Wilson Special Collections Library is holding its signature Recent Acquisitions Evening on Thursday, April 27. From 6-8 p.m. in the Fearrington Reading Room, Come explore nearly 300 items added to the Wilson Library collections since 2019 and talk with the expert staff who select and work with them.
Here, librarians and archivists from Wilson Library offer a sneak peek at just a few of the items that will be on view. This is just a small sample of what you’ll see during the actual event, but it illustrates the wide range of materials that make up the special collections.
Want to know more about what to expect? Read our Q&A with the event organizers for everything you need to know.
“The Oaxacan artist, activist and organizer Francisco Toldeo, known affectionately as “El Maestro,” is considered one of the most significant Mexican artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. Within this two-volume edition of Moby Dick, Toledo composed twenty full-page mixed media illustrations.
Though he is most well-known for his paintings, here Toledo utilized a wide range of materials, including natural pigments, handmade paper, shells, stone, ceramic, bone, and animal skins. His work often combines expressionist and surrealist elements with Zapotec mythology, creating images of fantastical, otherworldly creatures, such as the sea creatures shown here.”
– Emily Kader, Associate Curator for Rare Book Collection
“We feel privileged to be the stewards of the G. K. Butterfield materials. They give us a rare glimpse of how an African American kid from Wilson, NC, who grew up in the height of racial discrimination and segregation, could serve 18 years in United States House of Representatives and see the election of America’s first African American president, Barack Obama.
Butterfield’s collection includes materials from his high school days, featuring this photo of him and his band mates in front of the United States Capitol building, with the window of the office that would be his in the upper right corner of the image.”
– Chaitra Powell, Curator of Southern Historical Collection
“This puzzle, comprised of 48 triangular wooden pieces, depicts indigenous people within tropical settings alongside roughly 100 animals. The toy is an example of how the study of natural history and the classification of non-Europeans as specimens of study influenced how children in the West learned about the world. The mosaic puzzle comes from the Florence Fearrington Collection, a donation of 1,900 volumes and objects relating to the subject of natural history by the preeminent book collector and Carolina alumna, Florence Fearrington.”
– Emily Kader, Associate Curator for Rare Book Collection
“The UNC Athletic Communications Office kept biographical files on many prominent former Tar Heel athletes. These two magazines featuring Carolina legend Vince Carter on the cover are from the large addition to the records of the Athletic Communications office received by the University Archives in 2022.”
– Nicholas Graham, University Archivist
“This decorative woodblock comes from the University Libraries’ 9 millionth volume, a collection of 900 woodcut blocks from the Propaganda Fide printing press. The Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (“Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith”) is a college of the Catholic Church, now known as the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.
The acquisition of the Propaganda Fide press printing blocks, which was made possible by the Hanes Foundation, is part of the Rare Book Collection’s commitment to collecting the global history of print. The collection is of great value to people studying the dissemination of Christianity and the history of religious conversion, non-western languages in print, and the production of religious texts.”
– Emily Kader, Associate Curator for Rare Book Collection
“Robby Poore, then artist and Design Manager at the UNC School of Government, created this design and other limited-edition screen-printed posters to connect with community members who might be experiencing hardship or emotional turmoil during the pandemic. Poore posted these and other COVID-related posters on bare kiosks in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, which in pre-pandemic times were covered with concert posters.”
– Linda Jacobson, Keeper of the North Carolina Collection Gallery
