Open houses honor President Fitts’ inaugural theme
For the Latin American Library, it means a powerful exhibit by a French photographer who documents the people and culture of Guatemala. For the Hogan Jazz Archive, it means recounting the beginnings of the archive’s renowned oral history collection.
“Crossing Boundaries” is the theme that Tulane University President Mike Fitts chose for his inauguration, and groups across the Tulane uptown campus have been planning for months on ways to demonstrate that theme in open houses and exhibits planned for 10 a.m. until noon on inauguration day, March 17.
Visitors will cross the border into Guatemala when they view the collection of black-and-white photographs by John Edward Heaton at the Latin American Library, on the fourth floor of Howard-Tilton Memorial Library. March 17 will be a special preview; the photo exhibit formally opens on Friday, March 18, with a reception beginning at 5:30 p.m.
“We are honored to be the first venue in the U.S. to feature this collection of extraordinary photographs.”
Hortensia Calvo, Doris Stone Director at the Latin American Library
“John Edward Heaton’s Guatemala” debuted in Paris last fall, says Hortensia Calvo, Doris Stone Director of the library.
“He has spent 35 years immersed as an engaged inhabitant and curious witness to this Central American nation,” Calvo says. “He has lived in Guatemala long enough to see things from the inside and from the outside. And he has an exquisite eye that captures the magic and the unexpected in daily life.”
Called a “visual anthropologist” by some reviewers, Heaton specializes in natural portraits of Guatemalan people “going about their daily activities,” Calvo says, as well as religious processions and landscapes. The exhibit continues until May 27.
On the third floor of Jones Hall, across from Howard-Tilton, the Hogan Jazz Archive will offer two displays for inaugural guests. One shows the transfer from analog to digital media of the archive’s world-renowned oral history collection. A second exhibit will recount the oral history fieldwork that began in 1958.
“Tulane was the first American academic institution to so honor the men and women who created jazz in New Orleans and to systematically cross racial boundaries to get the job done,” says Bruce Raeburn, director of special collections and curator of the jazz archive.
Other March 17 open houses include ones at the Center for Public Service in Alcee Fortier Hall; the Phyllis M. Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking, 200 Flower Hall; the Center for Computational Science, 402 Stanley Thomas Hall; and the Roger Thayer Stone Center for Latin American Studies, 100 Jones Hall.
