Collins Unbound

Collins Library will be hosting an exhibit called Rewriting the Book of Nature: Charles Darwin and the rise of evolutionary theory during the month of November. This exhibit is partially developed by the National Library of Medicine, and supplemented with materials from our library collections and the Slater Museum. It focuses on Darwin’s development of the idea of evolution by natural selection, but also looks at the afterlife of that idea.

The exhibit covers everything from Darwin’s first, tentative sketches to the ever-changing (arguably evolving) Origin of Species, to Darwin’s supporters, detractors, and elucidators. It touches on how the idea was picked up and applied in completely new contexts–sometimes successfully and sometimes, in retrospect, highly troublingly.

We hope you’ll stop by the library in November to take a look at this display!

Since the Galapagos played such and important role in Darwin’s thinking, we thought it would be great to add a talk about them, too! We’re so happy to invite you to a brown bag lunch talk with Elizabeth Knight on Wednesday, November 28, 12-1 p.m., so you can hear about the process of setting up an archive on the Galapagos. You bring the nutritious lunch; we’ll provide the cookies and beverages!

As an interdisciplinary artist, Rucker integrates live performance, sound, original compositions, and visual art.  His work has been supported by grants and residencies from 4Culture, Seattle Mayor’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, South Carolina Arts Commission, Washington State Arts Commission, King County Site Specific, Photo Center NW, Artist Trust, Blue Mountain Center, Ucross Fdn., Art OMI, Banff Centre, Pichuk Glass School, Rockefeller Foundation Study Center in Bellagio, Italy, Headlands Center for the Arts, and Creative Capital.   Rucker has created public artwork for the Museum of Flight in Seattle, 4Culture, and the City of Tacoma.  He was named Best Emerging Artist of 2004 from Earshot, 2005 Jazz Artist of the Year from the Seattle Music Awards, and Outstanding Jazz Ensemble of the Year in 2008. In 2007, he performed for the opening of David Lynch’s film, Inland Empire.

Rucker is currently the recipient of a Chism Residency at the University of Puget Sound.  He will perform at Puget Sound on October 6^th, 2012, at the Race & Pedagogy Conference on Race, Education, and Criminal Justice, and on February 25^th, 2013, in Schneebeck Concert Hall.

FOUR SCORE – By Paul Rucker (Streaming version of artwork)

This work is a play on Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, and four graphic musical scores. Viewers can also listen to four corresponding compositions and arrangements through headphones.

Score 1: I AM STILL A MAN – During the Memphis sanitation worker strike on February 11, 1968, 1,300 workers walked off the job to protest discrimination and poor working conditions.  A sign that was used stated: I AM A MAN.  The word STILL has been added.  “We Shall Overcome” is played backwards and forwards on the cello simultaneously.

Score 2: Strange Fruit – This score is a graphic musical depiction that calls to mind the trees in the Southern part of the U.S. that were once used in lynchings.

Score 3: Convenient Truth—A solo cello plays “Come Thou Fount” layered over a rumbling choir of double basses.  Things are crumbling below, as we look up.

Score 4: CODA—This score employs the manipulated voice of Martin Luther King Jr., the text of Elizabeth Cady Stanton who wrote the Declaration of Sentiments for the Seneca Falls Convention (1848) on women’s suffrage that proclaimed, “All men and women are created equal,” and Abraham Lincoln’s text from the Gettysburg Address.  The CODA in music signals the end of a movement.

“The 2012 May Day Immigrant Rights Rally and March in Seattle” exhibition is going to be held in the Collins Library lounge from Oct. 3rd, to Oct. 24th. This exhibition features the photos of the 2012 May Day Immigrant Rights Rally that took place in downtown Seattle. The Rally is an annual event where the immigrant communities and immigrant workers in the Puget Sound area protest for immigration reform. The photos show the solidarity of the immigrant workers and their advocates who have been part of this annual event since May 1st 2006.

On October 29th, David Ayala from One America, one of the largest organizations in Washington that advocates for the rights of immigrant communities, will be giving a lecture on his involvement and experience working for immigrant, civil, and human rights in the state of Washington.

Thanks to:
G.A. Kang, Programs Coordinator
Multicultural Student Services
University of Puget Sound
diversityprograms@pugetsound.edu