The Elisabeth Remak-Honnef Center for Archival Research and Training (CART) is pleased to announce the opening of this year’s exhibitions curated by the 2022-2023 graduate fellows. These two exhibitions feature the Ingeborg Gerdes Photographs and Papers, as well as the Florence Wyckoff Papers, the William H. Friedland Papers, the William MacKenzie Papers, and the California Farm Research and Legislative Committee Records.

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Ingeborg Gerdes in Process: The Making of an Artist, curated by Yulia Gilich, features materials from the newly acquired collection of Ingeborg Gerdes Photographs and Papers. The vast collection reflects the legacy of artist Ingeborg Gerdes, including her meticulous craftsmanship and prolific photographic career, momentous personal life, and commitment to teaching. Born in Germany in 1938, Gerdes was known for photographing her travels through the American West among other locales, and taught at UC Santa Cruz for over two decades. The collection also offers a glimpse of the history of photography as a medium, which dramatically changed over the course of Gerdes’ life and career. Containing exhibition prints, film negatives, work prints, contact sheets, and slides, the exhibit traces Gerdes’ photographic trajectory from black and white film to color and, later, to digital photography.

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Beyond the Ivory Tower: Community engagement, education, and organizing in California’s Central Coast, curated by Riley Collins, Carrie Hamilton, Brittney Jimenez, and Summer Sullivan, tells a story about different approaches for eliciting social change in California’s Central Coast and beyond. While the large-scale, vegetable-dominant agriculture of the region has led to prosperity for some, it has resulted in unjust conditions for others. The area’s farm workers, in particular, have for decades faced numerous challenges related to immigration, labor, race and ethnicity, and education. The collections featured in this exhibition demonstrate that there are many avenues for activism both in and outside of academia, and are united around a goal of community-oriented social change for underrepresented groups, particularly the working class and immigrants. Central to the theories of change presented in each collection is the power of education as a public and social good.

Both exhibits are on view from June 15th to December 8th, 2023, in the Third Floor Gallery of McHenry Library at UC Santa Cruz.

For more information on these exhibitions and collections, visit the Special Collections & Archives website or contact Special Collections & Archives at speccoll@library.ucsc.edu.