Musselman Library Exhibits

Special Collections Reading Room, 4th Level

Gettysburg College has been educating women since 1885. Despite this early entry into co-education, there has always been pushback against women. A new exhibit in Special Collections and College Archives, Musselman Library, explores the steps forward made by Gettysburg College women and the challenges they faced in the classroom, on the field, and in life on campus. Co-curated by Abigail Adam ’22 and Alicia Method ’23, Educating Women at Gettysburg College: Progress and Pushback uses archival documents, photographs, and artifacts to relate over a century of women’s experiences.

This exhibit is available to view in the Special Collections Reading Room. Please check their webpage for current hours.

Since the advent of photography in the mid-19th century, women have been involved in and pushing the boundaries of art and science.

This exhibit focuses on twelve American women photographers spanning the late 19th through 21st centuries and showcases the variety of their personal and professional expressions through the lens of a camera.

Their work and efforts, and the work of countless other women photographers, have contributed to the advancement of the field of photography.

Their viewpoints provide new ways to see the people, places, and things of our world, all while forcing the viewer to reconsider prior assumptions about what they thought was real.

This exhibit is viewable now through June 2023 in Musselman Library’s main floor display cases adjacent to the Browsing Room.

Musselman Library’s main stair tower gallery features the 1982 color lithographs of Belgian artist Paul Van Hoeydonck. Van Hoeydonck, born in Antwerp in 1925, is best known for his aluminum sculpture Fallen Astronaut, which was placed on the Moon by the Apollo 15 crew in 1971 to commemorate the astronauts and cosmonauts who have died in the advancement of space exploration. Van Hoeydonck is also a painter.

As a young artist Van Hoeydonck was fascinated by the vastness of space and the possibilities of space travel. He was a cosmic artist at a time when humankind’s technical wonders were slowly being utilized to explore our universe and its mysteries. 

The Van Hoeydonck framed prints in this exhibit are reproductions of numbered lithographs in the Gettysburg College Fine Arts Collection. The lithographs were gifted to the college in 1991 by Lawrence A. and Pamela J. Rosenberg.

The exhibit will be available to view now through June 2023.  The following prints are featured in the exhibit:

Twilight Dream

Blue Sky and Red Roses

Roses and Bionic Bees

Pamela's Dream and Red Roses

A new exhibit at Musselman Library reveals an often-overlooked aspect of late Victorian culture in the United States: a fascination with Japan. Graces and Repose: Capturing the Culture of Late 19^th Century Japan  features colorful reproductions of photographs that capture the essence of contemporary Japanese culture.

The images come from a rare ten-volume set of books called  Japan: Described and Illustrated by the Japanese (1897) owned by Musselman Library’s Special Collections & College Archives. The hand-colored albumen prints, resized for this exhibit, decorate the pages of the volumes produced after the opening of diplomatic and economic relations between the United States and Japan in the late 19th century, and the subsequent interest in the island nation. The illustrations required many photographers and possibly hundreds of assistants to carefully overpaint the pictures.

This exhibit is located in the apse of the library’s main level and will be up now through June 2023.

Lower Level Printing Station

The posters in this series focus on parts of the Gettysburg College story that have been minimized or neglected altogether in previous histories – particularly with respect to underrepresented groups, issues, and activisms. Based on sometimes incomplete sources, they represent imperfect knowledge and are not comprehensive. They are a beginning, not an ending.

For that reason, we invite your feedback – corrections, additional information, people and events not pictured. We also invite contributions of relevant documents, photos, etc. to the College Archives, or via our digital repository, “What We Did Here: Activism at Gettysburg College.”

The story of change at Gettysburg is being written every day. You can help write it!

Additional resources:

• Gettysburg College: A Diversity Story: library-supported student project on the diversification of Gettysburg College
• This is Why We Fight: Student Activism at Gettysburg College: library-supported student project on student activism at Gettysburg College
• College and Community in Adams County: examines the evolution of service partnerships between Gettysburg College and the local community