Graphic Design BFA students enrolled in Communication Design 2 in Spring 2023 build visual communication skills by researching and exploring influential ideas in graphic design from a historical perspective. With a deep focus on creating a strong relationship between content and form, each student’s process involves experimentation with a specific design convention within a contemporary, personal context. These pieces convey what student’s have learned in the past year about themselves, academics, culture, politics, relationships, etc. while also exhibiting what they have learned about effective visual communication — composition, conceptual thinking, image-making, creating unity and variation within systems, and unconventional formats.
For the curators, archivists, and librarians working in Special Collections Divisions across the state and the country, maintaining a historical record through the collection of manuscripts, multimedia, and printed forms is not only important to their work, but also necessary to their institutions. Despite all of this, we are often unaware of the need to maintain our own records for future use.
A History of Special Collections is an exhibition that considers the archival history of the archives themselves, and demonstrates the importance of developing and maintaining such institutional knowledge.
From the early antecedents in the Utah Room to the most contemporary iteration, this exhibition traces the trajectory and evolution of the Special Collections Division at the Marriott Library over the last seven decades. Join us in exploring the unique holdings from each of the departments – now on display in the Special Collections Exhibition Gallery on Level 4. What’s revealed is a story of dedication, scholarship, and commitment to research and access.
The underground addition to the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library, commissioned in 1992 and completed in 1996, was the fourth in a series of underground library additions designed by Michigan-based architecture firm Gunnar Birkerts and Associates. Largely ignored by critics in their time, these projects have gained new relevance today because of their environmental performance characteristics as well as their delightful, inspiring daylighting strategies.
Curated by Michael Abrahamson, this exhibition of archival sketches, drawings, and photographs from the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan and the Balthazar Korab Collection, Library of Congress reveals the evolution of this distinctive project type in the hands of Birkerts and his employees over two decades, at the ends of which the Marriott can be seen as a culmination.
For the past 75 years the University of Utah College of Nursing (CON) has unified and inspired scientists, educators, clinicians, staff, and students to design, lead, and achieve improvements for the well-being of all.
In 1948, the CON became the first nursing college in the state of Utah. Since then, its faculty and staff have played a vital role in shaping the fields of nursing and gerontology. This exhibit showcases images from past and present, highlighting how the CON has evolved throughout the decades–honoring our past, and inspiring our future.
This exhibit and the online exhibit were made possible by the dedicated work from the Eccles Health Science Library. Thank you, Carmin Smoot, Elaine Thornton, Bryan Hull, Mike Thelin, and Dr. Beth Vaughan Cole (CON Emeritus Professor).
This exhibit highlights images from the Utah Association of Chinese History Photograph Collection (P0897), which features portraits of professionals and community leaders working in fields including business, science, government, religion, education, and the arts at the end of the 20th century.