2023 Webster Library Exhibitions
The Life and Works of Karl Polanyi
October 23 – December 22, 2023
Webster Library, vitrines on LB-2
Curated by: Marguerite Mendell and Ana Gomez
This exhibition showcases a selection of publications, archival material, photographs, and illustrations on "The Life and Work of Karl Polanyi," recognized as one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. Polanyi's influence continues to grow across all disciplines within the social sciences and humanities. As the complex 21st century unfolds, it is often referred to as Polanyi's century, both to understand the roots of today's crises and to chart urgently needed new pathways.
We have selected several photos of Karl Polanyi's illustrious family, including his brother, philosopher Michael Polanyi, his sister, historian Laura Polanyi, his daughter Kari Polanyi Levitt, among others. Photographs capture Polanyi's life in Hungary, Austria, England, the United States and Canada. Publications in this exhibition are both by and on Karl Polanyi.
Choosing what to include was a challenge as Karl Polanyi's work documents key moments in the history of the 20th century as well as influential writings in economic anthropology in the 1950's until his death in 1964. However, throughout his writings, both academic and as an observer of world events, Polanyi's intellectual journey was an ongoing theoretical inquiry into the world in which he lived to better understand the forces that dominate society.
The exhibition introduces the Karl Polanyi Institute of Political Economy, located here at Concordia University and the Karl Polanyi Digital Archive which is displayed here as well. The Institute is the repository of the Karl Polanyi Archive. We hope this exhibition will inspire students, faculty, visitors, and users of the Concordia library to discover the Institute and to learn more about Karl Polanyi's legacy.
Flame Keeping! Unearthing, Preserving, and Ensuring the Legacy of Montreal’s Black Women’s Groups
October 17 to December 20, 2023
Webster Library, display cases on LB-2
Under the aegis of Harambec and thanks to the contribution of Dr. Esmeralda’s Thornhill’s personal Archival Collection, we are pleased to share the tenure of a commemorative exhibit to honour the legacy of Black Feminist organizing here in Montreal.
Displayed at Concordia’s Webster Library from October 17 to December 20, 2023, the exhibition contains some authentic documents culled from the private Collection of Dr. Esmeralda M.A Thornhill as well as documents from Concordia Special Collections and Records Managements and Archives. This exhibition brings to public light the obscure evidence of Black Women’s key societal contributions to Montreal, Quebec, and Canada in the education sector. The exhibition was curated by Harambec’s archivist Samia Dumais, with the support of co-founder Marlihan Lopez and interdisciplinary artist Po B. K. Lomami. The exhibition, located on the second floor of Webster Library, can be visited during opening hours.
In the context of Concordia, this public education initiative responds to multiple recommendations included in the President’s Task Force on Anti-Black Racism Final Report and aligns with the University’s desire to repair and build relationships with Black communities. It is a direct response to the institutional erasure of Black Feminist contributions (in and outside the University), and marks the continuity of Black Feminist organizing and Harambec’s commitment to the path our elders so courageously paved.
Lasting Impressions
June 5 – September 25, 2023
Webster Library, vitrines on LB-2
Curated by: Erika Adams
Lasting Impressions showcases a selection of fine art prints produced over the last two decades through a special editions program within Concordia University's Print Media Department. Founded in the 1990s by Judy Garfin and Cheryl Kolak, this program fosters creative, collaborative and pedagogical opportunities for visiting artists, Master Printers and students.
This exhibition includes works by artists Geneviève Cadieux, Anne Carson, Pierre Dorion, Betty Goodwin, Pascal Grandmaison, Emily Hermant, Ed Pien and Roland Poulin and produced with Master Printers and artists Erika Adams, Chris Armijo, Brandon Gunn, Matthew Letzelter and Mikael Petraccia. Lasting Impressions is curated by Erika Adams, who is the current Director of this special editions program.
Annotate This!
April 6 – June 28, 2023
Webster Library, display cases LB-2
Annotated This! was a curated exhibition that investigated language and text and their relationship to artmaking and the library as a site. The location of Concordia University’s Webster Library was used, and these site-specific text-based pieces explored the cultural and grammatical structure of language, the ambiguity of fragmented type, and the play found within graphic text. The artworks were exhibited in display vitrines and showed a range of media, including printmaking, ceramics, painting, fiber arts, photography, and video. This exhibition began with a prompt: What did language as aesthetic mean to you? Each member of the artist collective [UN]PROMPTU was asked to create an artwork as a response. The result was a visual poem of artworks that reacted and responded to the library as a site. This exhibition continued a tradition of conceptual artists turning to text, such as the American artists Barbara Kruger, John Baldessari, and Ed Ruscha. The goal of the exhibition was to create new work in the present to imagine what text-based art could look like in the future. This question was especially poignant in a world that continued to replace printed matter with digital archives, and the handwritten and hand-painted with their virtual counterparts.
Annotated This! was an exhibition by the artist collective [UN]PROMPTU, which was committed to helping emerging artists receive recognition for their work. The six members of the collective were all emerging artists from an array of disciplines, such as painting, ceramics, photography, and textiles. Fractured, fragmented, playing with the structure of language in various media allowed this exhibition to explore many of the facets and nuances within this project. Palimpsests, illegibility, ambiguity, and the nuances of different languages were important themes that were reappropriated, toyed with, and fused with new ideas in unique and challenging ways. However, the intention was not to put words in your mouth, but instead, criticism and discussion were invited, in the hope that you, the viewer, would have felt inspired, even urged to Annotate This!
re* an exhibition of works by artist Amin Rehman on display at Webster Library
Amin Rehman, My father, 2021, Mixed media on paper 11"x17".
March 30 – June 1, 2023
Webster Library, vitrines on LB-2
Curated by: Manar Abo Touk, Lorraine Doucet Sisto, and Varda Nisar
This exhibition took place at the Concordia University Webster Library and FOFA Art Gallery on unceded Kanien'kehá:ka traditional territory, re* was part of the Worlding Public Cultures 2023 Tiohtià:ke/Montreal colloquium.
re* allowed for the possibilities to unlearn and relearn the diverse world-making practices that continue to exist and thrive, despite colonial attempts to eradicate them under the guise of progress.
The exhibition was conceived as a critical and collective reflection on the themes of worlding and world-making. We understand world-making as an endeavor that creates life, cosmos, heaven and earth; a sacred act contributing to the pluriversality of modes of being; a practice that has always guarded itself against the worlding desires of colonial, heteronormative and patriarchal modes of being.
re* offered a counterpoint to colonial histories and archival practices. The artworks included in the exhibition reimagined and redefined ideas around time, space, land and languages. The works of artists rudi aker, Pansee Atta, Amin Rehman, and Swapnaa Tamhane foreground different possibilities for reclaiming languages and histories, resisting and refuting imposed geographies, and reframing pasts and futures.
Journey Through the Stacks: Illustrated Travelogues and the Orientalist Imagination
January 31 – March 22, 2023
Webster Library, Vitrines and Discovery Counter on LB-2
Curated by: Stéphanie Hornstein
The project featured historic material from Concordia, McGill, and the Université de Montréal's library collections.
The exhibition was curated by Stéphanie Hornstein, Concordia Library's Researcher-in-Residence for 2022-2023. The project explored how photography was employed to illustrate and confirm a Western view of Asia and the Middle East as exotic destinations. The books gathered for this exhibition were common items in the middle-class bookshelf of the late 1800s and were hugely influential in shaping modern perceptions of actual places.
View the digital book display
