Reflections on a Museum
As noted before on this site, items from the Chapin Library are frequently lent to the Williams College Museum of Art in support of exhibitions. This is the case also with the re-installation opened in April 2011, entitled Reflections on a Museum. WCMA staff have helpfully created a series of video tours of its component displays, in some of which Chapin loans can be seen.
In Don’t Fence U.S. In: Part I, Dalila Scruggs introduces an exhibition in WCMA’s American galleries. On the wall behind her is the Chapin Library’s copy of the very important, and very large, 1755 Map of the British and French Dominions in North America by John Mitchell. In Don’t Fence U.S. In: Part III, Joann Harnden speaks briefly about the Founding Documents of the United States, on loan from the Chapin Library until our historic rooms in Stetson Hall re-open in 2014.
Finally, in The Medium and the Message former Deputy Director of WCMA John Stomberg shows a 13th-century manuscript Bible made in Paris and a 15th-century Bible printed in Augsburg, both from Chapin collections, next to a Sony Reader “open” to a passage from the Bible. (Note: The latter books have now been returned to the Library’s South Street rooms.) – WGH