On September 19, 1966, 750 freshmen arrived at UMBC and began taking classes in one of three building that made up the campus. Fifty years later, community members gathered together to share their memories of UMBC’s early days in the gleaming, new Linehan Concert Hall. The event was a special UMBC 50th anniversary edition of Baltimore’s popular Stoop Storytelling Series, which features “‘ordinary’ people telling the extraordinary, true tales of their lives.”

Mimi Detreich ‘70, American studies, set the stage by helping the audience imagine what it was like to be a student at UMBC during the first years. “We had professors who we had never heard of before, we had no idea what they were like, and we had no idea that they were really as new as we were to this whole thing,” she said.

When Louie Sowers ‘70, American studies, arrived at UMBC in 1966, she knew that she wanted to play sports in college because she loved playing volleyball during her high school years. At that time, UMBC only offered intercollegiate sports for men. “My sophomore year rolled around, and there were still no women’s sports. I was getting a little nervous because I really wanted to play volleyball, so I decided that I needed to be a little proactive,” she said. Sowers met with the athletic director who told her that if she could collect enough signatures of women interested in playing volleyball, he would hire a coach. “Evidently, I was pretty good at begging people,” she recalled, “because I came back with 66 names, and he hired us a coach.”

Ed Berlin ‘70, history, owner of The Ivy Bookshop in Baltimore, also arrived at UMBC in 1966 and recalls that the UMBC social scene was fairly quiet at first, before the campus began inviting top musicians like Otis Redding and Lou Reed to perform on campus. In those early days, he helped throw a Halloween party, and painted some wooden fences white as part of the decorations. After the party began he heard shrieks from people as they realized there were white stripes on their costumes from leaning against party decor. Being at UMBC was rewarding, he said, “I appreciate every second that I was here.”

In 1966, Simmona Simmons ‘74, American studies, now UMBC’s outreach and special projects librarian, started her first staff position at the library. After taking the state test, she applied to the first job opening that she saw, which happened to be at UMBC. During her time at UMBC, Simmons has seen the library move and expand, and she has continued her education, completing her bachelor’s degree and two master’s degrees. “The whole experience at UMBC was gratifying,” she said. “As UMBC grew, I grew with UMBC.”

Diane Tichnell ‘70, political science, says she arrived at UMBC ready to “wow” the community with her journalism skills. She began working on the school newspaper during her sophomore year, and at first was given small assignments, until her editor asked her to interview the leader of a group coming to campus to give a seminar. “That moment was a life-changing experience for me, when Bobby Seale, the co-founder of the Black Panthers for Self-Defense, started talking to me,” she recalls. “I couldn’t write fast enough to get down everything he said.” Tichnell’s experience at UMBC was one that changed the way she thought about causes. “They are not abstract, they are people who are putting themselves out there for the rest of us.”

When William Rothstein, faculty emeritus of the department sociology and anthropology, was interviewing for the job opening at UMBC, he was told that there was no campus for him to visit, so the interview was conducted in New York City. He was offered the job and began working at UMBC in the fall of 1966, where he continued to teach until he retired in 2013. “The first years at UMBC were notable because most of the faculty were new PhDs, like myself, and not much older than the students,” Rothstein said, adding that there were even faculty-student basketball and softball games. “So many things had to be decided in the early days when you were creating the university, as well as teaching and doing research.”

Donna Banks Hekler ‘70, English, recalled meeting Albin O. Kuhn, the first chancellor of UMBC, in the cafeteria while she was eating lunch with a friend in UMBC’s early days. She spoke about how Kuhn was always interested in hearing about students’ experiences. “He really wanted to know what was working and more importantly, what wasn’t working, what needed to be changed. What did we think?” she said. Heckler shared that Kuhn’s true love was farming, and that when he retired he moved back to his farm. “He planted crops, and he nurtured those and tilled the soil and did the harvest. And he did the same thing here. He planted a university, and he grew it and he nurtured it and he loved it.”

When audience members were offered the chance to come to the stage, John Titchener, emeritus associate professor of philosophy, and Allan Holtzman ‘70, history, also told short stories about their time at UMBC.

The final Stoop Story presenter was President Freeman A. Hrabowski, who jumped forward a few decades to tell a story about the early 1990s, a challenging time for university budgets in Maryland. President Hrabowski shared how, at a moment when arts and humanities programs were at risk, the UMBC campus showed up to support students’ access to a broad liberal arts education. “When times are tough, and it’s about character, people come together,” Hrabowski said. “I’m a strong believer that working class people, middle class people, should be exposed to the best, because they’re going to be the leaders one day.”

Header image: Simmona Simmons speaks at UMBC Stoop Stories event, September 17, 2016. All images by Jim Burger.

Timothy Nohe, director of the Center for Innovation, Research and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA) and visual arts professor, will introduce American audiences to the deeply woven human narrative of Botany Bay in his exhibition Sounding Botany Bay opening February 12 in the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery.

The exhibition, which runs through March 31, is the culmination of ten years of research beginning in 2006 while Nohe was an Australian-American Fulbright Commission Senior Scholar fellow. Nohe returned for intensive research residencies in subsequent years, during which time change inexorably swept the bay.

Nohe will also present a lecture about his work in the exhibition, part of the Humanities Forum series from UMBC’s Dresher Center for the Humanities, on Tuesday, February 16 at 4:00 p.m. Nohe shares:

For many thousands of years the land adjacent to Kamay was an important source of food, place of trade, and site of spiritual importance to a number of Aboriginal clans. Botany Bay/Kamay is one of Australia’s most significant cultural and natural sites. This location was a significant point of both physical and cultural conflict: HMS Endeavour, the first ship carrying British explorers and colonists, landed on the southern shores of Kamay — renamed, at this time, Botany Bay — in 1770.

Today, Botany Bay is an unusual clash of pristine national park land home to a diverse but delicate marine ecosystem, and heavily industrialized areas including Sydney’s main cargo seaport and the desalinization plant, oil refinery, sewer treatment facility, and miles of industrial pipelines that line the shores.

By walking through bush and dunes, suburban streets and industrial estates, Nohe was able to directly observe the Bay with contemplative discipline. The artist was ready to document discoveries with digital audio recorders and cameras, and comprehensive database searches in state and national libraries and the online market eBay.

Over time he became aware of seasonal and long-term rhythms accented by notes of discordant change. A world of inaudible sound was sampled via a radio frequency scanner, allowing Nohe to intercept air traffic at Sydney Airport; hydrophones captured otherwise inaudible underwater sounds in mangroves, docks and tide pools.

His extended time and methods of observation revealed truths about a complex place told with documentary mural prints, sound compositions, video, archival documents, and ephemeral materials. In many ways this story mirrors our American experience of human stewardship, the colonization and the decimation of indigenous peoples, industrialization, national narratives, globalization and climate change.

“In the years that I worked on this project, I witnessed and recorded change that astounded me,” Nohe says. “One must contrast the epoch of Aboriginal stewardship of the Bay, with the radical reshaping of the environment after the founding of Modern Australia.”

Timothy Nohe is an artist and educator engaging traditional and electronic media in daily life and public places. His artwork has focused on sustainability and place, intermedia works, and sound scores for dance and video. He received a 2006 Fulbright Senior Scholar Award from the Australian–American Fulbright Commission and an Australian–American Fulbright Commission Fulbright Alumni Initiative Grant in 2011.

Nohe has forged strong ties to Australia, serving on the editorial board of the peer-reviewed journal Unlikely, as an adjunct professor at La Trobe University, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and as an artist-in-residence at the Centre for Creative Arts at La Trobe University.

Four Maryland State Arts Council awards have supported his work in the areas of music composition, non-classical; media; new genre; and installation/sculpture. Nohe has also been recognized with a Creative Baltimore Award and in 2015 the Warnock Foundation supported his interdisciplinary work in urban forests with a Social Innovator award.

Complete performance information and tickets are available through the UMBC Arts & Culture Calendar.

Timothy Nohe will be on WYPR’s Humanities Connection live at 4:44 p.m. on February 11, 2016. An archive of the broadcast will be available at Humanities Connection.

Image: Botany Bay, Australia. Photo by Timothy Nohe.

A campus message from Provost Philip Rous and Antonio Moreira, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs:

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Patrick Jose Dawson as director of the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery, effective February 1, 2016.

Mr. Dawson joins UMBC from Northern Illinois University (NIU), where for the past seven years he has served as dean of libraries. Prior to his appointment at NIU, he served as associate university librarian for information and research services at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).

Mr. Dawson’s appointment brings to a conclusion a successful national search that began this past spring. On behalf of the entire campus community we would like to express our gratitude and thanks to all members of the search committee. Their commitment and hard work constitutes an outstanding contribution to the future of the library and UMBC. We also wish to acknowledge the advice and counsel provided by various members of the campus community to the search committee.

Throughout his career, Mr. Dawson has been actively involved in the promotion of innovative and emerging trends and technologies for the improvement of information retrieval and delivery. He has extensive experience working in research university libraries and brings strong skills in strategic planning and budgeting. Mr. Dawson also has a focused area of expertise in Chicano studies. While at UCSB, he served as head of the Colección Tloque Nahuaque, a nationally-recognized resource for comprehensive Chicana/o and Latina/o information and specialized reference services. He has also been active on issues related to library services for Latinos and collection development of Hispanic American materials.

In addition to a master of library science from the University of Arizona, Mr. Dawson has a master of arts in history/Latin American studies and a bachelor of arts in history from the University of New Mexico. He was a member of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Leadership and Career Development Program in 1998 and is a fellow in the ARL Research Library Leadership Fellows Program.

Mr. Dawson says he is impressed and inspired by the success of UMBC students in completing degrees and by the percentage of students that go on to graduate education. He also expressed much appreciation for the rich diversity reflected in our student population.

Mr. Dawson will build on the strong legacy of Dr. Larry Wilt, who retired as director on July 1, 2015.

The library is central to teaching and research and an integral part of the UMBC community. We are very fortunate to have someone of Mr. Dawson’s experience and ability to serve as director of our Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery. We know he will be a valuable addition to our campus community.

Please join us in welcoming and supporting him.

Image: UMBC Library Pond. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

In conjunction with the exhibition They Fight With Cameras: Walter Rosenblum in WWII from D-Day to Dachau, the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery presents public programs on Wednesday, November 11. A 12 pm film screening of Walter Rosenblum: In Search of Pitt Street will be followed at 6 pm by a talk given by Nina Rosenblum, film producer for Deadalus Productions, Inc.

Admission is free. Complete information is available on the Arts and Culture Calendar here.

The Friends of the Library & Gallery presents Theatre with Dinner, which will begin at 5 p.m. on the 7th floor of the Library on March 28, 2015.

The play will be These Shining Lives, by Melanie Marnich, presented by the UMBC Department of Theatre and directed by Nyalls Hartman. Dinner will be prior to the performance with a discussion of the play.

Tickets are $35 per person. Please use this form for reservations. Checks can be made to “UMBC Foundation” and must be received by March 10, 2015. Please mail checks to:
Friends Theatre with Dinner
UMBC Library
Baltimore, MD 21250

For inquiries and last minute reservations, please call 410-455-2356.

“Visual Music”: A UMBC Faculty Concert with Video will take place on March 25, 2015 at 4 p.m. in the Library Gallery. This event in the Friends of the Library & Gallery “ArtsNotes” / “MusicNotes” series.

Please join Lisa Cella, flutist, and Stephen Bradley, inter-media artist, for a live concert of contemporary flute repertoire with original video art created specifically for each piece.

This experimental flute performance is the culmination of a project begun a year ago. It embraces the work of four composers who Dr. Cella commissioned to write pieces specifically for her interpretive expertise.

Click here for more information.

Monday, March 9, 2015, 4 p.m.: “Visual Ecology: The Unexpected Abilities of Animal Eyes,” a presentation by Dr. Tom Cronin in the Library Gallery

Humans are visual creatures. We’re also introspective and curious, a combination that makes us all by nature amateur visual ecologists (even if we don’t know it, or even what it means!) Since vision dominates how we experience our world, we naturally wonder how other animals see their own worlds. When a cat is entranced by images of fish on a television screen, does it see colors? Does it think they are real fish? What is it experiencing? When a wasp flies up and stares us in the face, just what is it seeing? These questions have probably been asked for as long as our species have been around.

Professor Cronin’s studies of vision have included animals ranging from the tiny plankton, through many marine creatures, to whooping cranes and even whales. In his talk, he will focus mainly on his favorite animals of all, the fearsome “mantis shrimps,” known for their abilities to break aquarium walls and impale human flesh. Their eyes are some of the strangest in nature, seeing things that humans can only duplicate with high-tech imagery.

• A reception, sponsored by the Libby Kuhn Endowment Fund, will follow the program.
• Co-Sponsored by the Friends of the Library & Gallery and the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences

For more information on this event and other Friends of the Library & Gallery events, click here.

January 26 – March 25
A Stirring Song Sung Heroic: African Americans from Slavery to Freedom, 1619 to 1865, Photographs by William Earle Williams
Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery

The history of American slavery is considered in A Stirring Song Sung Heroic, an exhibition of 80 black and white silver gelatin prints by photographer William Earle Williams. These images document mostly anonymous, unheralded, and uncelebrated places in the New World—from the Caribbean to North America—where Americans black and white determined the meaning of freedom. Archives of prints, newspapers, and other ephemera related to the struggle accompany the work.

The presentation of this exhibition marks the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which abolished slavery nationwide following the conclusion of the American Civil War.

William Earle Williams is the Audrey and John L Dusseau Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Fine Arts, and Curator of Photography at Haverford College. He received his M.F.A. degree from Yale University School of Art, and holds a B.A. in history from Hamilton College. His photographs have been widely exhibited at diverse institutions including the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, and UMBC. His work is held in many public collections including the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and UMBC’s Special Collections. Williams has also received numerous fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for 2003–2004.

On Tuesday, February 24 at 4 pm, William Earle Williams will lecture on his photography. The lecture, co-sponsored by the Dresher Center the Humanities and the Library Gallery, will be presented as part of the Humanities Forum.

Admission to the gallery and the lecture is free. The Gallery is open Monday through Friday, 10 am to 5 pm, on Thursday until 8 pm, and Saturday and Sunday 12 – 5 pm. For more information call 410-455-2270.

From: Philip Rous, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Antonio Moreira, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs

We are very pleased to announce the appointment of Ms. Joyce Tenney as Acting Director of the Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery, effective November 24, 2014 through June 30, 2015. This appointment follows the recent announcement from Dr. Larry Wilt of his retirement from UMBC and his position of Director of the Library & Gallery on July 1, 2015 subsequent to taking a research leave starting January 1, 2015. A national search for a permanent Director will be launched with a target appointment date of July 1, 2015.

Joyce Tenney has had a long and very productive career as a member of the Library staff. She began as a student assistant in 1975 and was appointed Serials Librarian in 1983. Since 1983, Joyce has led the Serials Department through many changes and challenges, most notably the transition from print to online formats. She has supervised several other units in the Library on a temporary basis since that time. Currently, Serials, Circulation and Library Media Departments report to her as Associate Director. Ms. Tenney has also been very active on the Council of University System Faculty of USM, the USMAI and on the Maryland Digital Library.

Joyce is a UMBC alumna of the Ancient Studies Department, and has strong ties to UMBC. She has a deep commitment to ensuring faculty, staff and students have the research and teaching support needed at a research institution and a comfortable, inviting place to study.

While we will be celebrating Dr. Larry Wilt’s many accomplishments later in this academic year, we wish to express our deepest appreciation for all he has contributed during his 33 years of service to UMBC and his leadership for 24 years as Director of the Library & Gallery which he carried out with vision, passion, personal commitment and the utmost integrity.

Dr. Wilt’s primary research project for the first half of 2015 will address planning for mid-sized, research supporting, academic libraries.  In addition, he will be studying Spanish in a Medellín, Colombia immersion program and preparing to teach English in other countries.

Please join us in wishing Joyce Tenney much continued success in her new responsibilities.

Tom Beck, Chief Curator, Library & Gallery, recently spoke at the Library of Congress commemorating the photographs of David Seymour. He is a biographer of the famous photographer who in 1947 co-founded Magnum Photos with Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and George Rodger. Magnum Photos is the internationally important photojournalist’s cooperative whose members are among the finest photographers in the world.

The Library of Congress program occurred on the 103rd anniversary of the birth of Seymour and celebrated the donation of 112 of Seymour photographs to the Library of Congress.