The University of Tennessee - Martin

Dr. Seuss Wants You!
January - March 2008

Political cartoons have played a role in United States politics and
public affairs since the 1700s. Before he was a children's-book author
and illustrator, Theodore Seuss Giesel drew political cartoons for PM
newspaper during World War II, expressing a liberal view on Nazi
repression and American isolationism in an uncensored medium. "Dr. Seuss
Wants You!" collects a number of his best-known single-panel political
cartoons and presents them with explanatory text and other contemporary
information.

Pairings - Photographs by Robert Nunley

November - January 12

Interview with Robert Nunley (audio)

Diversity Endangered

September - Oct 19

A dazzling diversity of plants and animals inhabit the earth creating a rich natural world without which our lives would be impossible.  Human activities threaten this living diversity.  This poster exhibition examines the issues surrounding the problem and illustrates some of the ways each of us can make a difference.

Songs of the Patriot
When American Music Went to War
January - March 2007

Songs of the Patriot takes viewers back in time to the American wartime fronts at home and abroad during World War II through the cover art and lyrics of popular sheet music from 1940 to 1945. The exhibit explores how music publishers, songwriters and cover artists expressed a range of American wartime feelings from anti-war statements to rallying support for troops overseas. It also explores the booming sheet music industry, printing and chromolithography, and the significance of piano playing as a form of home entertainment.

Tingatinga Sytle of Art
From Tanzania
October 2006 - January 2007

Tanzania's most well-known style of painting was begun in the 1960s by Edward Saidi Tingatinga, after whom it is named. Tingatinga was born in 1932 in southern Tanzania's remote Tunduru district, and had only four years of primary school, in the 1950s, he headed north to Tanga, where he worked on a sisal plantation, and then later to Dar es Salaam, where he worked as domestic help fora British civil servant. During his time in Dar es Salaam, Tingatinga began to seek creative outlets and additional income, first as a member of a musical group, and later as a self-taught artist, painting fanciful and colourful animals on small shingles.

Tingatinga's wife sold his paintings near Morogoro Stores in Dar es Salaam, and his work soon became popular with European tourists. As his success grew, Tingatinga began to attract a small circle of students, with first his relatives and then others learning to imitate his style.

Then, one night in 1972, Tingatinga was mistaken for an escaping thief and fatally shot by the police. Following his death, Tingatinga's students organised themselves into the Tingatinga Partnership, which in 1990 was renamed the Tingatinga Arts Cooperative Society. This cooperative, which numbers about 50 members (including two women), is still based near Morogoro Stores in Dar es Salaam, where Tingatinga's works were originally sold. It has received significant support in recent years, including a new building, from Helvetas (the Swiss Association for International Cooperation).

Traditional Tingatinga paintings are composed in a square format, and generally feature colourful animal motifs against a monochrome background. One of the most distinctive characteristics of the style is its use of undiluted and often unmixed enamel and high-gloss paints which give Tingatinga paintings their characteristic glossy appearance.

Reflections - Photographs by Goetz Seifert
Oct 27 - Dec 23, 2005

Goetz Seifert's photographs presented in "Reflections," twenty images currently on exhibition in the University Museum. "Reflections" focuses (no pun intended) on the ways that the world mirrors its surroundings, especially in modern polished and transparent building materials. Light and Images play against each other as reversed images of reality--except that occasionally the mirror is flawed, or isn't a mirror at all. The result is an exceptionally vibrant and thoughtful opportunity to, well, reflect on what we "see" reality to be.

Varian Fry, ASSIGNMENT RESCUE: 1940–1941
by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Thru October 7, 2005

Additional Information at the USHMM website

The Way I Saw It - Photographs of World War II
by Major Joe Thompson
Thru May 26, 2005

AT THE CONTROLS: The Smithsonian National Air and Space Looks at Cockpits
From the National Air and Space Museum
November 18, 2004 - January 21, 2005

To be announced at a future date.