Evanston Public Library welcomed a Northwestern sesquicentennial exhibit on Thursday that will be shown at alumni events nationwide.
The exhibit, showcasing 150 years of NU student life, is taking time off from a national tour for a monthlong stop at the Evanston Public Library in the hopes of exposing the exhibit to the Evanston community and “bringing back memories of years long gone by,” said Virginia Koch, assistant director of NU’s Sesquicentennial Celebrations and curator of the exhibit.
Koch said the biggest challenge she encountered in assembling the exhibit was making sure that it could travel. Koch and the designer she worked with “racked their brains” to think of how they could make the exhibit durable, lightweight and good-looking, she said.
Judging by the number of miles the display has logged this year, Koch achieved her goal. Besides being used by campus groups such as Dance Marathon and Suitcase Party, the exhibit appeared at an alumni event in New York. At the showing in September, the display shared the spotlight with famous NU alumni from Broadway.
Working with alumni clubs in various cities, Koch plans to take the exhibit not only to Chicago but to Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The exhibit, which will be in the library lobby until the end of March, is broken down into six categories: athletics, academics, culture, activism, and student and Greek life.
Telling NU’s story through a menagerie of pictures, the exhibit depicts everything from students piling 1,155 textbooks into a 1950s Renault sedan to NU’s prestigious varsity tug-of-war team.
The pictures for the exhibit come mainly from University Archives and Syllabus yearbooks, Koch said.
“This is similar to the Northwestern book we put together on the history on Northwestern, so we kind of played off of that a little bit … as well as original research,” she said.
“Anybody that’s had contact with Northwestern students over the years, whether that be residents who had students as tenants or worked with them in their business, this is hopefully going to appeal to them.”
Don Olds, an Evanston library clerk, said the library was an appropriate venue for the exhibit.
“Northwestern University is certainly a part of Evanston,” he said.
Olds went on to say that he approved of the display: “I like it very much. I like the layout, I like the format, I like the color scheme.”
Marvin L. Stevens, a library patron, said the exhibit was “very educational and something different” from what he’s found in other libraries.
Laura Dudnik, head of reader services at the library, called the display “eye-catching and professional.” Dudnik said the library plans to enhance the exhibit by adding books written about NU or by NU alumni.
Both Koch and Dudnik said they hoped people would find the exhibit interesting. Koch also said she hoped NU students would take time, even in the midst of Reading Week and finals, to stop in and take a look at the display.
