American Ideas in Full Color

Curator: John Duff, Exhibition and Art Collection Curator, University Libraries

Exhibit Statement

Joseph D’Andrea ’25 (anticipated)

History is more than just the words you read in a textbook. It’s easy to feel detached from events of the past while reading about them or even watching old, grainy footage. Not until you look around and realize that there’s history all around you will you feel a stronger connection to past cultures, no matter how big or small that trigger may be. For some, it may come in the form of a campaign button you find in your grandparent’s dresser drawer, while others might appreciate the past by collecting coins, or maybe even listening to decades-old music that transports you to a bygone era. These may feel minor by first impression, but you can learn quite a bit about a society that you were never a part of just by putting sentimental and historical value into the items from their time. As a future history teacher, I believe that it’s very important that students understand that the past never simply stays behind us. History is continual and past cultural, economic, and political practices are all interpreted in one way or another from the ones that preceded them. To actually be able to touch or at least be in front of a piece of history is invaluable because it breaks down the wall between past and present and gives a tangible importance to the “things” of years past. This applies to anyone learning about history, and you can be a student of it without sitting behind a desk; there’s something to learn every day by going outside and observing and understanding why your surroundings look the way they do, at least as a starting point. Just in time for the upcoming 2024 presidential election, I hope visitors of this exhibit will reflect on those ideas when viewing the gallery’s tangible history of American political and cultural history in the form of pin-back buttons, pamphlets, books, vinyl records, and more.