick of the UI Department of History.The exhibition of more than 50 objects explores the transition from a time when books were hand copied by a select group of literate and often religious scribes to the era of mass-produced books created by master printers using the latest 15th-century technology — the hand-operated wooden printing press.

Among the books and manuscripts on display are beautiful illuminated manuscripts and many examples of incunabula (books printed before 1500). Together, these books illustrate a pivotal moment in history and demonstrate the relevance of historical materials to modern times.

Individual objects in the exhibition include a 15th-century “Book of Hours of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” a homily of Pope Gregory the Great from around 1450 and two copies of the Nuremberg Chronicle.

In addition, the Museum will host an extensive series of gallery talks featuring UI faculty and staff. All talks begin at 7:30 pm in the UIMA Carver Gallery. The schedule is as follows:

June 28: Kathleen C. Kamerick - Changing the Hours: Praying in Manuscript & Print

July 26: Gary Frost - Medieval Bookbinding

August 2: Raymond A. Mentzer - Medieval Religious Texts

August 9: Edwin A. Holtum - Breaking With Galen: Anatomy and Medicine in the Early Days of Printing

August 16: Cheryl D. Jacobsen - They Did That All by Hand? The Dedicated Task of the Medieval Scribe

August 23: Timothy D. Barrett - On the Invention of Imitation Parchment: Papermaking in Europe 1300-1500

August 30: Sara T. Sauers - Early Modern Typography

September 6: Elizabeth Aubrey - From Singer’s Lips to Scribe’s Pen: Music in Medieval Manuscripts

September 13: Denise Filios - Constructing Power: Illuminated Manuscripts in Medieval and Golden Age Spain

September 20: Jonathan Wilcox - Questions of Authenticity: Medieval Charters, Medieval Manuscripts, and Modern Facsimiles

September 27: Glenn Ehrstine - Medieval Studies at Iowa, the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493), and the Business of Early Books

October 4: Matthew P. Brown - The Persistence of the Medieval in Early American Book Culture

The exhibition is open to the public free of charge. The UI Museum of Art, located on North Riverside Drive in Iowa City, is open noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, and noon to 9 p.m. Thursday and Friday. Admission is free. Public metered parking is available in UI parking lots west and north of the museum.

What can you learn from a theatre program? Of course we can learn the name of the production and the people who are in it. But that’s just the beginning of what you can learn from these colorful and enchanting bits of ephemeral art. Local history, theatre layout, design, following the careers of certain persons, and changes in fashion and advertising through the decades are just some of the research possibilities arising from these collections, which are highlighted in a new exhibition in Special Collections & University Archives.

The exhibit will be on display through September, offering visitors a glimpse of this unique form of cultural ephemera. Did you know that you could eat oysters and ice cream in the same establishment after the show? That one could obtain telephone service for $1 a month? That Oscar Wilde appeared at the Iowa City Opera House? And from announcements printed in the eighteen-nineties by the newspaper printers to the colorful artworks of the teens; from the swirling forms of Art Nouveau in the nineteen-twenties to the streamlined angularity of Art Deco in the early nineteen thirties, these programs record changes in art, architecture, and design.