Baltimore County, MD smARTS, 12 Oct 2016

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From YouTube: UMBC Special Collections with Chief Curator Tom Beck: smARTS October 2016

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Photographs of the first black U.S. Senator, a Civil War artist and the scars of slavery, from the special collections at UMBC.

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There's an amazing world behind the stacks, computers,.

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And study rooms at the university of maryland, baltimore, county library.

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In addition to a comprehensive library to support the work of umbc, students,, faculty, and researchers,,.

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The university has some amazing special collections.

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I'm with tom beck, chief curator of the albin o. kuhn library, at umbc.,.

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Tom, good to have you here! delighted to be here. and I'm going to ask a really basic question:.

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What constitutes a special collection??

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What does that? Mean?.

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Special collection can be a variety of things,, but most particularly,, it's rare, valuable, whole collections of things.

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Things that are used in the research enterprise.

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And you have a lot of these special collections at your library.

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We do., I could spend hours listing them for you.

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Okay, well we're going to take a few minutes, at least.

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But let's talk a little about some of the unique collections.

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If you had to really focus on some of them,, what would they be? well,? We have 2.1 million photographs,.

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A library of 40,000 books devoted to photography--.

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Wow! we have a marylandia collection,, the joseph l. arnold maryland, collection;.

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We have a science fiction--, one of the major science fiction collections in the us.

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Oh,, do you really?.

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And a general rare book collection. our earliest book is from 1484.

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and do you know how many are in that rare book collection?.

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Oh,, probably about twenty, thirty thousand volumes.

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Wow!, that's a lot.

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So how do you come into possession of all of this material.

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And these collections?.

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Each in different ways., I can give you an example. okay., our mildred grossman, collection.

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mildred grossman was a teacher in new york city.

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And she belonged to a social minded. Photography. Group.-.

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We did an exhibition of one of her former colleagues from the group.

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And when he spoke with mildred's widower,.

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He recommended that her collection should be put at umbc.

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And so we acquired it., oh how interesting!.

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In that collection are photographs of the little rock nine,.

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The pioneering students who integrated little rock high school.

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At the time of brown, v. board of education.

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Oh, my heavens!, so a wonderful insight into our history,, our social history,, our political history,, yeah, okay.

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Photographs tell so much about, you know, about a people.

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And about an era and..., so I know that you have some photos that you've brought with you today,.

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A collection by d.b., bowser.

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So they're photographs of paintings,, I should clarify that.

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They come from an album,, a family album,, which includes a portrait of him.

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but also, works-- photographs of his painted works.

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He was a portrait painter..

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He studied with a student of thomas sully,, the noted philadelphia painter.

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And he learned how to do portraiture in a very fine manner.

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In the tradition of british style., but most importantly,, he was commissioned.

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To make civil war battle flags for us, colored troops.

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And there's a whole range of them with lots of symbolism and meaning to them.

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yeah, they're beautiful,. But as you said, have a very strong message.

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What about the peculiar institution?

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tell me a little bit about that.

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Well, that's a different kind of image, not made by bowser.

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Yeah., the one that we have is made by charles seaver,, a photographer in boston., but it was copied from one, an image made in louisiana of a man,.

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Former slave -- or a slave at that time, 1863 --.

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And he had committed some trifling misstep for the family, that owned him.

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And he was whipped mercilessly with these humongous scars on his back,.

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Is what the photograph shows.

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And it's a stirring and emotional image, even to this moment.

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But it was so much so at the time that it was made.

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That it was copied and circulated to raise awareness for abolitionists.

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But also after the war, after the civil war, to raise money to educate former slaves., now we have just a little time left,.

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So I want to make sure that we get to two photographs that I know that you've brought in.. Tell me about hiram revels.. We have a portrait of him.

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hiram revels was a north carolina-born fellow,.

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Free-Born man, in the 1830s.

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And he went to mississippi where he went into politics.

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And became the first elected african-american member.

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Of the united states senate. and we can't go into it today,, but he also has a baltimore connection.

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So we'll-- you'll have to go to the collection to learn about more.

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And quickly, roland freeman,, if you could. roland freeman, was a baltimorian.

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He lives in washington, dc now., but he was a photographer who, after his military service.

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Went into working for a newspaper in capitol hill, and from there launched a career., but he came back to his roots in baltimore and he did a whole portfolio devoted to baltimore,, including a portrait of mrs. brown --. A charming image, --.

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And arabbers on gay street in baltimore.

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There you go. all right,, so folks can take a look at these collections. Online,.

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Come into the library as well. yes. correct?, all right. well,. This is fascinating.. I wish we had the whole program we could dedicate to this..

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Thank you so much, tom, for being here. you're, welcome. delighted.. This is just a taste of what's there,, as we said.

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so you're invited to explore the umbc special collections.

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At the campus gallery in person or, as tom was saying,, you can go online.

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You're watching, smarts,, the baltimore county arts and culture show.