Documenting Dada / Disseminating Dada is an exhibition featuring items from the University of Iowa Libraries’ International Dada Archive, the world’s most comprehensive collection of material related to the Dada movement. Timothy Shipe who is the curator of the International Dada Archive and a librarian in Special Collections curated the exhibition.
From 1916 to 1923, a new kind of artistic movement swept Europe and America. Its very name, “DADA,” was notably missing the obligatory “ism,” distinguishing it from the long line of avant-gardes that had determined the preceding century of art history.
More than a mere art movement, Dada claimed a broader role as an agent of cultural, social, and political change. Its proponents wanted to affect all aspects of Western civilization, to take part in the revolutionary changes unfolding as inevitable results of the chaos of World War I.
The Dada movement was perhaps the single most decisive influence on the development of twentieth-century art, and its innovations are so pervasive as to be virtually taken for granted today.
This exhibition highlights Dada’s printed output, which documents the ephemeral aspects of the movement and shows how the dadaists used their publications to spread the movement beyond its origins in Zurich.
The exhibition continues through April 28, 2017 in the Main Library Gallery. Learn more here: https://www.lib.uiowa.edu/gallery/
On January 18, 2017 the exhibition was officially opened with a ribbon cutting. The ribbon cutting involved creating a Dadaist poem inspired by the instructions from Dada writer Tristan Tzara:
“To make a Dadaist Poem” (1920):
Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are—an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.
Arthur Bonfield, “The Why, How, What, and Result of 60 Years of Rare Book Collecting”
Instruction Librarian Amy Chen has a new publication.
So you want to visualize your data?
For the last 60 years Professor Arthur Bonfield has collected rare books— original copies of books on several subjects written, published, printed, and bound between 1490 and 1800. In this talk he will discuss the why, how, what, and result of his 60 years of rare book collecting. He has collected over 1,000 original copies of books from that period on voyages, travels, exploration, and geography; encyclopedias; English and continental history; English literature; English translations of classical Greek and Roman literature; political philosophy; and herbals. In his talk he will explain how and why his life has been enriched by his continuing attachment to and preoccupation with this very absorbing avocation.
We’ve started a new project to simulate browsing the artists’ books in the stacks. Every week, John Fifield will be refreshing the shelf with the
Instruction Librarian Amy Chen and Outreach & Engagement Librarian Colleen Theisen have written book chapters in “New Directions for Special Collections” which will be available Nov 30, 2016 from Libraries Unlimited. 
Historic Foodies November 30th Meeting
“Iowa Now” Press Release: 
Amy Chen occasionally posts in the blog for the Newly Composed PhD: Writing Across Careers. This blog supports the efforts of the 
