Vietnam Sinfonie oder Desastres de la Guerra by Wolf Vostell
Materials from the German artist Wolf Vostell’s Vietnam Sinfonie oder Désastres de la Guerra (Vietnam Symphony or Disasters of the War) are on display in the Architecture and Art Library’s upper mezzanine. This piece was performed at the Galerie Van de Loo in Munich in 1972. Vostell is known for his role in the Fluxus art movement in the late 1950s in Europe. He was the founder of the European Happening scene and was one of the first video and installation artists.
Art Revolution: Women Artists from Around the World
On display in the south wing are books dedicated to groundbreaking women artists from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the United States. These women challenge traditional assumptions and engage us in conversations that were previously unthinkable through their creative work in video art, photography, performance art, paintings, textiles, sculptures, room installations, drawings, etchings, collages and beyond. This exhibit highlights many different art movements including Hannah Höch’s work as a Dada artist in the Weimar period, Carolee Schneemann’s Fluxus’ work, Ana Medieta’s involvement in the Body art movement, Helen Marten’s contemporary art earning her the 2016 Turner Prize, Germaine Arnaktauyok’s work stemming from her Inuk childhood, Lorna Simpson’s Conceptual Photography and avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama’s installations.
The William R. Jenkins Architecture & Art Library is pleased to present Leah Bydalek’s first solo exhibition.
Fluorescent Lessons is on view from July to August 2017. Bydalek is a senior painting major at the University of Houston. Ms. Bydalek’s color palette was inspired by the pictorial artist Wayne Thiebaud, known for painting cakes. The artist also plays around with her memories and giving them a final twist.
Leah Bydalek’s art is on display in the William R. Jenkins Architecture & Art Library through August.
Artist’s statement:
I love it when the “truth” of a thing can be turned on its head to yield a novel experience. It shows us that perceptions are malleable and that people have the potential to change. This is the meeting point of the familiar and the unknown the beautiful and the disgusting the docile and the disobedient.
Interested in working for a museum? Join us for a friendly conversation with museum professional Javier Sanchez Martinez and learn about his career and curatorial research. Refreshments will be served.
RSVP to library.ambassadorsuh@gmail.com
A Geniza by Raphael Rubinstein, Professor of Critical Studies at UH’s School of Art, is on display in the upper mezzanine. A Geniza is a limited edition poem in a box inspired by Cairo, Egypt. The poem is fragmented into more than 100 pieces of paper, using various colored paper and different fonts, resulting in an eclectic and visually stimulating display. The poem is meant to be pieced together by each reader to create a distinctive itinerary through Cairo’s history and meaning.
On display in the south wing exhibit case: the LEGO Architecture series, curated by Library Specialist Julia Kress (and assembled by her son). The LEGO structures are based upon great built works, such as the Sydney Opera House and the Villa Savoye, and complimented by books from the William R. Jenkins Architecture and Art Library collection. 
An installation of drawings titled “The Shortest Distance, an Accidental Series,” which was on display in the William R. Jenkins Architecture and Art Library from February – August 2016, is now on view in the UH Digital Library. The artist, Talha Kabasakal, is a junior majoring in industrial design who plans to design cars after graduation. His series of works in ink on paper draws upon the visual culture of his native Turkey and his interest in car design. The artist has played upon the notion of a personal geographic dichotomy by juxtaposing two places, two different countries – the familiar and the foreign, the old and the new, the past and the future. Though each occupies discrete space, isolated at opposite sides of the composition, the two are connected by a bridge. The artist expresses the belief that there should always be a bridge, a connection representing hope, remembrance, love…
Are you interested in becoming more engaged at UH? Maximizing your potential as a student researcher? Getting the most out of campus research services? Meeting students in other art and design programs?
Come to Jenkins Library Student Ambassador gatherings in the Architecture and Art Library. These informal half-hour gatherings include a short demonstration of library equipment, resources, or research techniques, as well as conversation with other students about course work.
The Jenkins Library Student Ambassadors are student leaders with advanced research skills. They are here to help direct other art and design students to resources and research information, so that everyone has what they need to work efficiently and make the most of their time at UH.
Gatherings take place on the Architecture and Art Library’s upper mezzanine from 10:30-11 every Tuesday. The library is located on the first floor of the College of Architecture and Design building
Our fall schedule:
9/13 – Learn to use library equipment, including scanners, software, and the mysterious free printers
9/20 – How to find articles and building plans in print journals
9/27 – How to find articles and building plans in online journals
10/4 – How to store and manage data
10/11 – How to use the library’s free video streaming service
10/18 – How to find and use e-books
10/25 – How to get materials that aren’t in our collection (without spending money)
11/1 – How to find GIS data
11/8 – Highlights from the Franzheim Rare Books Room
11/15 – How to cite (quickly and painlessly)
11/22 – How to find and manage digital images
11/29 – Highlights from the fine art and architectural archives (RSVP required)
2016-2017 Officers
Negin Nayeri, President
Angela Rios, Vice President
Edith Villasenor, Treasurer
Christine Hinojosa, Secretary
“Old Galveston,” featuring reproductions of pen drawings by Emil Bunjes, is on display in the upper mezzanine. The drawings, which date from 1924-1939, are part of the Kenneth Franzheim II Rare Books Room collection.
A variety of pop-up books from our collection are on display in the south wing, including works of satire and works adapted from two-dimensional artworks.
The Hines College of Architecture Posters is now available in the UH Digital Library. They feature striking graphic designs advertising course offerings as well as lectures and other events. The School of Architecture had a screen printing press in the 1970s, and many of these posters were produced by students, faculty, and staff in-house. They come in a variety of sizes, some as small as legal paper size, while others are much larger. Although many of the posters are undated, the bulk of the posters are from the 1970s. There are more than 80 posters in the collection.
Architecture first appeared at the University of Houston in the 1945-46 school year. At that time, it was a two-year program offered through the College of Technology. Beginning in 1946, both architecture and architectural engineering were offered within the College of Engineering. While the study of architecture remained within the College of Engineering through the 1956 school year, a “new plan” for architectural training incorporating elements of design, construction, aesthetics, and graphics was initiated in 1950. Eventually the program was moved to the School of Architecture in 1956, and in the fall of 1961 it became the College of Architecture.
Now in the UH Digital Library: Burdette Keeland, Jr. was an influential Houston architect who left a legacy as a designer, an educator, and a member of the Houston Planning Commission. At the peak of his practice, from 1950 to 1980, Keeland produced some of the city’s best modernist architectural design. Yet he will also be remembered for his four decades on the faculty of the University of Houston, where he dedicated himself to mentoring the next generation of architects. This digital collection provides a sample of five of his imaginative works, including architectural drawings and renderings, photographs, clippings, and audio interviews.
A 1950 graduate of the University of Houston, Keeland quickly developed a successful architectural practice. As with many architects of the period, his work of the 1950s reflected the influence of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. Keeland’s innovative design for the Fred Winchell Studio and Apartments (with Harwood Taylor, 1953) combined a professional office with rental apartments on a small city lot. Two years later he produced his best-known work, a steel-frame residence for homebuilder W. K. King, featured in the 1955 Meyerland Parade of Homes.
In the 1960s Keeland’s work expressed other trends in architectural design. He interpreted the Brutalist aesthetic in the Essex-Houck Office Building (with Herman F. Goeters, 1962), where his tight grouping of masonry towers gave this small office building a sense of the monumental. In the Williams Beach House of 1967 (with Alan Rice), his crisp, shed-roofed volumes evoked the barnlike structures of California’s iconic Sea Ranch development.
Keeland experimented with new ideas in his own house on Ferndale Street. In 1976 he transformed a modest 1930s house into an urban retreat for his family. He made further changes in the 1980s and 1990s, but the rear courtyard received the most attention. He showed his flair for artistic and whimsical details in the over-scaled metal column that supports a second floor overhang; a few feet away a vine-covered spiral staircase offered access to a roof-top office and observation deck.
The original materials are available in UH Libraries’ Special Collections in the Burdette Keeland Architectural Papers.
Recent art exhibits by Araceli Casas and Trevon Latin have been added to the UH Digital Library. Both exhibits were mounted in the Jenkins Architecture and Art Library’s A2A Alcove. Mr. Latin’s “Orders from the Dead” series features mixed media pieces that are strongly influenced by outsider art and American history. It is part of a larger oeuvre of works based upon an enslaved character in the antebellum South, conceived by Mr. Latin. He earned his B.A. in Painting at the University of Houston in Spring 2015 and is now a working artist in New York City. Ms. Casas’ whimsical series “Veggies in Space” came together when she married her exploration of still life techniques with her interest in science fiction. Imperfect vegetables cruise through landscapes inspired by Hubble telescope photography. Ms. Casas earned her BA in art history at the University of Houston and now studies and works in art education. She is currently a teaching artist at the Texas Children’s Hospital. UH Libraries gave both of these alumni their first opportunity to mount and exhibit their own work before a wide public audience.