Joining Neilson Library in its centennial celebration, the branch libraries are hosting their own historical exhibitions. Each of Smith College’s branch libraries has its own unique history and place within the scholarly community. The exhibitions give some background of the events and people behind their founding, and the physical spaces they have occupied over the years.
Hillyer Art Library
The first home for the fine arts at Smith was the Hillyer Gallery, opened in 1882. Designed by Peabody and Stearns, the same architectural firm that built College Hall and Pierce Hall, the Hillyer Gallery added to the stately red-brick grouping of central campus buildings. Expanded by Graham Hall around 1910, the original arts building lasted just shy of a century, and was razed in 1970 to make way for a modern arts complex. The new Fine Arts Center, which opened in 1972, combined all the visual arts under one roof, including the ever-expanding Museum of Art. The enormity of the building, with its striking glass and red tile façade, and its elegant atrium adorned by Rodin’s imposing bronze, “The Walking Man” reflected the prestige of the fine arts at Smith, and housed what was, and still is, one of the largest academic departments on campus. In less than 25 years of use, however, it became clear that the combined pressures of New England weather and the changing nature of arts study had made a complete renovation of the complex necessary. Planning for the renovations began in 1997, and the new, improved Brown Fine Arts Center that we know today was re-opened in 2002.
Josten Performing Arts Library
The performing arts library as we know it today journeyed from Pierce Hall to Sage Hall, to its current permanent home in the Mendenhall Performing Arts Center. The Werner Josten Library, dedicated in 1968, combined the libraries of the music and theater departments into one collection, becoming the center of performing arts scholarship at Smith.
Young Science Library
In the early days, Smith’s science departments each maintained their own libraries in different locations around campus. Among the disciplines with their own collections were chemistry, physics, botany, geology, zoology, and bacteriology. These individual libraries remained until 1965 when the Clark Science Center was built, and a science library was created in the new Sabin-Reed hall. At the time, it was still typical of most colleges to have discipline-specific libraries in the sciences. Smith’s consolidated library was considered an innovative approach to managing scientific scholarly resources.
Exhibit Curator
This web exhibition is based on physical exhibitions that were on view in the Smith College branch libraries from 24 November 2009 through 19 March 2010. The exhibits were created by Lisa DeCarolis, Circulation Coordiator for Hillyer Art Library, with material from the Smith College Archives. Leslie Fields, Records Services Archivist at the Smith College Archives, created the online exhibition.
