"This was Now."
Talk by Mark Iwinski
October 9th, 2007
7pm at the History Center
Free and open to all.
The
present is informed by absence and is through this absence that the
past becomes visible. Lost architecture and cultural history leave
traces in the urban and cultural landscape revealing themselves through
gaps in the fabric of the city. From old photographs, fragments,
ruins, and parking lots these terrains of absence provide enigmatic
traces of “what was now” to “what now is”.
learn More...
On the Road Marks First In a
Year-Long Series of Transportation Exhibits
From August 16th through October 11th,
2008, an exhibit of archival photographs and historic artifacts will
explore the impact on Tompkins County of road development and road
transportation from the late 1700’s to the present, as well
as the impact on local transportation businesses and industries as
technology changed. Read More...
"Lois & Marion: A Literary and Visual Legacy." Exhibit
and book group honoring Lois O'Connor and Marion Wesp.
Making Music Together
Ithaca College Concerts at The History Center – Free admission
Thursday, October 11: RAAJA Woodwind quintet, 7:30 – 8:30 pm
Thursday, November 8: Cosmopolitan Saxophone Quartet, 7:30 – 8:30 pm
Thursday, January 24: Five Cents Sharp, brass quintet, 7:30 – 8:30 pm
Thursday, February 21; Brass Quintet: 7:30 – 8:30 pm
The exhibit will be on display from September 2007 through February 2008.
Read about the exhibit in the Ithacan (10/04/2007).
The exhibit, developed by The History Center with support from Ithaca College, is sponsored by Tompkins Trust Company.
Images: (top left) O5.3, (right) V30.47, Sol Goldberg Collection 2001.29.1.620
A History of Summer Fun
What
do boat builders, train conductors, ice-cream scoopers, and hotel
housekeepers have in common? All of these jobs support the summer
vacation industry in the Finger Lakes region – and all are explored
in The History Center’s current exhibit, From Lifeguard
to Wine Steward: Summer Work in the Finger Lakes. The exhibit,
which runs at The History Center through August 15, explores the history
of the jobs attached to the region’s summer vacation industry
– and the people who fill them – through vintage and contemporary
images and artifacts from The History Center’s collection. Kids
of all ages will enjoy participating in hands-on activities like trying
to take a dinner order from a very indecisive patron or filling out
an application for the perfect summer job.
Summer
Work in the Finger Lakes is one of six exhibitions at history
museums around the region this summer that explore the history of
vacationing, tourism and summer activities in the Finger Lakes region.
The other five exhibitions to see are:
Over
the next few years the exhibitions will rotate between participating
organizations. Support for this project was provided by the Institute
for Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Humanities,
the New York Council for the Humanities, and the New York State Council
on the Arts. Local support was provided by the Tompkins County Tourism
program.
For more
information on the participating museums, click
here!
Images:
(top left) Counselors with kids getting ready to go canoeing, ca.
1940s. Curt Foerster 80.130.2802; (bottom right) Y Camp counselors
and kids playing the park, July 29, 1949. Curt Foerster 80.130.2792.
Sol Goldberg, Photographer, Remembered in New Exhibit
Sol
Goldberg: The Journal Years was first shown
at Kendal at Ithaca in 2006, at the request of Kendal resident and
President Emeritus of Cornell University, Dale Corson. Dale wanted
to highlight The History Center’s remarkable photo collections
and chose the Sol Goldberg Collection in appreciation for Sol’s
warm and witty commentary on life in Ithaca. The History Center was
happy to share these photographs with the Kendal community and is
delighted to bring them to a wider public audience with this exhibit.
“Sol Goldberg,
The Journal Years 1956 - 1965” is on display at The
Shops at Ithaca Mall (formerly Pyramid Mall) across from the Regal
Cinemas through December 2007.
Solomon H. Goldberg
was born in Ithaca, on April 4, 1923, the son of Eastern European
immigrants. A graduate of Ithaca High School, Goldberg attended Cornell
University for one year, but left to work full-time to support his
widowed mother and sister. In 1946 he was working as a janitor at
Cornell’s Photographic Science Laboratory, and one day the
lab had an assignment due and no photographer was available, so Goldberg
was given a camera, and told how to use it. The rest was history.
So began a photographic career that spanned five decades, 85 regional
and national photography awards, induction into Cornell’s Athletic
Hall of Fame for his innovative sports photography, and publication
in such leading periodicals as Newsweek, Popular Science, and Time,
as well as numerous Cornell University publications.
This exhibit focuses on just one facet of Goldberg ’s career,
the rich and fruitful decade between 1956 and 1965 when he worked
as a staff photographer for the Ithaca Journal. These were productive
years for photojournalism – the use of photos that by themselves
tell a story – and Sol made the most of his skills and his intimate
knowledge of Ithaca and its people. He said, “Our job as news
photographers became to make the camera talk about our hometowns,
to capture their different perspectives.” Sol did this with
great insight and sensitivity, and, as often as he could, with a sense
of humor. “It made sense to me to latch on to a theme and use
it in my work whenever possible. The one I chose was perhaps the most
scarce – and most valuable – of them all. I chose humor.
And what’s more, it fit my personality; it came rather easily.
So, with camera, I laughed with the hopes that fellow Ithacans would
laugh with me.” These photographs represent Sol’s efforts
to portray everyday life, including some of its grimmer sides, in
Ithaca and Tompkins County.
In 1965 Sol left the Journal to direct the new Office of Visual Services
at Cornell, a job that he held until his retirement in 1988. In 2000,
Sol became a resident of Kendal at Ithaca, and, always the innovator,
began using a digital camera. He died in 2002, leaving a rich legacy
of thousands of photographs behind him.
This exhibit has been made possible thanks to the Ithaca Journal,
Ithaca Downtown Partnership and the Shops at Ithaca Mall and from
The History Center:
Donna Eschenbrenner, Archivist
Mari Tiwari, Janet Wagner and Andrew Alexander, Research Assistants
Shannon Lindridge, Collections Manager
Carl Koski, Museum and Photograph Technician
Typing
in Tompkins: Origins of a Global Shift
Related
links: View
the exhibit on-line
A
new on-line exhibit created through a unique collaboration between
The History Center and the Cornell University Department of Design
and Environmental Analysis.
Today around the world, people use computers and type on a regular
basis when composing emails, writing papers, and for performing leisurely
activities. Not long ago, typewriters were the main tool used for
these functions. This exhibit features several influential advances
in typewriters that forever changed the way we work. Without these
early innovative machines we would not have the typing technology
we rely so heavily on today. The world as we know it would be an entirely
different place. The most incredible part of the story is that so
much of it occurred in a place called Tompkins County.
The History
Center in Tompkins County has a large collection of early typewriters,
only several of which are featured in this exhibit. The featured machines
all contain innovative technological advances. These changes transformed
the way we work and are critical pieces of ergonomic history.
Selections from
the Student Historians Initiative
In this unique program, area
high school students are given detailed training to navigate our archives
and properly handle historical documents and objects. Their research
leads them to write a journalistic article about an historic artifact
to be published in the Ithaca Journal. Objects highlighted in the
current Student Historian exhibit are from the World War II era and
are the perfect compliment to the poster exhibition.
Our Historic Treasures
Unwrapped! -The Big Stuff
What do a plow, a telescope
and a fainting couch have in common? Come find out as our big stuff
goes on display in the Unwrapped exhibition. Read a feature article
about the 'Unwrapped!' project on the Heritage
Preservation website. Heritage Preservation is a federal agency
working to ensure the preservation of America's collective heritage.
