{"id":434,"date":"2022-03-11T20:58:40","date_gmt":"2022-03-11T20:58:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/gallery\/?p=434"},"modified":"2022-04-08T19:50:56","modified_gmt":"2022-04-08T19:50:56","slug":"a-dorm-room-ca-1975-with-david-mccartney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/gallery\/2022\/03\/11\/a-dorm-room-ca-1975-with-david-mccartney\/","title":{"rendered":"A Dorm Room, ca. 1975 with David McCartney"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sara J. Pinkham<\/em><\/p>\n

A bright lava lamp in the front display case of the Main Library Gallery serves as a beacon, inviting library patrons to examine the plenitude of nostalgic objects just on the other side of the glass window. Records lean against a speaker and fan out over a record player’s plastic dust cover: Tapestry<\/em> by Carole King, Live & Well<\/em> by B.B. King, The Graduate<\/em> by Simon & Garfunkel, Magical Mystery Tour<\/em> by The Beatles, Cheap Thrills<\/em> by Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Age of Aquarius<\/em> by The 5th Dimension, and others. Vintage board games, a bright pink frisbee, a portable transistor radio, and a 7-Up wastepaper basket are arrayed over a classic shag carpet. While flattened from years of use, the vibrant greens, yellows, and oranges are a familiar signal of the 1970s.<\/p>\n

A crate is crammed full of both popular books and required reading, such as Catch-22<\/em>, Watership Down<\/em>, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance<\/em>, and The Metamorphosis<\/em>. An empty soda bottle, pop can, and tea mug add comfortable clutter, and a cinder block serves as an economical pedestal for a potted plant. We have stepped back in time to 1975, a year during which We Are Hawkeyes <\/em>exhibit co-curator and University Archivist Emeritus David McCartney found himself working toward his undergraduate degree.<\/p>\n

“I would say that the dorm room replication that we have at this exhibit pretty closely resembles the dorm room I occupied once upon a time, back around 1975,” said McCartney, who spent many hours sourcing era-appropriate objects for the display.<\/p>\n

Inspired by his own experience moving away from home for the first time, the dorm room set in We Are Hawkeyes: Celebrating 175 Years of Student Life at the University of Iowa <\/em>naturally includes a desk with a Smith Corona portable typewriter. “We did not have laptops, let alone tabletop computers, in 1975,” he said. <\/p>\n

The desk, located beyond the display case inside the Main Library Gallery, includes a chair, and invites visitors to sit and try their hand at using the typewriter. A vintage couch, on loan from the University of Iowa Department of Theatre Arts, is a comfortable spot to flip through a Hawkeye Yearbook or duplicate 1970s issues of Light-Eater<\/em> (“Serving the University of Iowa Residence Halls”), a student-published newsletter. <\/p>\n

“As time-specific as this dorm room is, I think there’s a timelessness to it in terms of how we as students, and later alumni, could identify ourselves,” said McCartney. “And that’s what a dorm room is all about, isn’t it?”<\/p>\n

Check out the latest Main Library Gallery video below, in which David McCartney provides a brief tour of the dorm room set from the We Are Hawkeyes<\/em> exhibit. <\/strong><\/p>\n