2024 Webster Library Exhibitions

Celebrating Pride: A Donation of Gay Literature to Concordia Library

The image shows the spines of 11 books standing upright.

June 3 – September 5, 2024

Webster Library LB-2 vitrines

In 2017, Charlie Hill donated a collection of books related to gay culture, with a particular focus on gay men, to the Concordia Library. In celebration of Pride month, this exhibition features just a few of the more than 300 gifted books.

The exhibition showcases art and photography books, biographies, memoirs, literary and historical works by and about gay artists and authors. Books in the collection reflect changing attitudes over the last century both within and without the gay community.

The exhibition is arranged chronologically by subject: books about the arts in Paris and Berlin before the First World War; the careers of English authors W.H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, and Stephen Spender, who explored life in 1930s Berlin before living in the United States; the works of American artists Paul Cadmus and Jared French beginning in the 1930s; American gay-themed novels from the 1950s and later; and stylized homoerotic drawings from the 1960s onwards. Photography celebrating the male figure is represented by George Platt Lynes' and Robert Mapplethorpe's early exhibition catalogues, as well as works by other pioneering photographers.

This exhibition is curated by Karen Jensen, Head of Cataloguing and Collection Maintenance, and Christopher Carr, Special Materials Cataloguing Librarian at Concordia University Library. The exhibition will be on display in the Webster Library vitrines on LB-2 from June 3 to September 5, 2024.

Me, Myself, and AI: Is This My Voice

The image shows three hands cupped together, fingers curving in to hold a large, glossy red apple. The apple appears centred in the image, with a visible stem on top. The hand from the top is free-floating with no connection to a wrist and presents six fingers. The two hands on the bottom are connected to the wrists and have three visible fingers.

Embodiment by Sydney McMannus

May 6 – May 29, 2024

Webster Library, vitrines and display cases on LB-2

The Webster Library is pleased to present "Me, Myself, and AI: Is This My Voice," an exhibition showcasing the works and reflections of design and computation arts students of the fall 2023 course DART491 discursive design studies. Located in the vitrine on the library's first floor, the exhibition presents a collection of student works that explore questions that arise from confronting creative self-expression with automation and artificial intelligence.

The exhibition "Me, Myself, and AI: Is This My Voice" showcases the works of students who attended the course DART491, Discursive Design Studies, in the fall semester of 2023. In this course, students explored the potential and limits of generative AI while developing their artist statements, confronting what mattered to them and their creativity with generative AI's tendency to hallucinate, confabulate, and produce 'BS' as per Harry Frankfurt's terminology, navigating the fine line between the automated, the genuine, the absurd and machine-generated happy accidents.

Throughout the semester, students explored various topics related to AI and beyond, including authenticity, authorship, spirituality, inclusion, sustainability, design justice, and identity. Reflections, conversations, and threads of computations ran in parallel using ChatGPT, Dalle, or Stable Diffusion, articulating responses with the help of creatively prompting generative AI tools. The resulting works are a unique blend of human enquiry and curiosity and machine-generated output, questioning the potential and limitations of AI in creative fields like art and design.

From these diverse topics, two overarching perspectives emerged, represented by the background images in the vitrines: On the right, a critical view of the corporate infrastructure providing generative AI tools, and on the left, the personal experience of navigating or passively being exposed to this new reality. Interestingly, humour often guided the exploration in these uncharted territories, adding a light-hearted touch to confronting questions about our individual and collective futures. All works, including students' reflections, can also be viewed on the digital counter.

With these works, the students prompt the viewers of this exhibition to ponder how the next generation of creatives may navigate opportunities and risks and what it means to develop one's voice and have it heard in the age of AI.

Curated by Florian Grond, Assistant Professor of Design and Computation Arts, and Shadi Roozie, TA and graduating student of the Master of Design program.

Flame Keeping!: Unearthing, Preserving, and Ensuring the Legacy of Montreal's Black Women's Groups

February 7 – May 1, 2024

Webster Library, vitrines and display cases on LB-2

After an initial exhibition featuring documents from the Leon Llewellyn fonds (F032) located in Special Collections, documents from Concordia's Records and Managements Archives and the archives of Dr. Esmeralda Thornhill, Harambec continues its mandate of flame keeping with a second commemorative exhibit to honor the legacy of Black Feminist organizing here in Montreal.

Displayed at Concordia's Webster Library from February 7, 2024, to May 1, 2024, the exhibition highlights the various efforts of Montreal Black Women's organizing, from the second half of the 20th century until today. The exhibition features archived material from women active in these groups, as well as from other community groups, which highlight and underline various intersections of Black women's struggles. Black women in Montreal, both French- and English-speaking, have been at the frontline of multiple solidarity movements and initiatives from internationalism in denouncing the apartheid in South Africa to decrying police killings and medical racism and demanding recognition of Black lesbian scholarship and culture.

This exhibition also features various commemorative objects, coming directly from the personal collections of women active in community organizing across decades and sectors. Through a dialogue between archives representing some of these mobilizations, as well as the initiatives put forward by Black feminist and women's groups today, including Harambec, this second exhibition demonstrates that the Black Feminist flame has been passed, and is still burning.

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 Women's 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.

This exhibition is curated by Samia Dumais, archivist at Harambec, and Marlihan Lopez, cofounder of Harambec, with the special collaboration of Maguy Metellus, Black feminist organizer.

AUPresses Book, Jacket, and Journal Show

January 11 – 30, 2024

Webster Library, vitrines on LB-2

Concordia University Press and the Concordia University Library are pleased to showcase the 2023 AUPresses Book, Jacket, and Journal Show, representing the best book design by university press publishers.

Concordia University Press is honoured to have three of its books included in this year's show: Arthur Erickson on Learning Systems and Liz Magor's Subject to Change: Writings and Interviews are both included in the Scholarly Typographic category, and Lauren Beck's Canada's Place Names and How to Change Them is included in the Book Covers category. Our congratulations to designers Sean Yendrys, Scott Ponik, and Sébastien Aubin, OTAMI-. As a relatively new publisher, with our first book, Ken Lum's Everything is Relevant: Writings on Art and Life, 1991-2018 (also a Scholarly Typographic winner) appearing in 2020, we are proud to be included among the best design in our industry and among our esteemed peers.

If you would like to flip through these books, please visit us on January 31 from 3 to 5 p.m. at the 4TH Space. We will be releasing these books from their display cases and hosting a free and public event. Join us for a discussion about excellence in book design with award-winning designers and publishing colleagues from McGill-Queen's University Press.

For more information on the AUPresses, the annual design show's winners, and its jury members, please visit Association of University Presses Design. For more information on Concordia University Press titles, please visit the Concordia University Press website.