STOP AND GO TRAFFIC IN THE WOLFSONIAN LIBRARY

JEFFRY SCHNAPP AND WOLFSONIAN CURATORS REVIEW LIBRARY MATERIALS FOR SPEED LIMITS EXHIBITION

Jeffrey T. Schnapp, based out of the Stanford Humanities Lab, returned to Miami Beach this last Monday to meet with our curators and to discuss ideas for reworking the exhibition he guest curated at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, entitled: SPEED limits / La Vitesse et ses limites. Commemorating the centenary of the Italian Futurist movement and its obsession with speed and technology, the show examines the important role played by speed in radically and rapidly reordering the modern world not only in the obvious terms of a more rapid means of transportation and communication, but also in its more subtle manifestations in art and culture, urbanization and city planning, and industrialization and design. As implied by the title, the exhibition does not merely celebrate speed; it also consciously calls attention to the limits and problems that the rapid pace of modern life has created for humanity. The show is set to reopen at the Wolfsonian-FIU in September, 2010, and will integrate more of the Wolfsonian's own collection in its redesign.

This is not Jeffrey’s first curatorial collaboration with the Wolfsonian. Another of his exhibitions, Revolutionary Tides, brought together the minds and materials of the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for the Visual Arts (Stanford), The Wolfsonian-Florida International University, the Hoover Institution Archives, and the Stanford Humanities Lab for a show that ran from February 24th, 2006 through July 25th, 2006 here in Miami Beach. A small display of library materials was also organized at that time to complement the exhibit on the gallery floors:

http://www.librarydisplays.wolfsonian.org/Revolutionary%20Tides/Revolutionary%20Tides.htm

This Monday’s meeting included a stop in the library to review some selections from our rare books, periodicals, and ephemera that might be integrated into the themes of the new exhibition. Here is a “Sneak peek” of a few library items that might be included.