Dr. Vicky Clark of Clarion University—a very well-respected curator and critic—arranged for the show to tour as part of her work for IUP’s museum last fall. Bill Double, University Museum board president, is “thrilled to see the show get a second audience and very pleased that we have been able to effect a positive relationship with another state system school. We hope to do more such collaborations in the future.”

Arrangements are being made for the show to continue its “road-trip” at other venues. For more information about the Clarion University exhibit, call 814-393-2523.

The Black Diamond Jubilee includes a preview of the museum’s opening exhibit, A Walk Through Time: Pennsylvania Coal Culture; informal dining; the announcement of the winner of a custom-designed black diamond necklace; and music by The NewLanders. The jubilee will be held September 11, 2009, at 6:00 p.m. in the University Museum and Blue Room of IUP’s Sutton Hall. Tickets are $75, and reservations are requested by September 2. Visit the University Museum website for further information about the Black Diamond Jubilee, including an RSVP card, or call 724-357-2397.

Pictured is one of Donoughe’s recent works, titled “Near Campus.”

The Indiana Arts Council is assisting the University Museum in this year’s fundraising efforts by raffling off a beautiful black-and-white diamond pendant for only $10 per ticket.

The pendant, which is in the shape of a heart and encrusted with half white and half black diamonds, will be a centerpiece of the museum’s Black Diamond Jubilee, to be held September 11, 2009, at the museum and in the Blue Room in Sutton Hall. The pendant, which has an appraised value of more than $1,100, has been gifted to the museum, so that every dollar earned in ticket sales will support the museum and its activities.

For raffle tickets, Jubilee tickets, and information, call the College of Fine Arts at 724-357-2397.

IMLS has now awarded almost three thousand free sets of the IMLS Bookshelf, in cooperation with the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH).

William Double, Museum board president, said, “The University Museum holds a number of important collections, including a collection of the works of Milton Bancroft, a master of illustration and painting who lived and worked in the early part of the twentieth century. The collection needs appropriate ongoing conservation and, in some cases, repair if it is to be maintained and enjoyed by Museum patrons.”

“When IMLS launched this initiative to improve the dire state of our nation’s collections, we understood that the materials gathered for the Bookshelf would serve as important tools for museums, libraries, and archives nationwide,” said Anne-Imelda Radice, director of IMLS. “We were both pleased and encouraged by the overwhelming interest of institutions prepared to answer the call to action, and we know that with their dedication, artifacts from our shared history will be preserved for future generations.”

The University Museum will receive this essential set of resources based on an application describing the needs and plans for the care of its collections. The IMLS Bookshelf focuses on collections typically found in art or history museums and in libraries’ special collections, with an added selection of texts for zoos, aquaria, public gardens, and nature centers. It addresses such topics as the philosophy and ethics of collecting, collections management and planning, emergency preparedness, and culturally specific conservation issues.

Featuring the Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company Collection

September 15–December 5, 2009
The University Museum at IUP
Public Reception: September 19, 2009

The University Museum, in cooperation with IUP Special Collections and University Archives, presents “A Walk Through Time: Pennsylvania Coal Culture Featuring the Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company Collection.” The exhibit opens to the public on September 15, 2009. The exhibit is curated by Harrison Wick and Rhonda Yeager, IUP Special Collections and University Archives in Stapleton Library.

Artifacts and documents of coal mining life in western Pennsylvania are presented in cooperation by the IUP Special Collections and University Archives, the Tri-Area Historical Society and Liberty Museum in Nanty-Glo, the Historical and Genealogical Society of Indiana County, and private collectors.

The exhibit features artifacts, photographs, mine maps, and ledgers that document western Pennsylvania bituminous coal culture, including the work and lives of miners and their families, the company towns and community activities such as baseball games. Also featured in the exhibit are the operations of Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company and other companies, mine disasters, coal miner strikes, and unionization. Some of the company towns in Indiana County and Cambria County highlighted in the exhibit include Clymer, Commodore, Coral, Ernest, Heilwood, Iselin, Nanty Glo, Sagamore, and Whiskey Run.

IUP actively preserves coal culture through the Special Collections and University Archives, the Institute for Mine Mapping, Archival Procedures and Safety (IMAPS), and the Center for Northern Appalachian Studies. The Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company Records is the largest manuscript collection housed in the IUP Special Collections and University Archives. This collection represents over a hundred years of local history. R&P was organized in 1881, and the collection is a complete record of the company until R&P was purchased by CONSOL Coal Group in 1998.

IMAPS is a multidisciplinary group of faculty, staff, and students who work together to digitize, record, and preserve historical mining maps. IMAPS has digitized over five hundred maps, including mining maps from the Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company, using a large format Cruse scanner, and is developing a web-based searchable database of Pennsylvania mine maps. Additional information is available at IUP Mine Mapping.

On Friday, September 11, 2009, at 6:00 p.m., there will be a special reception by reservation. The event is titled "Black Diamond Jubilee" and includes an exhibition preview, informal dining, and concert by The NewLanders. Proceeds benefit the exhibition and educational programs of the University Museum.

A public reception will be held at the University Museum on Saturday, September 19 at 6:00 p.m.

“Invisible Threads • Common Ground,” an art exhibition curated by Vicky A. Clark, opens in the University Museum at Indiana University of Pennsylvania on February 7, with a public reception from 4:00–6:30 p.m. The exhibition and reception are free, and the exhibit runs through March 21.

According to the curator, Clark, “Art history is full of confrontations between the artist and the public, but we tend to forget this when viewing contemporary art that forces us to think and look in new ways. ... Artists are affected by their own world and their own times. Good art both reflects the issues of a specific time period and also constructs those issues as artists react to their unique situations.”

The exhibition is about reacting to contemporary issues as an artist. History is embedded in the art of, for example, Francisco Goya and Käthe Kollwitz, and are still so relevant that artists today are still investigating them.

Clark has selected these and other works from the University Museum collection for the strength with which they make statements about issues of their times. She also has selected works by contemporary artists in southwestern Pennsylvania that make strong statements about our own time. Together, the works represent artists’ continuing exploration of the human condition in all its complexity and contradiction.

Prominent contemporary artists whose works are included in the exhibition “Invisible Threads • Common Ground” include Paul Binai, Timothy Hadfield, Adrienne Heinrich, Jennifer Howison, Delanie Jenkins, Mary Mazzioti, Herbert Olds, Susanne Slavick, and Barbara Weissberger.

Art Works Represented:

Top: Figure #3055 by Adrienne Heinrich
Lower: La Soif by Paul Binai

TALK

Artist Alastair Noble will present a talk about the installation on October 22 in room 301, Sprowls Hall, at 5:00 p.m. This will be followed by a reception in Kipp Gallery.

INSTALLATION EXHIBIT

Alastair Noble — Babel III: Random Access

The show will open to the public on October 14 and will run through November 14, open 12:00 to 4:00 p.m. Tuesday through Friday.

The following is an excerpt from the September issue of Sculpture magazine, written by Michael Howard. Mr. Howard has also written an essay that will be included in the catalog for this show.

“Alastair Noble is an English sculptor living and working in New York. His diverse and compelling body of work includes resonant sculptures and installations that invite viewers to engage in a creative collaboration, and in so doing, to undertake their own imaginative journeys into a terrain where material, space, and ideas coincide in objects of stunning visual power. Noble’s works can be seen as an artistic response to architecture and literature, creating a dialogue between two crucial activities by which we attempt to order and tame the world. Nurtured by the writings of Poe, Mallarmé, Joyce, and Borges, his sculptures are not empty academic exercises in intertextual reading; instead, they give occasion for a rich experience of aesthetic and intellectual delight.”

Indiana Bones: An Evening at the Explorers Club features a reception and exhibition preview in the University Museum, followed by dinner and entertainment in the Blue Room. There will also be a silent auction featuring natural and manmade wonders.

Find more information on Indiana Bones: An Evening at the Explorers Club.