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Estera Milman with long greying hair and glasses, smiling at the camera
Feb 18 2021

Remembering the vision of Estera Milman

Posted on February 18, 2021 by Elizabeth Riordan

We lost an important voice in the art and archival world last month. 

Estera Milman, art historian, curator, and researcher of the avant-garde, died January 27, 2021 in Boston. Milman received her MFA at the University of Iowa in Photography/Photomedia, Historical Criticism and Theory. She then went on to be a curator for the Stanley Museum of Art and teach in the School of Art and Art History. 

Estera Milman with long greying hair and glasses, smiling at the cameraIn 1982, Milman founded Alternative Traditions in the Contemporary Arts (ATCA) at the University of Iowa. Now housed in Special Collections,  ATCA was dedicated to collecting and preserving the works and papers of contemporary artists and to the facilitation and dissemination of research related to the post-World War II avant-garde. Artists and critics whose works and papers are represented in the ATCA collection include Vito Acconci,  Laurie Anderson, Ay-O, Gregory Battcock, George Brecht, John Cage, Giuseppe Chiari, Buster Cleveland,  Robert Filliou, Ken Friedman, Klaus Groh, Al Hansen, Dick Higgins, Alice Hutchins, Ray Johnson, Shigeko Kubota, George Maciunas, Robert Morris, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Benjamin Patterson, Dieter Rot, Andre Tomkins, Endre Tot, Wolf Vostell, and Robert Watts, among a host of others.

Under Milman’s leadership for 18 years, ATCA allowed a space for people to grapple with and embrace the challenging ideas brought forth by artists outside of the “mainstream” of popularly celebrated art. As stated in Milman’s obituary, “At a time when few museums were ready to show—let alone collect—ephemera, performance relics, artifacts, and related artist papers, Milman dedicated her professional career to establishing the institutional framework to support art that challenges the market, dares to expand our sensibilities, and demands a just world. She was deeply committed to ideals of human equality and to art as a political mechanism for challenging complacency and elitism.”

Apart from publishing widely and receiving numerous awards and grants, Milman also proved ahead of her time in exploring how the internet could push ideas of art and space beyond the museum walls, as demonstrated on her “Estera Milman inter/arts” webpage. 

Her visionary look at what the art and archival world has left a mark on those who knew her as well as the ATCA collection here at Special Collections. Tim Shipe, curator of the International Dada Archive, reflects about his time with Milman during a 1989 conference below:

“My initial encounters with Estera Milman occurred in the early 1980s, during meetings of the Board of Directors of what was then called the ‘Dada Archive and Research Center,’ when we charted the possible futures of this project that was still in its infancy. But I believe I first began to grasp the scope of Estera’s thinking about art and archives during a 1989 conference that she organized and on whose published proceedings we collaborated. The title was Art Networks and Information Systems, and I can best describe it by borrowing liberally from my 1990 review in Art Documentation, written when the impact of the event was fresh in my mind:

An astonishingly diverse assortment of artists, librarians, entrepreneurs, and other arts and information specialists from a variety of institutions, large and small, gathered in Coralville, Iowa for an unusual planning conference cosponsored by New York’s Franklin Furnace Archive and the University of Iowa’s Alternative Traditions in the Contemporary Arts. It was the particular vision of this conference to bring together practicing avant-garde artists, librarians from some of the nation’s most influential institutions, curators of small archives and special collections far from the mainstream, and a variety of other people active in various areas of the contemporary arts as well as the information professions, harnessing the potential of their diverse areas of expertise in order to examine the problems of sharing information about contemporary artists’ materials and, if possible, to begin developing a plan to link a variety of alternative collections in some sort of electronic network. Facing one another in a cozy conference space were artists who had never heard of MARC or AACR2, librarians who had never dreamed of Fluxus or Neo-Dada, and a surprising number of people who were familiar with both the contemporary arts scene and the more arcane areas of library and information science. This unlikely assortment of attendees came with open minds and a genuine desire to learn from one another, to listen, and to seek common solutions.

I won’t claim that Estera Milman invented the World Wide Web at that conference, but the art information system that she proposed during the concluding session certainly seems, in retrospect, to anticipate what in just a few years we would know by that name. Such was Estera’s vision.

In the years following the conference, Estera and I had a number of fruitful exchanges, often concerning the best way to catalog some of the artists’ books from the Alternative Traditions collection. We had fewer interactions in later years, and it is always that 1989 conference that comes to mind when I consider Estera’s role as a thinker about the interrelations between artistic practice, art theory, art history, and art documentation.” 

 

For more information on Estera Milman, visit her obituary in the Boston Globe

You can also learn more about ATCA here

 

 

Posted in Collection Connection, NewsTagged art, ATCA, Estera Milman, tim shipe
Dec 04 2017

Special Collections November Recap

Posted on December 4, 2017December 5, 2017 by Colleen Theisen

Late October and November were filled with big events in Special Collections and the Iowa Women’s Archives.

 

Iowa Bibliophiles 15th Anniversary, 11-8-2017

The November meeting marked the 15th anniversary of the group. In celebration, the evening’s talk was given by Arthur Bonfield, who gave the inaugural Bibliophiles talk in November, 2002.


Iowa Women’s Archives 25th Anniversary, 11-10-2017 – 11-11-2017

The Iowa Women’s Archives celebrated their 25th anniversary with an open house, a gallery tour, a gala dinner, and a full day symposium.


Teaching with Medieval Manuscripts

Teaching with Medieval manuscripts was a theme this month. Special Collections librarians and graduate student workers from the School of Library and Information Science all worked together to bring in all eight sections of the Medieval Art survey course Cave Paintings to Cathedrals (ARTH:1050:0A01).

Also this month Center for the Book faculty member Melissa Moreton partnered with librarians and graduate student workers to bring in two fifth grade classes from Horace Mann Elementary School to test a lesson teaching young students with medieval manuscripts.


“Saving Brinton” Documentary Premieres in New York City, November 9-16th

The documentary “Saving Brinton” premiered at DOC NYC. The documentary features a collection of very early motion pictures that are now housed in Special Collections. See a selection online. The documentary continues to play at film festivals around the country before a wider release next year. More.

 


NBC Nightly News Films in Special Collections, November 30, 2017

NBC Nightly News filmed a segment about miniature book creator, collector, and donor Charlotte Smith, and School of Library and Information Science student Bethany Kluender who has cataloged one thousand of the tiny books. The segment will air sometime in the next month.


University Archives Acquires History of Hydraulics Lab Collection

The C. Maxwell Stanley Hydraulics Laboratory at the University of Iowa is one of the nation’s leading fluids-related research centers. Established in 1920, it is also historically significant. Recently the University Archives acquired a set of daily journals maintained by the laboratory’s first director, Floyd Nagler of the College of Engineering faculty. The typewritten logs document activity at the laboratory from 1921 to 1933, its first dozen years of operation. During this time, the laboratory was formally established as the Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research (IIHR), and in 1932 ground was broken for the present-day structure on the west bank of the Iowa River.

 

Here is Prof. Nagler’s terse but turning-point entry from Tuesday, July 5, 1932:

“University Building Committee agreed to construct partitions in hydraulic laboratory addition. Contractor began excavation for foundation of laboratory.”

The journals have been added to the Records of the Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research (collection no. RG 10.0006.001) and are open for research. The Dept. of Special Collections expresses its appreciation to Dennis A. Hill for making this acquisition possible.

To learn more about IIHR’s history, go to http://www.iihr.uiowa.edu/about/history/.

 


Andrei Codrescu’s Papers Arrive

Andrei Codrescu and Curator Timothy Shipe

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


New Episode of Historically Yours Podcast

Historically Yours Podcast: A Tale of Woe for Miss Rosa Poe with guest Peter Balestrieri

 


One From Our Social Media:

Holy binder’s waste! This 1568 copy of Tractatus de iure prothomiseos… has a very unique binding. The staining on top of a manuscript leaf gives it quite the appearance, and makes you wonder what happened to it! [xK349.3774 A4 1568] #uiowa #specialcollections #iglibraries #binderswaste #dirtybooks #16thcentury

A post shared by U. of Iowa Special Collections (@uispeccoll) on Nov 28, 2017 at 2:49pm PST

 


“Freaky Friday” October Halloween Video Series on Facebook

Elizabeth Riordan, graduate student assistant in Special Collections and student in the Scho0l of Library and Information Science wrote and directed a Halloween film series for our Facebook premiering every Friday in October. Watch the whole playlist here: https://www.facebook.com/pg/uispeccoll/videos/

Freaky Fridays 1: Ghostly transgressions in the Reading Room

Freaky Fridays are back in Special Collections! Be on the lookout for Hawkeye Ghost's spooktacular adventures this month.

Posted by University of Iowa Special Collections & University Archives on Friday, October 6, 2017



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Posted in NewsTagged andrei codrescu, arthur bonfield, Iowa Bibliophiles, iwa25, medieval manuscripts, saving brinton, tim shipe
screen shot of the journal issue
Jul 27 2017

Dada/Surrealism Issue 21 is Now Online

Posted on July 27, 2017July 27, 2017 by admin3010

by Tim Shipe

The International Dada Archive is pleased to announce the publication of issue number 21 of Dada/Surrealism:

http://ir.uiowa.edu/dadasur/

screen shot of the journal issue

The theme of the issue is Exhibiting Dada and Surrealism,  guest edited by Professor Kathryn Floyd of Auburn University, a former student library assistant at Iowa. In addition to the theme section, we have articles on Dada and music, on Breton, Mayakovsky, and photography, and on the surrealist film La Perle. Finally, in our first venture into multimedia, we present a video of Andrei Codrescu’s lecture-performance at the University of Iowa Libraries in connection with the exhibition Documenting Dada / Disseminating Dada.

 

Dada/Surrealism is the peer-reviewed open-access journal of the Association for the Study of Dada and Surrealism. It is published by the International Dada Archive, Special Collections, University of Iowa Libraries. The general editor is Tim Shipe.

Posted in NewsTagged dada, dada and surrealism, dada/surrealism, tim shipe
Feb 02 2017

Documenting Dada//Disseminating Dada Exhibition Opens: Ribbon Cutting

Posted on February 2, 2017February 3, 2017 by Colleen Theisen

Documenting Dada Disseminating Dada

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.

Posted in ExhibitionsTagged dada, tim shipe, tristan tzara
Image of Tim Shipe
Mar 11 2016

Special Collections Weekly Update 3/11/2016

Posted on March 11, 2016January 14, 2019 by Colleen Theisen

Newsfeed:

  • Meet Dorothy Wirtz, by Annie Tunnicliff, Dorothy Wirtz Graduate Research Assistant in the Iowa Women’s Archives http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/iwa/2016/03/03/meet-dorothy-wirtz/
  • Public History Partners Follow the Trail of a Dismantled and Lost Medieval Manuscript, by Colleen Theisen https://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/speccoll/2016/03/09/public-history-partners-follow-the-trail-of-a-broken-and-lost-medieval-manuscript/.

Upcoming Events:

  • Thursday, 3/24:  Jeannette Gabriel, We Did So Much Beyond the Home: Jewish Women and Community Life in Iowa (4 p.m., Iowa Women’s Archives). http://events.uiowa.edu/event/we_did_so_much_beyond_the_home_jewish_women_and_community_life_in_iowa
  • Saturday, 3/26: Latin Paleography Workshop, Instructors: Sarah Bond, Yvonne Seale, Heather Wacha, Room 1140 Main Library. Register: https://uiowa.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_9XZkqhyaFTrY4Wp
  • Wednesday, 3/30: Felicia Rice, Doc/Undoc (lecture performance), followed by a public conversation with Guillermo Gόmez-Pẽna (5 p.m., Special Collections Reading Room). http://book.grad.uiowa.edu/events/march-2016/gomez-pena-and-rice
  • Wednesday, 4/13: Iowa Bibliophiles, Jane Murphy and Mark Brookfield, 36 year partners in Murphy-Brookfield Books, will talk about the enormous changes brought on by Internet bookselling in the last 20+ years. (Refreshments 6:30PM, Talk 7PM, Special Collections Reading Room).

Upcoming Deadlines:

  • DEADLINE MARCH 15, 2016: Meet the Manuscript: A Transcription and Translation Workshop http://clas.uiowa.edu/dwllc/node/1249
  • DEADLINE MARCH 21, 2016: Apply to be our next Olson Graduate Assistant http://www.grad.uiowa.edu/graduate-assistant-job-postings/6409/olson-graduate-research-assistantship-at-special-collections
  • DEADLINE EXTENDED TO APRIL 15, 2016: Apply for the Linda and Richard Kerber fund for financial support to research in the Iowa Women’s Archives http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/iwa/kerber/

Staff Updates:

Image of David McCartney speakingUniversity Archivist David McCartney traveled this week to accept the 2016 Distinguished Archives Alumni award from the iSchool at the University of Maryland. Join us in congratulating David!

 

 

 

Image of Tim ShipeTim Shipe has just returned from his mostly Dada-related European travels. He started in Amsterdam, where he acquired books by Dutch writers who had participated in the International Writing Program. Proceeding via Cologne, where he met with curators at two museums devoted to German dadaists, he then flew to Bucharest, where he was an invited keynote speaker at an international conference on Dada held at the Romanian Academy. He ended his travels in Zurich, where the Dada centennial celebrations were in full swing. After meeting with numerous librarians, curators, and scholars, his Swiss sojourn culminated in another keynote address, this time at the Cabaret Voltaire, in the very room where the Dada movement was born in 1916. The picture shows Tim in the Cabaret just after completing his lecture.

 

This Week’s Best from Social Media:

  • Ethan DeGross testing the 3D model on the interactive screen which is part of the “Explorer’s Legacy” exhibition in the Main Library gallery, open through April 8th.

https://vine.co/v/iHgU5BiJQbP

  •  A new episode in the If Books Could Talk video series debuted this week on YouTube. If Books Could Talk is a collaboration between the University of Iowa Libraries and History Corps, a digital public history initiative from the University of Iowa Department of History.

 

New Acquisition:

  • Interstices & Intersections or, An Autodidact Comprehends a Cube, by Russell Maret. N7433.4.M37 I57 2014 

While these photos were fun to take (Geometry! Yay!), Russell Maret’s 2014 work Interstices & Intersections must be seen in person to understand the way the structure of the book impacts the text. You can also see several books of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry, the inspiration behind Maret’s work, in Special Collections. – Margaret Gamm

Russell Marat's illustrations
Russell Marat's illustrations
Russell Marat's illustrations

Events & Workshops Recap:

Bruce Whiteman setting up for his workshop

3/4/2016  Bruce Whiteman, Head Librarian Emeritus of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at UCLA, gave a workshop for the Center for the Book last Friday on forgeries and drew extensively from Special Collections to demonstrate the history of forgeries, fakes, pirated copies, hoaxes, false imprints, and counterfeits. Special Collections is deeply grateful for his generous sharing of his expertise making it possible to better identify and describe our collections.

 

P1010299

3/5/2016 The Iowa Women’s Archives kicked off Women’s History Month by celebrating the contributions of Iowa Latinas to our history and the formation of the Latina/o Studies minor on campus. Mujeres Latinas: Every Woman Has a Story brought 62 participants to the Library for a two-hour workshop Saturday morning.   I especially enjoyed the participatory aspect of the event – from the Latina/o Studies announcement to the terrific contributions of the students and heartfelt memories from members of the public about their own family history and the artifacts/documents they brought to share. After the event, many participants headed out of the library to other venues to “continue the discussion.” – Janet Weaver, Assistant Curator, Iowa Women’s Archives

 

IMG_5308

3/9/2016 The Iowa Bibliophiles welcomed Doug Russell, senior judge of the Iowa District Court, who addressed the Bibliophiles on books by and about famous bibliophiles, their book collections, and the books they have written about collecting.

Join our email list to receive updates on future events: http://eepurl.com/beW3-T

 

 


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Posted in News, Weekly UpdateTagged 3d modeling, bruce whiteman, ethan, if books could talk, Iowa Bibliophiles, mujeres latinas, tim shipe
Dec 31 2015

Issue no. 20 of Dada/Surrealism Journal Now Available

Posted on December 31, 2015January 14, 2019 by Colleen Theisen

By Tim Shipe, Curator, International Dada Archive, and Arts & Literature Liaison

We are pleased to announce the publication of issue no. 20 of our journal Dada/Surrealism, a special number entitled From Dada to Infra-noir: Dada, Surrealism, and Romania.” http://ir.uiowa.edu/dadasur/vol20/iss1/.

Co-edited by Monique Yaari of the Pennsylvania State University and Timothy Shipe of the University of Iowa, our thematic issue includes eighteen articles by scholars and critics from North America, Europe, and Israel, as well as a selection of primary documents newly translated into English and a substantial bibliography. From Dada to Infra-Noir is the first essay collection in English on the subject of Romanian Dada and surrealism in literature and the visual arts, both within Romania and in the (largely francophone) diaspora.

Dada/Surrealism is the peer-reviewed, free and open-access journal of the Association for the Study of Dada and Surrealism, and is published by the International Dada Archive, Special Collections, University of Iowa Libraries.

Profuse thanks are due to Wendy Robertson for her expertise, patience, and hard work in bringing this project to fruition.

Tim Shipe

General Editor, Dada/Surrealism

Posted in Collection Connection, DadaTagged dada, dada and surrealism, romania, tim shipe

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