Walt Whitman, Civil War exhibit by Roanoke professor and artist on display at Taubman Museum of Art
February 05, 2015
Read about the "War Memoranda" exhibit in The Roanoke Times.
A Roanoke College English professor and a well-known artist have combined their skills and interests into a unique exhibition of poetic words, photography and art on display for several months at the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke. The exhibit runs through May 23.
Several Roanoke students interning at the Taubman Museum also will help to promote and speak about the exhibition and its historical elements.
The exhibition, "War Memoranda: Photography, Walt Whitman and Renewal," features poems and prose by Walt Whitman, an American poet, displayed alongside wartime photos and portraits of soldiers, some pressed into leaves using a chlorophyll print method. The exhibition is meant to ask questions of how Americans remember war.
Artist Binh Danh photographed the battlefield images using a 19th century large format camera. Some are produced using a cyanotype method that displays the photos in a blueprint color tone.
Danh also uses daguerreotype, which is an early photographic process that creates a photograph on a mirror-like, silver-coated copper plate, and results in a highly detailed image.
Additionally, the exhibition showcases the Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War portraits from the Library of Congress as well as poetry by Schultz.
This isn't the first time that Schultz and Danh has worked together. They created a photo book, "War Memoranda," during Danh's semester-long artist residency at Roanoke in 2011. The book showcases some of the art displayed at the museum. It also includes photographs of Roanoke College students reading and reflecting on Whitman's poetry.
In all, the Taubman exhibition, timed with the closing of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War and the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, features daguerreotypes by Danh, 50 chlorophyll prints, 20 cyanotypes, three artists' books and five poems by Schultz.
Three Roanoke students - Brooke Gardiner, Jane Nowell and Julia Lee- are interns at the Taubman Museum, and they will join Schultz for a gallery talk and Saturday events related to the War Memoranda exhibit. The students took a Whitman and Civil War course taught by Schultz last fall, and they each have researched different subjects related to the topic, Schultz said.
Gardiner's research focused on female nurses during the Civil War, while Nowell studied the effects of the Civil War in Southwest Virginia, compared with the rest of the state. Lee studied Whitman's poetry and prose, with an emphasis on his wartime work, "Drum Taps," and his experiences caring for the war's wounded and sick in Washington D.C. This summer "War Memoranda" will travel to the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, N.Y. Its other destinations are unknown, Schultz said.
A member's preview and opening celebration for the exhibit will be held on Feb. 13 from 5 pm. to 9 p.m. at the Taubman Museum. Schultz and Danh will speak about "War Memoranda" at 5:30 p.m. in the Taubman Theater.
-Published Feb. 5, 2015