Exhibits

Special Collections & College Archives

Professor Frank Kramer, Class of 1914, taught a popular Fine Arts elective designed to teach students how to examine jade, ivory, embroidered textiles, lacquer, and porcelain with the eye of a collector. Kramer allowed students to handle and analyze pieces from his extensive personal collection. In 1958 Kramer finished writing a textbook customized for the class. Many of the pieces displayed in this exhibit were discussed in the text and are remembered by students who took the class.

Browsing Room, Main Floor

“Trash and Treasure” is an exhibit by marine biologist, ecologist, and Environmental Studies Professor Emeritus John Commito. It features sculptures from objects he has found on beaches and back roads of coastal Maine as well as in his hometown of Frederick, Maryland. Commito collects, sorts, and arranges these objects, then encloses them with a frame. Presented this way, “they appear both ancient and ephemeral, like miniature ecosystems in tension between the past and the present,” says Commito. This exhibit is currently featured in the Browsing Room on the main floor of the library.

The Majestic Theater

This exhibit gives a glimpse of life at Gettysburg College campus as it appeared during the College’s first 100 years and how it appears today. All of the black and white photographs on display are exhibited courtesy of Special Collections & College Archives at Gettysburg College. The color photos are courtesy of the College’s Communications & Marketing department as well as the Athletic Communications department.

Some of the early images in this exhibit were created by battlefield photographer William Howard Tipton, a Gettysburg native who apprenticed with local photographers Charles and Isaac Tyson. Several of the other photographs have appeared in early twentieth century publications of the Spectrum, Gettysburg College’s yearbook.

Life of Civilians and Military Personnel in Europe

Photographs by Sgt. Burdette J. Marker, Staff Photographer, 71st Division, U.S. Army

Ground Floor

This exhibit features a collection of black and white photos taken by Sgt. Burdette Marker, the former father-in-law of Art and Art History Adjunct Instructor Brent Blair. History major Philip Pane, ’17 first encountered the negatives in Blair’s Introduction to Photography class. After graduating, Philip did further research on these negatives and selected some to print and display for this exhibit.

Sgt. Marker served as an official photographer of the 71st United States Infantry Division during World War II. He took these photographs in France, Germany, and Austria during the final months of the war. The 71st was a “rapid response” division serving as part of General Patton’s 3rd Army. The photos displayed show war-related activities, but also convey the daily life of the soldiers.

“Local Names and Habitations” is a photography exhibit by naturalist, astronomer, and adjunct associate professor of English Ian Clarke. This exhibit features nature photos taken from his hikes in and around southcentral and northern Pennsylvania. Because Clarke is an angler, many of these photos feature local streams and watersheds.  In addition to the landscape photography, the exhibit includes a few starry night sky photos as well.

View the online exhibit

An exhibit remembering the classmates, friends, brothers, sons, and husbands from Gettysburg College who were killed while serving in the military during the Vietnam Wa

This exhibit highlights and contrasts the work of two artists recording their impressions of the Adams County landscape. Separated by over 140 years of history and technology, George Leo Frankenstein and Daniel Gilbert have each responded to this historic rural environment with the tools most appropriate to their time. For George Leo Frankenstein, oil paints loosely brushed on paper suggested the humid summer atmosphere of the Gettysburg Battlefield three years after the conflict. For Daniel Gilbert, his 35mm camera allowed him to explore the textures and warm colors of fall foliage in dynamic compositions. 

The Frankenstein prints on display in this exhibit are enlarged reproductions of his original oil paintings of Gettysburg that are part of the collection of Gettysburg College’s Special Collections and College Archives. The photographs of autumn leaves on display are a selection of the non-digital images that were on display in Musselman Library in 2005.

This photography exhibit features a collection of images taken by Stephen Warner, Class of 1968, during the Vietnam War. The photographs and text on display are select reproductions from a collection of photographs, negatives, notebooks, diaries, and letters created by Warner. They were bequeathed to Gettysburg College by Warner, upon his death in Vietnam in 1971.

People around the world have been playing games since the beginning of time. In “A New Look at Old Games,” Musselman Library traces the history of some of the most popular board, tile, and card games in Western culture. Using examples from the combined private collections of Lynda and Lawrence Taylor and Professor Dan DeNicola, this exhibit showcases items from the late 19th through the mid-20th century, all predating the use of computers as a recreational pastime.  Whether it’s chess, checkers, or Mah Jong, each game reflects something of its time and place of origin.

Despite years of stagnation on the Western Front, the First World War was a transformational experience for many, Gettysburg College alumni included.  While annihilating the landscape of the Western Front, mechanized and modern warfare impelled creativity and adaptation from soldiers and civilians.  The Front followed these men and women home and impacted their perspectives and prospects.

Beyond Futility features artifacts, documents, and photographs from Gettysburg College’s Special Collections, the Adams County Historical Society and the private collections of the Zorich-Dracopoli P’14 Family, the Rothenberger Family, Philip Pane ‘17,Tyler Shrader ‘21, Tony Luis, and John R. Heckman.