Overheard: Voices on the Underground Railroad at the Lutnick Library

To and From the Desk of John G. Whittier
Margot de Abreu, To and From the Desk of John Greenleaf Whittier. 2020 Envelope, hand drawn. Image courtesy of de Abreu. An envelope based on the writing life of John Greenleaf Whittier.

March 1 – April, 23, 2022

Overheard: Voices on the Underground Railroad at the Lutnick Library, is a collaboration with Marisa Williamson, while a visiting artist-in-residence at Haverford for the Visual Studies course, “Reframed: Enactment and Reenactment in Popular Culture, Digital Media, and Contemporary Art,” taught by Sally Berger in Fall 2020.

Williamson led the class in exploring the theoretical and literary landscapes of critical fabulation, speculative fiction, and parafiction in relationship to her commissioned visual art installation, Seedbed (2022), made for Performing Past-Present: Transforming Reenactment in the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery (March 18 – April 23). Seedbed is a plinth made of air-dried clay that holds a bed overflowing with plants in tribute to Sally Hemings. Embedded within the plinth are artifacts and short augmented reality Artivive videos made by the students who researched records of abolition held by Quaker & Special Collections at the Haverford Libraries.

The student art projects are: Noorjehan Assim, Reimagining the Wartime Sketchbook; Margot de Abreu, To and From the Desk of John G. Whittier; Hilda Delgado, The Journey of Josephine Starks; Mingwei Gao, Free Produce and Free Luxury; Owen Genco-Kamin, Samuel Pennock’s Letterbook; Aaliyah Joseph, untitled (I See Ghosts); Ellie Kerns, Status: Missing; Rebecca Matson, The Philadelphia Star; Isaac Wasserman, 20 Reasons; Madeline Webster, The Doll Lost in Time; Clara Zhang, Students’ Strike Chess Game.

a double sided doll with a skirt that lets you switch between Eliza Jacobs and Lucinda Hopper
Madeline Webster, The Doll Lost in Time, 2020. A Topsy Turvey American Girl doll: Eliza Jacobs and Lucinda S. Jacobs. Image courtesy of Webster. An amalgamation of two dolls based on real people and fictional characters from the 1850s.
a card covered in names crossed out with John Henry written in
Noorjehan Asim, “What’s in a name?” Reimagining the Wartime Sketchbook. 2020. Page from sketchbook, hand drawn. Image courtesy of Asim. Wartime sketchbook from the perspective of John Henry, based on photograph taken by Alexander Gardener during the Civil War entitled, What Do I Want John Henry?

Sarah Horowitz, curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts and Head of Quaker & Special Collections, assisted the students in their research into specific library resources/holdings. On display in the Lutnick Library exhibit are the research materials the students found in the Special Collections that inspired their projects, and accompanying texts about their art-making process. These documents include: autobiographies by Harriet Jacobs (Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl) and Frederick Douglass (My Bondage and My Freedom); Wilbur H. Siebert’s The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom; photographic collections of Friends Meeting Houses; photographs by James VanDer Zee, Carl Van Vechten, and Alexander Gardener; the letter books of John Greenleaf Whittier and Samuel Pennock; minutes from the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society; and pamphlets on the Free Produce Movement. 

Monday–Thursday: 8 a.m.-2 a.m.
Friday: 8 a.m.-9 p.m.
Saturday: 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
Sunday: 10 a.m.-9 p.m.

Directions

Requires a College OneCard to access. Enter via the Library ramp.

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Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery

Whitehead Campus Center
Haverford College
370 Lancaster Avenue
Haverford, PA 19041
(610) 896-1287

haverford.edu/exhibits

Hours

Monday–Friday: 11 a.m.–5 p.m.
Wednesday: 11 a.m.–8 p.m.
Saturday–Sunday: 12 p.m.–5 p.m.

Visitors are required to wear masks at all times while indoors. Visitors should practice social distancing when interacting with anyone outside their family.