Collecting Space and Form Exhibit

Modernist architecture is on full display at UC Clermont College now through Dec. 13 as part of “Collecting Space and Form: Ideas of the Modern,” featuring exhibits from the Robert A. Deshon and Karl J. Schlachter Library for Design, Art, Architecture and Planning at the University of Cincinnati’s Uptown campus.

In the mid-20th-century, Cincinnati architects created buildings and planning of local, national and international importance. Cincinnati played a significant, but largely unrecognized, role in the introduction of International Style Modernist architecture to the United States.

The DAAP library has been collecting and archiving drawings, photographs and other materials related to Cincinnati Modernist architecture since 2008. This exhibit focuses specifically on Cincinnati Modernist architect Woodie Garber, who had an important though sometimes tense relationship with the University. In the late 1960s-70s, Garber created a master plan and designed several buildings for UC. Two of his buildings were built: the Sander Hall dormitory complex and Procter Hall for the College of Nursing and Health. Sander Hall dormitory was demolished (though its adjacent cafeteria building survives, repurposed for new uses) and Procter Hall has been re-clad and remodeled. Garber also interacted with UC by employing many DAAP architecture students as cooperative education interns in his office and hiring some after their graduation.

Further emphasizing the breadth of UC’s collection are artists’ books from the DAAP Library focusing on the link between art and language. This selection of modern works from UC’s vast collection links the ideas of space and form, from the archival aspects of architecture, to the collecting of the three-dimensional as it meets in the two-dimensional within artists’ books.

The show was curated by Patrick Snadon, UC professor emeritus, design and architectural historian; Elizabeth Meyer, DAAP librarian; and Carla Cesare, assistant professor of art history.

The Park National Bank Art Gallery is located in the Snyder Building on the UC Clermont College campus in Batavia at 4200 Clermont College Drive. Gallery summer hours are Monday through Friday, 8 a.m.–5 p.m. For more than 20 years, the spacious 1,000-square-foot gallery has offered visual art exhibits open to UC Clermont students, faculty, staff and the general public.

DAAP Library Portion of Two Hundred Years of Curation Exhibit

Women Directed, Women Curated

The Robert A. Deshon and Karl J. Schlachter Library for Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning has been collecting artists’ books since 1970, and a portion of these books are on display at the Two Hundred Years of Curation exhibit. Artists’ books come in many forms, among them: a traditional codex, a stack of playing cards, a flip book, a tunnel book, and a scroll. Some forms toy with the boundaries of how a book is read, inviting more active participation by the reader than reading alone and some forms cross the boundaries into a more sculptural realm. They are often published in small editions, though they are sometimes produced as one-of-a-kind objects.

The DAAP Library’s collection includes works by many famous artists: Sol LeWitt, Edward Ruscha, Dieter Roth, Jenny Holzer, Yoko Ono and others. The collection also comprises several hundred hand-crafted books, many of which serve as excellent examples of fine binding and book illustration and reflect a focus on the artistic movements of the 1970s and 1980s. Recent efforts in collecting reflect the collectors’ interests in sculptural form, identity politics in relation to race and gender, and other recent artworld trends.

In celebration of the centennial of woman’s suffrage, all of these selections on display were created by women artists, and selected by women librarians.

Another view of DAAP Library Portion of Two-Hundred Years of Curation