Exhibit of Early Italian Books from the Brown University Library
An Exhibition in Honor of Romano Prodi
Curated by William S. Monroe and Patricia Figueroa

March 31 – May 15, 2009
Bopp Seminar Room, 3rd floor, John Hay Library
Although the codex, the book as we know it, was invented in the eastern Mediterranean, it quickly found a home in the Italian peninsula, which became the main center of book production in the early Middle Ages, with the great monasteries of Vivarium and Monte Cassino providing the initiative. While the production of manuscript books spread from the monasteries to the universities and beyond, it was still the Benedictine monastery at Subiaco that brought the first printing press to Italy in the 1460′s. Manuscripts and printed books lived side by side through the rest of the fifteenth and well into the sixteenth century, each form influencing the other.
The Brown University Library holds very strong collections of Italian history, literature, and art, reaching back to its founding in the late eighteenth century. Especially notable are the library’s special collections, housed in the John Hay Library, which include some named collections (the Chambers Dante Collection, the Machievelli Collection) as well as important components of other collections (Annmary Brown collection of incunabula, and the Koopman Collection).
Most of the books in the present exhibit come from the Annmary Brown Collection, with some additions from Koopman, History of Science, and other Special Collections. The John Carter Brown Library, also, has generously lent us one of the exhibited books. We have included some manuscripts along with early printed books, and one can easily see how the new technology of printing did not greatly change the appearance of books in this period. We also hope to illustrate not only the burgeoning vernacular culture, but also the great range of humanistic scholarship between about 1350 and 1600.

Commemorating Aimé Césaire: Poet, Rebel, Statesman
An exhibit curated by Dominique Coulombe and Pauline de Tholozany in collaboration with William Miles, Adjunct Research Professor of International Studies at the Watson Institute

John Hay Library foyer and reading room cases, March 30 – April 30, 2009
Poetry Reading, April 3, 5 pm, John Hay Library Lownes Room, followed by the exhibit opening reception
Aimé Césaire was the foremost Black French intellectual-statesman-writer of the 20th and 21st centuries. Co-founder of the négritude school of literature in the 1930s, parliamentarian to the National Assembly in Paris for nearly 5 decades, and author of 16 books, plays, and poetry collections, Césaire’s recent demise is understandably mourned by Francophones throughout the Caribbean, Europe, and Africa.
As lead-up to the Memorial Symposium hosted by the Watson Institute on April 17, a Commemorating Aimé Césaire exhibit will showcase the Brown Library’s collection of Césaire’s oeuvres and works on the French Caribbean, along with other objets d’art and memorabilia (on loan from faculty) that are reminiscent of Césaire and his native island. A display in the John Hay Library foyer will be dedicated to President Ruth Simmons who explored The Poetic Language of Aimé Césaire in her Ph. D. dissertation completed at Harvard University in 1973.
Sponsors of the Aimé Césaire Memorial Exhibit and Symposium include the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Office of the Cultural Services of the Consulate of France (Boston), the journal French Politics, Cultural and Society, the Alliance Française de Providence, and the Departments of Africana Studies, French Studies, Comparative Literature, and the Brown University Library.

Audubon’s “Seaside Finch” on display at the John Hay Library

A volume of John James Audubon’s master work, The Birds of America, is on display on the main floor of the John Hay Library. Each plate will be on display for only one month. This month’s bird is the “Seaside Finch”.

This elephant folio edition of The Birds of America, bound in six volumes, was presented by Albert E. Lownes to the Library on the occasion of his 50th class reunion in 1970.

For more information please contact hay@brown.edu

Environmental History of Hispaniola
An exhibit curated by Dominique Coulombe and Patricia Figueroa in collaboration with Patrick Sylvain, Max Clermont, Deborah Saint-Vil and Kona Shen
March 12 – April 30, 2009
John Hay Library
Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the land area of the Caribbean Island of Hispaniola. Although both of these former colonies of Spain and France have faced socioeconomic hardships and political instability in their post-colonial period, they show a sharp contrast in the current state of their natural resources.
This exhibition traces the environmental history of Hispaniola from pre-Columbian times to the present and explores the evolution of its natural resources by highlighting special collection materials from the John Hay and John Carter Brown Libraries, and museum objects from the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology.
Sponsored by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Brown University Library.
For further information contact Patricia_Figueroa@brown.edu