Lobby Exhibits at Mann Library
November 2009 - January 2010
Backyard Revivial: American Heritage Poultry
The past decade has brought a resurgence of interest in small-scale poultry-keeping. As consumer interest in the environmental dimensions of farming has widened, a growing number of people are raising small flocks of chickens outdoors. These new poultry keepers need birds that thrive in variable weather, forage some of their own food, and produce both eggs and meat-birds like the American breeds of a century ago. Drawing from rare historical works in the Rice Poultry Collection at Mann Library, this late Fall exhibit showcases a variety of heirloom poultry breeds once common on American farms and currently making somewhat of a comeback in both rural and sometimes surprisingly urban landscapes of the modern U.S.
October 2009 - February 2010
Blowing in the Wind: Agricultural Disaster on the Great Plains
The Dust Bowl of the American Great Plains is the starting point for John Steinbeck's 1939 classic The Grapes of Wrath, which has been the focus of this year’s New Student Reading Project at Cornell. An exhibit at Mann Library highlights the agroecological factors behind the Dust Bowl and the birth of U.S. soil conservation programs that this environmental catastrophe engendered. The exhibit will be on display on the first floor of the library through February 2010. (See also our online display of Farm Security Administration photos of Dust Bowl era farmsteads from the Library of Congress Archives).
June 2009 - October 31, 2009
Written on Our Faces: Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
In 1872, Darwin published The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, a treatise he had originally intended to include as a chapter in his seminal work, The Origin of Species. Presenting detailed observations from living subjects—and making intensive use of new techniques in photographic reproduction to illustrate his work—Darwin builds a case for the innate ability, shared by both humans and animals, to express a variety of emotions. A central tenet of his argument and illustrations: The expression of emotions in man and animals provides revealing clues about evolutionary connections between species. This display in the Mann Library lobby, installed in conjunction with the Cornell University Library's celebration of the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species, presents some of the major influences that shaped both the reasoning and methodology behind The Expressions, and highlights the lasting impact the treatise has had on scientific observation of animal behavior. Also featured in the display is an intriguing first appearance from the Cornell University Library archives: An original letter to Darwin’s 19th century colleague in zoology, Henry Reeks, written in Darwin’s own hand. Additional detail is available in the recent article in the Cornell Daily Sun (9/17/2009).