Legendary Cellist's Archive Added to UNC Greensboro Cello Music Collection

The Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections & University Archives is pleased to announce the donation of the collection of the legendary cellist, János Starker. Starker is among the most acclaimed cellists of the 20th century. Born in Budapest in 1924, Starker was considered a child prodigy. After World War II, during which he spent three months in a Nazi internment camp, Starker left Hungary to compete and perform throughout Europe, eventually emigrating to the United States in 1948. Once in the US, Starker became principal cellist of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (1948-1949), principal cellist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra (1949-1953), and principal cellist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1953-1958). As a soloist, Starker performed in over 5000 concerts. He was a trend setter as a classical recording artist, with over 150 recordings. In 1997, he was awarded a Grammy for his recording of the Bach Suites for Solo Cello on the RCA Victor Red Seal. To this day, Starker is considered to be among the most authoritative interpreters of Kodaly’s Sonata for Solo Cello. In addition to his fame as a performer, János Starker was also a beloved teacher. In 1958, he was appointed Professor of Cello at Indiana University at Bloomington.

The János Starker Musical Score and Personal Papers Collection, generously donated by his estate, includes personal papers, writings, photographs, sheet music, and recordings among its many treasures. The staff of the UNC Greensboro Cello Music Collection are prioritizing the processing of the Starker Collection and are planning to digitize as much of the material as is copyright-allowable. The collection is open for access to the public during UNC Greensboro Special Collection & University Archives regular working hours, between 9:00am - 5:00pm, Monday through Friday. To facilitate your visit or if you have any questions, please contact the curator of the collection, Stacey Krim, at srkrim@uncg.edu or 336.334.5498.

The Cello Music Collections at the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections & University Archives at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro is dedicated to acquiring, preserving, and making accessible cello music collections for research and learning. The archive contains sheet music (manuscript and published), monographs, audio-video recordings, personal papers, and artifacts associated with cellists noted for their distinguished contributions in the areas of composition, performance, pedagogy, and research.

 

Curtain's Up! The Carolina Theatre Records Come to Special Collections and University Archives

The Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives is thrilled to announce that we are now the home to the Carolina Theatre of Greensboro’s historic materials. A donation to our Manuscript collections, the Carolina Theatre’s materials include programs, marketing materials, slides, photographs, artifacts, and digital records.

The Carolina Theatre has been an important cultural and business icon in downtown Greensboro since 1927. The Carolina Theatre’s records will provide an amazing perspective on the history of downtown Greensboro, performing arts, film, and local business for students, faculty, researchers, and the general public.

Carolina Theatre, circa 1927.

As part of the ongoing relationship between Special Collections and the Carolina Theatre, Special Collections will continue to receive materials from the theatre to ensure a continuous record of their operations and impact on the Greensboro and the Triad.

Carolina Theatre sketch, 1982.

We hope to begin processing the collection soon and will provide more updates as the collection is arranged, described, and digitized! Look for updates about the collection on this blog and our social media platforms.

Forgotten Composers, a Cello Music Recital Featuring Yuriy Leonovich

The Cello Music Collection of the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives is home to the largest archival holding of cello music-related material in the world, including some of the world’s great cellists. It is the mission of the archive to preserve and make accessible manuscript and annotated sheet music and waiting for it to be musically resurrected through the hands of a musician. On Thursday, October 3rd, Special Collections and University Archives will be hosting a cellist who has accepted the challenge of reviving three compositions, two of which have not been publicly performed in the 21st century.

Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, cellist, composer, and arranger Yuriy Leonovich immigrated to the United States with his family. His teachers include cellists Stephen Geber and Robert DeMaine, and composer James Hartway. Leonovich earned his Doctorate of Musical Arts from the Cleveland Institute of Music. His compositions and arrangements have been played in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia/Oceania. His music, including the Rusalka Fantasie, has been recorded on the Five/Four Productions label. Leonovich holds the Assistant Cello Professor position at Bob Jones University in Greenville, SC.

As a scholar and performer, Leonovich is a frequent researcher and visitor to the UNCG Cello Music Collection. It is out of this relationship that Leonovich and the curator of the collection, Stacey Krim, were inspired to offer a program open to the public, featuring some of the rarely performed music in the collection. In preparing for the October recital, Krim interviewed Leonovich, asking about his research and the uniqueness of the upcoming program.

Krim: Can you speak to the value of archival research for performers?

Leonovich: I am biased because libraries have been my second home for the last 23 years. Archives are often seen as a place for the elite scholars. Most performers love to have the reader's digest version of information handed to them. Their motto is, "just tell me what to play." Hundreds of thousands of musicians are sitting in orchestras and ensembles of all types, waiting for their conductor or leader to tell them what to play and how to play it. Most of these performers wouldn't know what to do with an archive.

Stacey Krim is unique in that she actively promotes the UNCG Archive, showing performers, students, and teachers the need to dig deeper. An archive is an invaluable window into the past. I think it's important for musicians to make informed decisions based on their own findings without the middleman. Middlemen tend to use condescension and peer pressure, speaking about certain scholars at certain popular music publishers. Find an archive near you in an area that interests you, and set up a time to talk to the curator. Even then, you will learn something great.

Krim: You have chosen to perform what some would consider an unconventional selection of music for this performance. What made you choose these pieces in particular?

Leonovich: Yagling was a no-brainer for me; I love Soviet music and remember hearing the finale of the Yagling Suite performed by Antonio Meneses on a Tchaikovsky Competition LP from 1982. With regards to the other two composers, Fitelberg and Jemnitz, I had never heard of them before. Once I saw the manuscripts, I found something pleasing about how they were written, the penmanship. These pieces have been very challenging to learn, but the sonic result has been very rewarding.

Krim: Do you have any additional plans for the music and composers you have selected beyond this performance?

Leonovich: I hope to give multiple performances of these works. In the case of Jemnitz, I am involved in a major research project and I made a studio recording of this sonata. I did a smaller research project on Fitelberg and recorded his sonata, now available on my website for download. I see myself digging more into Fitelberg in the future. I will definitely play and record Yagling, but have not researched her life too much yet. Yagling died only 8 years ago.

Krim: Why do performers seem to avoid 20th and 21st century composers?

Leonovich: One of the reasons musicians avoid modern and contemporary music is because they don't understand contemporary art. This is true across the fine and visual arts. There is often a knee-jerk reaction against the current and a tendency to embrace the classic. Within that group of people, there will be a majority that also enjoys the popular. When we talk about composers, we immediately think of "high art music." On the other side you have the contemporary pop music, which speaks more in laymen's terms and is music easier to understand. ...think of an art gallery vs. phone pictures on social media. Both art and popular music reflect the times in different ways. Often art music is more difficult to understand, thus, more difficult to sell to an audience.

Copyright laws play a big role in why performers intentionally and unintentionally avoid music from the last 100 years. Not to go into details, but publishers are currently the gatekeepers of music, and once the composer dies or the publisher goes out of business, the music also dies. The copyright law helps that music stay dead in some cases for 150 years. Because of self publishing, it's becoming easier to access new music.

I can say with confidence that all three pieces on this program have been dead for a long time. The version of Jemnitz I am playing has not been heard since 1933. The Fitelberg was most likely last performed in 1946.
______________________________________

If you are a interested in learning more about Leonovich and these compositions, or are a fan of cello music, please join us for Forgotten Composers, a Cello Music Recital Featuring Yuriy Leonovich, Thursday, October 3, 4:00 pm-5:30 pm in the Hodges Reading Room, 2nd Floor Main Building, W.C. Jackson Library. The event is free and open to the public.

Program:

Cello Sonata (1945), Jerzy Fitelberg

Cello Sonata, Op. 31, (1931, rev. 1933) Sándor Jemnitz

Suite for Violoncello Solo No. 1 (1982), Victoria Yagling

If there are any questions relating to this event, please contact Stacey Krim at 336.334.5498 or srkrim@uncg.edu.

New Exhibit Shines Flashbulb on Arnold Doren, Photographer and UNC Greensboro Professor

A new exhibit on the first floor of Jackson Library shines a spotlight on American and international lives during Woodstock, the Sturgis motorcycle rally, the Greensboro Massacre, and street and landscape scenes from Beijing.

Arnold Doren, undated.

Located in the three exhibit cases by the reference desk on the first floor, the exhibit is created using reproductions from the Arnold Doren Papers. The Doren Papers includes photographs, slides, negatives, and digital photographs from Doren’s long career as a photographer. The collection also contains Doren’s personal papers, including some of his teaching materials. The collection’s materials date from the late 1960s to the early 2000s. The materials on display are a small sample of some of Doren’s photographs, showing the range of subjects he captured during his long career.

Arnold T. Doren (1935-2003) was born on July 29, 1935, in Chicago, Illinois, to Hy and Rose Dorenfield. Doren eventually changed his name from Dorenfield to Doren.

Doren’s interest in photography began when he was a teenager, photographing local life and high school athletics. Doren went on to serve in the Korean War as a Navy journalist in the Public Information Office. After his time in the military, he attended the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he received his Associate of Applied Science (A.A.S.) and Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees. While at RIT, Doren studied photography under famous photographers Minor White and Ralph Hattersley.

Doren discovered his passion for art photography while working in New York City as an assistant to photographers Irwin Blumenthal, Irving Penn, and Alan Vogel. His work in New York him to travel both in the United States and internationally. Doren’s photography often focused on documenting people – he photographed portraits, major social events, or everyday life in towns and cities.

Crowd at the Woodstock Festival, 1969.

His travels eventually led him to a commune in Woodstock, leading to his famous photographs of the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and Jimi Hendrix’s closing performance. A major piece of the exhibit, the Woodstock photographs were selected to mark the festival's 50th anniversary in 2019.

Doren spent a significant amount of time traveling across the country photographing his series of “Americana Faces.” This series included photographs of Native Americans, various roadside cultures, and individuals across the country. A Greensboro Daily News article in 1979 suggested that “the photographs in this series all could have been taken 40-50 years ago.” Doren strived to capture a historical America by photographing its people, scenery, and cultures.

In 1978, Doren joined the faculty of UNC Greensboro as an assistance professor of photography. In 1984, he became an associate professor of photography in the Art Department. He continued to travel and photograph lifestyles, including people and events in Greensboro. In 1998, Doren received a Fullbright-Hayes grant, which allowed him to travel across China to photograph the country and its people.

New Internationally recognized, Doren’s photography has been displayed in galleries across the world. Doren remained at UNC Greensboro until his retirement in 2002. In 2003, Doren passed away in his home. Special Collections and University Archives received the collection in 2009.

Visit Special Collections and University Archives at the Martha Blakeney Hodges Reading Room on the second floor of Jackson Library if you want to learn more!

New Exhibit in the Hodges Reading Room

“Setting a Proper Table: 1860-1960” 

“There’s something special about gathering a few favorite people for a meal. A beautifully set table is the perfect canvas for a delicious meal.”
Chantal Larocque

An elegantly set table is more than a backdrop for a good meal, it can also reflect social status, proper etiquette, and cultural traditions. Seemingly minute details, such as the placement of utensils, reflected important aspects of the meal, from the status of the guests to the dishes being served.

The Victorian era in Britain saw a growing interest in table settings, a trend which was soon reflected in American society as well. With the rise of the middle class, many families were in a financial position to entertain, and purchased expensive crystal, china, silver, and ivory. The purpose was to closely emulate the upper class and nobility who populated their table with as many intricate service pieces as possible, requiring a knowledge of etiquette that would reflect their social station. Meals were served in “courses” (a la russe), allowing more space at the table for elegant china, utensils, and floral arrangements. The quality and quantity of serving pieces reflected the host’s wealth and station. The lower classes’ tables had plates made of wood and pottery, while the upper classes purchased fine china and employed silversmiths and craftsman to create sumptuous table settings.

Floral arrangements enhanced the tableware and in some cases decorators were brought in to install “artificial gardens” to delight guests. Dinner parties became popular and American tables were set with European tableware. Books were published by authors, such as Mrs. Isabella Beeton, to help the lady of the house keep up with table manners and settings.

Table settings became less extravagant in the years following World War I, as house staff diminished, and women moved progressively into the workforce. This trend would continue through the next war, as advances in household appliances and prepackaged meals required less extravagant table settings. Increasingly, the focus was to simplify – leaving more elaborate table settings to holidays and special occasions.

This exhibit, “Setting a Proper Table: 1860-1960,” features china and silver that would have been seen on tables from 1860 to 1960.

A New Addition and an Epic Story: The UNC Greensboro Cello Music Collection welcomes the manuscripts and papers of Lubomir Georgiev

The Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections &University Archives is pleased to announce the donation of an important addition to the UNC Greensboro Cello Music Collection. The archive has received the manuscripts, personal papers, recordings and photographs of Bulgarian cellist, teacher, and composer, Lubomir Georgiev. This is a second, critical part to the initial sheet music collection, which was received in 2014. As the original donation only consisted of annotated sheet music, these recently donated materials contribute to understanding the breathtaking story behind Lubomir Georgiev as a performer, teacher, composer, and political refugee.

Lubomir Georgiev (b. Dec. 24, 1951, Varna, Bulgaria - d. May 31, 2005, Tallahassee, FL) studied with cellist Zdravko Jordanov, composer and violinist Marin Goleminov, and composer and pianist Alexander Raytchev at the Bulgarian State Academy of Music “Pantcho Vladigerov” in Sofia. He graduated with his Bachelor of Music in Cello Performance in 1976 and his Bachelor of Music in Composition in 1978. A talented performer, Georgiev’s reputation was established quickly in Bulgaria. He became principal cellist and soloist for the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra by 1978, touring throughout Europe and North America with the symphony. As a composer, Georgiev was winner of the Youth Creativity Award of the Bulgarian Composer’s Union in 1980 for his Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, as well as first prize at the Carl-Maria von Weber International Competition in Dresden, Germany only a year later for his string quartet, Musica Multiplici Mentes. By his late 20s, Georgiev was a rising star as a performer and composer with ambitions to refine his musicianship and well along the path to making his name known worldwide. Unfortunately, to be overly aspiring in his homeland at this time was dangerous.

Georgiev performing as the soloist, 1981

Bulgaria between 1946 to 1990 actually was known as The People’s Republic of Bulgaria, controlled by the Bulgarian Communist Party in close alliance with the Soviet Union. It was a country in which the government diligently watched over and controlled the lives of its citizens, regulating external cultural influences so as to avoid any potential corruption or subversion to Communist ideology. Musicians, such as Georgiev, were permitted limited access to the arts and artists from non-communist countries, but there were few avenues for creative growth. The government enforced strict adherence to Communist values and state loyalty.

As an artist, Lubomir Georgiev recognized that Communism directly repressed the heart of his identity as a musician. When he became principal cellist in Sofia, it was demanded that he officially join the Communist Party, but he refused. Yet again, two years later in 1980, it was demanded that Georgiev join the Party, and he declined. Needless to say, this did not endear Georgiev to Communist officials. Georgiev’s clash with Communism culminated in 1986 during a visit to Bulgaria by the famous cellist, János Starker. This was Starker’s second visit to Bulgaria in which Georgiev was able to study with him, and on both occasions, Starker invited Georgiev to be his student at Indiana University Bloomington. The prospect to develop himself as a musician with such a legendary artist was the opportunity Georgiev craved and what was denied to him by living in a Communist country. He began making plans to travel to the United States to become Starker’s student.        

Georgiev performing in a master class for János Starker in Bulgaria 

Georgiev’s choice came with great risk; to travel to the United States, he would need an American visa, but it was forbidden for a Bulgarian citizen to directly contact anyone at the American Embassy. The Bulgarian government feared not only the potential for espionage, but also that its citizens would defect. Consequently, Georgiev arranged a secret meeting with a cultural attaché to the American Embassy in Sofia. They were set to meet at 3:00 pm on May 5, 1986 at a park bench in front of the National Theater.

Georgiev arrived at the meeting place early and saw the attaché approaching. Before the diplomat got to the bench, two men abducted Georgiev and transported him to a nearby building in which he was imprisoned in the basement. He was interrogated for several hours about his motives for contacting the American Embassy. Eventually, he was sent back to his house with his wife, where he was told to remain until contacted. The Bulgarian agent who originally questioned Georgiev visited him after two days and informed Georgiev that he would be allowed to travel to the United States on one condition; Georgiev was to serve as a spy for Bulgaria. He was given permission to leave Bulgaria for five months to study with Starker and was forced to leave his wife behind in Bulgaria. Georgiev made it to the United States on January 8, 1987 and would not set foot in Bulgaria again until after the fall of the Communist government.

When it became apparent that Georgiev was not serving as a spy and had no plans to return to Bulgaria, government officials began to get nervous. Georgiev’s wife at the time, Rossitza Dontcheva Georgiev, had applied for a passport and visa to travel in 1987, and when she went to the police station to collect the documents, government officials were waiting for her. Rossitza was interrogated, and after it was ascertained that she could speak English, she was told that she was to travel to the United States to find and retrieve her husband, acting as a spy for the Bulgarian government for the forty days she was allotted for the task. Ultimately, Rossitza would travel to the United States and remain with her husband.

Physical residency in the United States did not mean that Lubomir Georgiev was safe against reprisal from the Bulgarian government for his defection. Georgiev had been scheduled for a five-concert tour in Japan during the Summer of 1987. As his status as a political refugee in the United States was not official yet, Georgiev technically was a Bulgarian citizen still, and the country would not issue the required permissions for him to travel to Japan, thus sabotaging his performance tour. Eventually, the Japanese Embassy did intervene, and the Bulgarian government did issue the permission, but it was issued five days after the tour began, making it impossible for Georgiev to participate in the tour.  

Although performing was impossible for Georgiev immediately after defecting to the United States, he was able to indulge in his original purpose. Once at Indiana University, Georgiev thrived, studying not only with János Starker, but with such great musicians as Fritz Magg and David Baker. He graduated with his Artist’s Diploma in Cello Performance from the Indiana University School of Music in 1988. This was an important year, as Georgiev officially was granted asylum on November 22, 1988. With protection granted by the United States, Georgiev was able to find employment, serving as principal cellist of the Richmond Symphony in Indiana from 1989 to 1993.

Georgiev with student

After settling in the United States, Georgiev became known as a teacher and performer. Georgiev was hired as an Assistant Professor of Cello at Florida State University (FSU) and began serving as principal cellist for the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra in 1993. He made multiple appearances as a soloist, in addition to performing in chamber ensembles. In 1995, after the fall of Communism in Bulgaria, Georgiev even returned to his birthplace of Varna on a tour to perform and teach a new generation of Eastern European cellists.  

The UNC Greensboro Cello Music Collection of the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections & University Archives is excited to provide exposure and access to Lubomir Georgiev’s collection, bringing attention to the public the story of his life and providing support to researchers and performers. Once the manuscript compositions are processed and cataloged, there are plans to provide free digital access to Georgiev’s compositions and arrangements (copyright permitting), permitting researchers worldwide to explore Georgiev as a composer and allowing performers the opportunity to bring his music to life. Additionally, the collection includes materials that can be incorporated into class instruction, including the paperwork relating to his petition for asylum in the United States. Lubomir Georgiev is in good company among the other cellists represented in the UNC Greensboro Cello Music Collection, masters of their instrument and many of whom were political refugees.

Consisting of the archival collections of sixteen cellists, the UNC Greensboro Cello Music Collection constitutes the largest single holding of cello music-related material worldwide.

An Intern’s Experience with Artifacts

*Sarah Maske is a senior at UNC Greensboro, with a double major in history and archaeology. She is interning in the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collection and University Archives for the spring 2019 semester. 

SCUA intern, Sarah Maske

This semester, I am interning in the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) for HIS 390, a course offered by the History Department as a way for students to gain experience in the Public History field. My main project is to process material for the University Archives artifact collections. I am two and a half months into my semester long internship and I have loved every minute of my time here. The last four years I have spent a lot of time researching in the archives, but to work inside the stacks and to be a part of caring for a collection is a whole new experience for me.

I want to share some of what I learned about processing materials, and what it is like working with artifacts related to the University. Archival processing is essentially how materials are added to an archival collection. I found that researching the origins of an artifact and its significance to the University is my favorite part of the internship. Nevertheless, this is also one of the most frustrating parts of processing because sometimes it is hard to track the history of an artifact. Yet when your research is fruitful, it is so exciting!

Diebold Safe

When I am researching, I try to picture what type of life the artifact had. I sometimes wonder if an artifact was a person what stories it would tell. My favorite books as a child were the Strange Museum series by Jahanna N. Malcolm. The series was about two siblings who lived above a museum, and if they touched an artifact after the museum closed, they would travel back in time to meet the artifact’s owner. When I am processing an artifact I always think about this series. It is moments when I am struggling to find information on an artifact that make me wish time travel was not limited to a work of fiction.

So far, I have processed or reprocessed, at least 50 artifacts and each are unique in their own way. Some artifacts are connected to buildings (you would be surprised by how many bricks are in the artifact collection), while others are connected to a single student or faculty member. Some are important awards and others seem like the most obsolete objects, such as laundry cards. As a researcher with an archaeology background, I find these little artifacts rich resources to understand the everyday life of the students. For example, a laundry card contains a list of different articles of clothing, so as a researcher the card illustrates what types of clothing were popular in the 1940s.

Woman's College Make-Up Case

Sometimes I think about what artifact I could add to the collection that would be memorable and aid a researcher in understanding what it was like to be a student on campus in 2019. Would my flyer I kept from a lecture on Roman pigments or my Honors Ambassador name tag be helpful to a future researcher? To be honest, I keep a lot of objects and notes from my time at UNC Greensboro. Any flyer from an important event or course notes go in chronological order to be packed away in my room at home. At times, I worry that I toe the fine line between hoarder and collector. Anyone else would throw it all away, but I would like to think someone in the future, who thinks like me will think my notes from my courses and keepsakes are interesting. As someone who is actively using the artifact collection, I am appreciative of the people who thought to donate their buttons, rain caps, stickers, toasters, and paperweights. Each one of these artifacts lets me see a small glimpse into the past.

Every time I work in the archives, I experience something new. SCUA has a wide variety of artifacts, whether it’s bricks from demolished buildings, a makeup case, a handkerchief from a former Queen of England, or even an antique crib. One day, I might crawl under a chair to look for manufacturer’s markings and the next day box buttons from the most recent campus event. I am so lucky to work with artifacts that have interesting histories. Working with the University Archive Collection has helped me grow as a public historian, and I am forever grateful to SCUA for this experience.

Reminder: Triad History Day is April 6th!!

Join us for the first annual Triad History Day on Saturday, April 6, 2019, from 10AM until 3PM, at the Greensboro History Museum (130 Summit Ave, Greensboro, NC 27401)!

Triad History Day is a one-day public festival focused on Triad history, both the stories and the people who preserve them. The event will feature a “history hall” with displays from history organizations, a series of lightning round talks focused on local history, as well as booths focused on oral history, preservation advice, and digitization of community materials. Learn more here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1245098408985423/ 

We need volunteers too! Please sign up here if you would like to help us make this an awesome event: http://go.uncg.edu/triadhistoryvolunteers

Participating institutions include:

• African American Genealogical Society 
• Alamance Battlegound 
• American Home Furnishings Hall of Fame Foundation 
• Belk Library, Elon University 
• Blandwood/Preservation Greensboro 
• Bluford Library, NC A&T State University 
• Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum
• Digital Collections, University Libraries, UNC Greensboro 
• Green Book Project, NC African American Heritage Commission 
• Greensboro History Museum 
• Greensboro Public Library 
• Guilford County Register of Deeds 
• High Point Museum 
• Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, UNC Greensboro 
• Holgate Library, Bennett College 
• Mendenhall Homeplace of Historic Jamestown Society 
• Moravian Archives 
• North Carolina Collection, Forsyth County Public Library 
• O'Kelly Library, Winston-Salem State University 
• People Not Property, UNC Greensboro 
• PRIDE of the Community, UNC Greensboro 
• Quaker Archives, Guilford College 
• Well Crafted NC, UNC Greensboro 
• ZSR Library, Wake Forest University

New Exhibit!: "UNC Greensboro Back to the Future: The Story of the 1960s"

On March 14, 2019, more than thirty people stopped by Hodges Reading Room for an open house event to celebrate our new student-curated exhibit "UNC Greensboro Back to the Future: The Story of the 1960s." Student curators provided visitors with personalized tours of the exhibit and provided reflections on their experiences researching campus history.

This exhibit was curated by graduate student Erin Blackledge with assistant from undergraduate students Alexis Castorena and Malory Cedeno. Sarah Colonna, Associate Faculty Chair for Grogan College, and Erin Lawrimore, University Archivist and Associate Professor, served as grant coordinators and faculty advisors for the exhibit. Student curator stipends were funded through a grant from the UNC Greensboro Interdisciplinary Collaboration Committee.

"UNC Greensboro Back to the Future" is available for viewing in Hodges Reading Room through June 2019. Hodges Reading Room is on the second floor of Jackson Library. The exhibit is open Monday through Friday between 9am and 5pm.

By combining reflections and poems from current undergraduate students from Grogan Residential College with primary sources from the 1960s, "UNC Greensboro Back to the Future" explores the enormous social changes that arose during this momentous decade and demonstrates how UNCG students today reflect on its past. Topics explored include campus desegregation, civil rights movements, and the transformation from Woman's College to UNCG.

This exhibit is part of UNC Greensboro's year-long celebration "The '60s: Exploring the Limits." You can learn more about the campus's upcoming events and activities to examine and understand this decade at sixties.uncg.edu.

Save the Date! Triad History Day is April 6th

Join us for the first annual Triad History Day on Saturday, April 6, 2019, from 10AM until 3PM, at the Greensboro History Museum (130 Summit Ave, Greensboro, NC 27401). Triad History Day is a free one-day public festival focused on Triad history, both the stories and the people who preserve them.

The event will feature a “history hall” with displays from history organizations, a series of lightning round talks focused on local history, as well as booths focused on oral history, preservation advice, and digitization of community materials. Visitors can learn more about local archives, museums, libraries, and other historical organizations in the “history hall.” Participating institutions include representation from all over the Triad. See the complete participating institution list below.

 Visitors with photographs or other records that help document Triad history can bring materials to the scanning station at Triad History Day. There, archivists will scan the materials for inclusion in UNC Greensboro’s community history portal. Visitors will also receive a copy of the scan.

 An oral history booth will allow participants the opportunity to record a 15-minute interview about an interesting story related to the Triad region. Interviews may involve two friends having a conversation, a family member interviewing a family member, or an individual being interviewed by a UNCG graduate students serving as an oral history facilitator. Interviews would be made available through the TriadHistory.org digital collection portal.

 A series of short talks about local Triad history will take place throughout the day, with speakers announced in late March.

 You can get updates and reminders for Triad History Day via our Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/events/1245098408985423/. 

We hope you'll join us for a fun, family-friendly celebration of Triad history!

List of participating institutions: 

• African American Genealogical Society
• American Home Furnishings Hall of Fame Foundation
• Belk Library, Elon University 
• Blandwood/Preservation Greensboro 
• Bluford Library, NC A&T State University 
• Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum 
• Digital Collections, University Libraries, UNG Greensboro 
• Green Book Project, NC African American Heritage Commission 
• Greensboro History Museum 
• Greensboro Public Library 
• Guilford County Register of Deeds 
• High Point Museum 
• Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, UNC Greensboro 
• Holgate Library, Bennett College 
• Mendenhall Homeplace of Historic Jamestown Society 
• Moravian Archives 
• North Carolina Collection, Forsyth County Public Library 
• O'Kelly Library, Winston-Salem State University 
• People Not Property, UNC Greensboro 
• PRIDE of the Community, UNC Greensboro 
• Quaker Archives, Guilford College 
• Well Crafted NC, UNC Greensboro 
• ZSR Library, Wake Forest University

Kick Off Event for Archives, Archiving, & Community Engagement

Join us on Friday, March 15th at 2pm for a kick off event for the campus-wide Archives, Archiving, and Community Engagement discussion group. This group will be led by UNCG University Archivist Erin Lawrimore and is sponsored by UNC Greensboro's Institute for Community and Economic Engagement (ICEE) Faculty Fellows Program.

We will meet in Hodges Reading Room (219 Jackson Library) to chat about how we can collaborate to ensure that artifacts of community-engaged scholarship as well as the archives of our partner communities are preserved in a sustainable, accessible way.

Everyone - faculty, staff, administrators, students, and community members - is welcome to join us and help guide the direction of the group's discussions throughout 2019. For more information, please see: http://communityengagement.uncg.edu/archives-archiving-and-community/.

You can also keep up with the event via Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/events/784479635220770/.

Hop into History this Spring - save the dates!

We're once again going to Hop into History at Gibb's Hundred Brewing this semester! We've got three dates scheduled this Spring:

• Thursday, February 21 
• Thursday, March 21 
• Thursday, April 18 

All will be from 5-7pm at Gibb's location at 504 State Street in Greensboro.

The February event will focus on Charlotte Hawkins Brown and the Palmer Memorial Institute. The awesome folks at the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum in eastern Guilford County will be bringing artifacts that show Dr. Brown's work as an educator, as well as her work as a supporter of suffrage, civil rights, and social justice. Founded by Dr. Brown in 1902, Palmer was one of the first elite Black boarding schools in the South. Open until 1971, Dr. Brown transformed the lives of more than 1,000 African American students. You can learn more at the Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/2188513461398141/.

Also, if you want to do some preliminary reading to learn more about a connection between Dr. Brown and UNCG, we have a Spartan Stories post from a few years ago about how the state's Jim Crow segregationist laws impacted her students and their ability to attend performances in Aycock (now UNCG) Auditorium: https://uncghistory.blogspot.com/2015/02/charlotte-hawkins-brown-walter-clinton.html.

We hope to see many of you at these events!

A Well Crafted NC update!

Our Well Crafted NC project continues to grow! Well Crafted NC is a collaborative project that documents the history of North Carolina beer and brewing through oral history interviews with industry leaders and archiving the records of individual small businesses. The craft beer industry in North Carolina has an annual economic impact of over $2.1 billion and provides more than 12,000 jobs across the state, so Well Crafted NC was created to ensure that the history of this important business sector is preserved.

In Summer 2018, University Archivist Erin Lawrimore received a UNCG Faculty First Award to support a series of oral history interviews with women brewers and brewery owners in North Carolina. Twenty-three women's stories were recorded for the project, bringing to total number of interviews in Well Crafted NC as of January 15, 2019, to 34. You can read more about this work in the Spring 2019 issue of UNCG Research Magazine (see the article online here). You can also listen to some of the women interviewed during this project talk about the importance of the Pink Boots Society, an organization focused on supporting women in the beer industry, in this video:

Additionally, the Well Crafted NC team received a grant through UNCG's Community-Engaged Pathways and Partnerships Collective Scholarship Fellows program, which aims to strengthen collective approaches to community-engaged scholarship through the development of sustainable pathways and partnerships that build deep, reciprocal processes to achieve mutually beneficial, community-identified priorities. The team, which includes faculty from the University Libraries as well as the Bryan School, will work with the Triad Brewers Alliance to document the history of local breweries and train local breweries on how to utilize their history to increase marketing and tourism for craft beer in the Triad.

We also received an in-kind award (100GB of digital storage) from Archive-It to create two web archive collections focused on beer and brewing. The Archives of Beer and Brewing will focus on documenting websites of influential craft breweries across the U.S. The Beer Bloggers Archive will focus on prominent national beer blogs. We're asking the public to help us identify beer blogs for inclusion in this web archive collection. You can nominate sites here.

In addition to the grants and special projects, in November 2018, the Well Crafted NC team set up an exhibit and information booth at the North Carolina Craft Brewers Conference in Winston-Salem. Erin Lawrimore was interviewed by Spectrum News for a piece on the importance of craft beer to North Carolina. You can see that piece here.


There are also a number of upcoming opportunities for folks to learn more about Well Crafted NC through presentations and exhibits.

On Wednesday, January 23 at 4pm at ZSR Library at Wake Forest University, Erin Lawrimore will discuss the original concept for the project, the continued development of the project through strategic partnerships and grant funding, and new initiatives focused on helping breweries integrate history into their individual and regional marketing efforts. You can learn more on the event's Facebook page. This event is free and open to the public. A reception, with an exhibit of materials from Well Crafted NC, will follow.

On Saturday, January 26 at 7pm at the Beer Growler in Winston-Salem, Richard Cox will join journalist and beer blogger Kat Bodrie for a discussion of the history and future of craft beer in North Carolina. We will also have an exhibit focused on North Carolina beer history. This event is free and open to the public. More details can be found on the Facebook event page.

On Saturday, March 2 at 1pm at Highland Brewing Company in Asheville, Well Crafted NC will have an exhibit focused on the history of women in North Carolina beer as part of the annual Biere de Femme festival, sponsored by Pink Boots Society North Carolina. Biere de Femme is focused on highlighting women in the craft beer industry. 100% of all proceeds go toward scholarships to help women in North Carolina and beyond improve their lives by giving them education and marketable skills in the beer industry. This is a ticketed event, and tickets are currently available here. The event also has a Facebook page you can follow for updates (including a list of participating breweries).

We hope that you'll join us for one (or more) of these upcoming events! You can learn more about Well Crafted NC and keep up with news about other events and activities on our Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.