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The Art of Death and Dying Symposium – Call for Papers

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The Art of Death and Dying, University of Houston, October 25-27, 2012
http://artofdeathanddying.blogspot.com/
The University of Houston Libraries, in partnership with the Blaffer Art Museum, the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, the Department for Hispanic Studies, the Honors College and School of Art,  will host a three day symposium titled “The Art of Death and Dying” on October 25-27, 2012.We welcome scholars in all disciplines to submit paper proposals on literary, visual, and performing arts topics related to death and dying. Topics of the symposium include, but are not limited to:

  • Literary, performing, or visual depictions or interpretations of death and dying
  • Commemoration of the dead in art and performance
  • Artifacts of death and dying as represented in archival or museum collections
  • Artistic depictions of the after life
  • Cultural death rituals
  • Cultural expressions of mourning
  • Death and dying in Latin American arts and culture
  • Readings of original creative material on the subject
  • Performances of material on the subject
  • Presentation of visual material on the subject
  • Memorial architecture
  • Cemetery design
  • Analysis of an artist’s, performer’s, filmmaker’s or writer’s work related to the subject
  • Depictions of death and dying in film, radio, and television


Proposals related to death in Latin American art and visual culture are encouraged.  The organizers will accept presentations in both Spanish and English.

Papers will be selected based upon the quality of the proposal (including merit of the topic, clarity of expression, and relevance to the conference theme), the proposal’s ability to provoke critical exchange and debate, and opportunities for interaction between participants that will enable attendees to engage in a truly interdisciplinary exchange of ideas and viewpoints.

Presenters will be afforded the opportunity for their symposium paper/presentation to be published in the Texas Digital Library.

Papers will be twenty minutes in length and will be followed by ten minutes of discussion.  Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted on the symposium website.

The deadline for submissions is May 1, 2012.

Student art exhibit opening 2/24

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The Fifth Annual UH Libraries’ Student Art Exhibition opened Friday, February 24th at 5:00 pm on the third floor of the M.D. Anderson Library.  Attendees experienced the original work of up-and-coming UH artists from multiple classifications and academic departments.  Attendees also had the opportunity to mingle with the student artists themselves, as well as the exhibition’s jurors and curator.  http://youtu.be/k1Zt11FOPhA

This exhibit was juried by Susan Sutton, Curatorial Assistant at the Menil Collection, Katherine Veneman, Curator of Education at UH’s Blaffer Art Museum, and Dena Woodall, Assistant Curator, Prints & Drawings at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The exhibit is curated by the Architecture and Art Library’s Evening Supervisor, Christopher Conway.

The following students’ work was accepted into the exhibit and the Houston-based performance art group Continuum will recreate UH sculptor Hilary Scullane’s work, The Green Blob, a photographic documentation of which is included in the exhibition.

Karesha Brown

Felipe Campos

Almendra Castillo

Emily Connor

Isabel Cuenca

Jessica L. Davis

Rachel Harmeyer

Rosine Kouamen

JoJo Lam

Veronica Lizaola

Yma Luis

Miguel Martinez

Chad Maydwell

Andria Nguyen

Hilary Scullane

Jeff Simmons

Stäcy L. Smith

Elbert Claiborne Thompson

New digital collections

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In the Digital Library (http://digital.lib.uh.edu) you will find new collections selected by the staff of the William R. Jenkins Architecture and Art Library.  Evening Supervisor Chris Conway and Librarian Catherine Essinger either selected the projects below or organized the scanning and metadata.  More collections are on their way.

The Kenneth Franzheim Collection is now available in the UH Digital Library!

Significant to the architectural history of Houston was the work of architect Kenneth Franzheim (1890–1959).

Gulf Building, Houston, TX

The Kenneth Franzheim Collection is comprised of photographs and architectural drawings and models of Franzheim’s work. In addition to Houston landmarks such as the Foley’s Building and the Gulf Building, the collection surveys a broad range of works; included are corporate offices, high-rise apartments, theaters, private residences, airport facilities and others. Beyond Houston, the works contained herein were built and/or proposed for a variety of locales within and outside Texas.

Downtown Houston w/ Foley's, Foley's Garage, Cullen Nurses Building, Texas National Bank Building, Texas National Garage, Humble Building Additions, Oil & Gas Building, and New Memorial Hospital

Represented are Franzheim’s contributions to the architectural landscapes of New York, Boston, Chicago and elsewhere. The collection’s images comprise the collected works of Franzheim as they appear in three self-published volumes: Kenneth Franzheim, Architect, New York City (1940), Drawings and Models of Some of the Recent Work of Kenneth Franzheim, Architect, Together with Sketches of a Few Proposed Buildings (1952ca) and Drawings and Models of Some of the Recent Work of Kenneth Franzheim, Architect, Together with Sketches of a Few Proposed Buildings (1960).  The original texts are available in the Kenneth Franzheim II Rare Books Room.

Student artwork from the 2011 Student Art Exhibit held annually in the UH Libraries is now available in the UH Digital Library!  If you missed your chance to see the 2011 Student Art Exhibit in person, you can now browse the works in the UH Digital Library.

Herbie Hancock's Chameleon

The student art exhibit features artists from a variety of majors and concentrations across campus.

Little Monster

The exhibit also features a variety of media.

As Time Goes By

It is a juried competition that features prominent members of the Houston art scene as jurors.  Works from the 2010 Student Art Exhibit are also available for viewing.

The SEM Collection (1914-1925) is now available in the UH Digital Library.

SEM (1863–1934), né Georges Goursat, was a French illustrator and caricaturist who rose to fame during the Belle Époque. The Digital Library’s SEM Collection is comprised of four volumes from the UH Architecture and Art Library’s Kenneth Franzheim II Rare Books Room.

Le Vrai & le Faux Chic (1914),

Le vrai & le faux chic

White Bottoms (ca. 1920),

White Bottoms

the self-titled SEM (ca. 1920),

Sem: [drawings]

and Le Nouveau Monde (1925)

Le Nouveau Monde: 3e. Série

Each volume affectionately and mercilessly documents the Parisian high society of a bygone era, and showcase the wild and whimsical work of SEM.  The books are available in the Kenneth Franzheim II Rare Books Room.