We all have muses who inspire our creative side. But what makes us create and innovate? How do we find that ‘Aha’ moment? Creativity is expressed in many ways: architects and their visions of new buildings, sketches by patients from inside a hospital, authors and stories loosely related to their childhood, artists reimagining the look and shape of the book, costume sketches that mimic the gracefulness of artists on stage, and even a group of singing Jesuits performing on the same stage as the Supremes and Elvis Presley. Visit the Library’s newest exhibition opening on February 25 to explore how creatives throughout history have generated original ideas.
Organized around themes of Inspiration, Stages of Completion, Production, and Reception, the exhibition uses materials from the Booth Family Center for Special Collections to shed light on the creative process of individual artists. The selection of items captures the interplay of beginnings, ends, and betweens. They include not only completed works but also failed attempts, the different stages of the creative process, and ephemeral pieces that help to fill in the gap. The exhibition embraces the idea of absence and imagination that fuels the creative process with a unique installation, leaving out exhibit labels to invite visitors to create their own narrative. This approach aims to facilitate the experience of what is in the cases – not curate how they should be understood. By not setting limits on how to interact with the items, visitors can start to create their own narrative, asking themselves how the items in each case tell their own story, the relationship between items throughout the exhibition, and what may still be missing from the process.
One of the exhibition’s curators, Ethan Henderson, Rare Books Curator said that he hopes that the experience of the exhibition will “encourage you to respond in your own way, whether by a conversation with a friend, getting out paint brushes that you hid away years ago, whistling a tune as you walk down the sidewalk, or just by simply doing something that involves your imagination.”
Visit the Library's exhibition page to learn more about this exhibition.