The Archive in Motion Special Collections Research Center

Bird Library

01-30-2014 to 06-27-2014

Reception:  January 30, 2014 / 6:00 pm (Immediately following the lecture by Zeynep Çelik Alexander) / Sixth floor gallery / Bird Library

This exhibition explores the concept of movement through the materials held by Syracuse University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center. Organized around a set of interlinked themes—color, combat, magic, transportation, dance, drawing, athletics, and gravity—the exhibition encompasses rare books, manuscripts, photographs, and original artworks spanning the 15th and 20th centuries. Inspired by the eccentric library of the art historian Aby Warburg and informed by the theoretical discourse on the archive formulated by Walter Benjamin, Jorge Luis Borges, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault, this exhibition highlights the unique character of the collections at Syracuse. From Albert Einstein’s original handwritten research paper “On Rotationally Symmetric Stationary Gravitational Fields,” through stunning photographs of ballet dancers Paul Draper and George Skibine, to pochoir prints hand-painted by Native Americans, this exhibition not only attends to the representation of movement found in the collections, but it suggests that the archive is itself always in motion.