Capturing History

The result of 40 years of collecting and selective recruiting by Dr. Howard Gotlieb, founder of the newly renamed Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, this exhibition displays the papers and ephemera of notable figures to convey how they shaped the cultural landscape of the last hundred years. In some cases, one can see how they influenced each other, while in others, the differences between people working in the same field is readily apparent.

For example, early New Yorker contributor Ralph Ingersoll notes his run-ins with Harold Ross, the magazine's first editor, in his diary. Another New Yorker writer, Dorothy Parker, is quoted by journalist Herbert Bayer Swope in his diary. Also on display is Robert Benchley's draft of a New Yorker review of Bert Lahr, whose son, John, went on to become a writer for the magazine and who is represented by a corrected manuscript page from his father's biography.

By viewing the papers of both revolutionary filmmaker Maya Daren and mainstream theater producer Irene Mayer Selznick, or the collections of poets Robert Frost and T.S. Eliot side by side with beat writers Allan Ginsburg and John Clellon Holmes, one can truly see the diversity among successful people working in the same field.

Other highlights include, a handwritten draft for a sermon by Martin Luther King Jr. appears in the exhibit along with a letter from Coretta Scott King to the family of James Earl Ray, vowing to clear his name in the death of her husband. On display alongside his many Emmys are Dan Rather's notes for a February 2003 interview with Saddam Hussein as well as his Iraqi working papers.

The balance of the exhibit will allow enthusiasts of opera, movies, theater, journalism, literature, and politics to leave knowing something new about the great innovators of the last century.