Displays & Exhibits
Current Exhibits & Displays
Trigger Planting 2.0, and Abortion In Context
Milstein Center Lobby
Trigger Planting 2.0, an installation at The Milstein Center for Teaching and Learning addresses the changing conditions of reproductive rights in the United States and across the world. Opening on October 9, just one month before the presidential election, the year-long project assembles medicinal plants, data, maps, and research drawn from local, national, and international sources, in the Milstein Lobby and outside gardens. Collectively, the exhibition surveys the shifting political, legal, social, and environmental landscapes and advocates for forms of expansive reproductive justice and ecologies of resistance. A series of evolving installations throughout the year reflect on abortion care since the Dobbs decision. (more)
Black, Brilliant & Free/An Ode to Zora: Dust Tracks On a Road
Floor 2, by the Circulation and Help Desk
Interdisciplinary Artist and Literary Scholar OlaRonke Akinmowo presents “Black, Brilliant and Free,” an interactive installation at BLAIS (Milstein Center, 2nd fl.) in honor of the Zora Neale Hurston Centennial at Barnard College (opening January 21, 2025 and closing May 5, 2025.) Throughout the spring 2025 semester, Barnard Library and Ola invite the Barnard community to engage with the words and legacy of Hurston through a two-part workshop and critical conversation on the theme of finding freedom through autoethnography, using her memoir Dust Tracks On a Road as model/template. Free copies of the book will be made available for all participants while supplies last (email tbryant@barnard.edu).
Digital Displays
Floor 2, by the Circulation and Help Desk
Libraries regularly use book displays to highlight titles in their collection, feature resources on particular subjects, invite deeper exploration of timely issues, and to foster dialogue around issues and ideas. Our digital displays are an extension of this tradition.
BIPOC Alum Collection Display
Floor 2, to the left of the Circulation and Help Desk
The Barnard Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) Alum Collection was initiated by former Barnard Librarian Vani Natarajan along with several students. The collection affirms the lives, histories, and imaginations of past and current Barnard students who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Displaying these materials helps make their creative work more visible to our entire community; a duplicate copy of each item is also located in the general collection.
Past Exhibitions
I Am Queen Mary
Milstein Center Lobby
Artists: La Vaughn Belle CC'95 and Jeanette Ehlers
I Am Queen Mary came to Barnard’s campus in Fall 2019 on long-term loan courtesy of artists Jeanette Ehlers and La Vaughn Belle CC'95, with support from Lisa Kim ’96, Director of the Ford Foundation gallery and Tami Navarro, former Associate Director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women. Originally installed in Barnard Hall (2019-2021), the artwork moved to Sulzberger Tower, Milstein Lobby (2023-2024), and is now on view in the lobby of the Diana Oval since October 2024.
This replica is a scaled-down iteration of the original 23-foot monument which was installed in front of Copenhagen’s West India Warehouse in 2018, commemorating the 101st anniversary of Denmark’s sale of the Virgin Islands to the United States.
Undesign the Redline
The Barnard College installation of the traveling exhibition Undesign the Redline, will be on view at the Milstein Center from September 2021 - May 2022. This interactive exhibition combines history, art, and storytelling with community outreach and collaboration as a means to reckon with systemic racism and the legacy of redlining in Barnard and Columbia’s neighborhood.
Undesign presents a national and local history of redlining practices through a series of custom panels made up of primary and secondary sources, student and community contributions, and multimedia narratives. The Undesign installation provokes inquiry about the persistence of racism in our built environment and systems, by tracing social and spatial histories prior to the creation of redlined maps by the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation (HOLC) in 1938 through to the present. The exhibition provides a lens through which we can examine empirical phenomena such as racialized inequities in public health, vulnerability to climate disaster, exposure to algorithmic bias and differential access to resources. Viewers are asked to consider what it takes to “undesign” the past and build something radically different. Working with a New York-based social design studio Designing the WE, both internal and external stakeholders in Barnard’s upper Manhattan neighborhoods such as faculty, students, and community members have co-created parts of the exhibition, bridging academic research with personal and community narratives. For more information, see the Undesign the Redline website.
This program is funded by Barnard Library and Academic Information Services, Barnard Engages, Barnard Center for Research on Women, a grant from Humanities New York with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and an Addressing Racism Seed Grant from the Trustees of Columbia University. Co-sponsors include: Barnard Digital Humanities Center, the Center for Engaged Pedagogy, and the Barnard–Columbia Urban Studies Program
WORDY
WORDY: Sabra Moore will be on view at the Hope L. and John L. Furth Archives Reading Room, Barnard Archives and Special Collections. WORDY was scheduled for spring 2020 and postponed due to COVID-19 closures; WORDY will now open on Thursday, March 17, 2022.
The Barnard Archives and Special Collections are pleased to announce WORDY: Sabra Moore, an exhibition of painted and sewn wall works and artist’s books from 1982-2018. This is Moore’s first exhibition at Barnard; a collection documenting her work as an organizer, activist, and curator in New York City is housed at the Archives. Moore lives in New Mexico and has exhibited extensively in New York City, Canada, Brazil and New Mexico.
STUFF
STUFF was a multimedia installation celebrating Ntozake Shange’s groundbreaking choreopoem, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf. The installation featured artwork by Dianne Smith and a selection of materials from the Ntozake Shange Papers curated by Souleo. STUFF was a part of the Shange Magic Project, a two-year initiative celebrating the life and legacy of Ntozake Shange '70. Learn more at library.barnard.edu/stuff
Open Doors
Open Doors features Barnard alumnae who are trailblazers in their respective fields, including Ntozake Shange, Grace Lee Boggs, Norma Merrick Sklarek, and more. The exhibit was curated by Suze Meyers '16.
Six Days in Mississippi Exhibit
The Center for Engaged Pedagogy (CEP) exhibited images from the Mississippi Semester course taught by professor of History Premilla Nadasen in Spring 2018, which was built on a collaboration with the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative. The photos and text on view, by Aubri Juhasz ‘18, provided a narrative about the experiences of students as they traveled together to do field work during Spring Break.
Exhibitions Staff
Miriam Neptune | Director of Milstein Exhibitions, Programming, and Public Engagement
Erinma Adaeze Onyewuchi '24 | 2023-24 Milstein Exhibitions Assistant
Exhibitions Advisory Board
Emily Alexander | Milstein Coordinator
Anastatia Curley | Associate Director of Academic Communications, Office of the Provost
Jennifer Eberhardt | Associate Director, Archives & Special Collections
Ralph Ghoche | Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture
Fannie Ouyang | Community and Student Engagement Librarian
Mary Rocco | Director of Engaged Scholarship, Community Engagement and Inclusion
To inquire about participation in the Exhibitions Advisory Board, please contact Miriam Neptune, mneptune@barnard.edu.