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Blair School of Music: Forty Years of Excellence
August 2005 - January 2006

Chamber GroupAn exhibit celebrating the history of the Blair School of Music is currently on display at the Martha Rivers Ingram Center for the Student ChoirPerforming Arts. Featured in the exhibit are photographs and ephemera culled from the Blair School of Music collection and the Joseph Nicholas collection held by Vanderbilt Special Collections and University Archives.

Originally affiliated with the George Peabody College for Teachers and funded by the Justin and Valere Potter Foundation, the Blair Academy of Music opened its doors in 1964 and offered preparatory musical instruction to children throughout Nashville and Middle Tennessee. Over the past four decades, the school has blossomed into one of the premier music programs in the United States. Separated from Peabody, Blair merged with Vanderbilt in 1981 and became the tenth school at the university.

Today, the school offers a bachelor's degree in four areas - composition/theory, musical arts, performance, and teacher education - as well as a Master of Education degree for prospective music teachers.

In early 2005 Middle Tennessee writer D. B. Kellogg published a history of the school and later that year the school was named one of the "schools that rock" in the Rolling Stone College Guide. The exhibit is expected to run through April 2006. For more information, contact Special Collections.



All the World's A Stage: Shakespeare and the Performing Arts
April 2005 - October 2005

Katherine HepburnRare photos, playbills, theatrical posters and more representing performances of the works of William Shakespeare nowKatharine Cornell on display at Vanderbilt University's Ingram Hall. Titled All the World's A Stage: Shakespeare and the Performing Arts, the exhibit highlights 20th century performances of the great bard's work.

Produced by the university's Special Collections, this exhibit is the second in a series of exhibits culled from the Francis Robinson Collection of Theatre, Dance and Music, which is part of the library's permanent collection. Among the items on display are playbills featuring Sir Laurence Olivier, Maurice Evans and Katherine Hepburn, as well as posters for performances by Katharine Cornell and Helen Hayes.

Robinson, a native of Kentucky and a graduate of Vanderbilt (B.A. '32 and M.A. '33), spent nearly four decades of his life working for the famed Metropolitan Opera in New York. He was a devoted fan and supporter of the performing arts, and amassed one of the finest collections dedicated to the theatrical arts.

Robinson's collection proved to be a valuable primary resource for the many projects he produced during his lifetime, including album liner notes and scripts for the Bell Telephone "Radio Hour" and "Live From the Met Broadcasts," which he hosted in the later years of his career. Additionally, he published two excellent books, Caruso: His Life in Pictures (1957) and Celebration: The Metropolitan Opera (1979).

Robert Penn Warren
May 2005 - August 2005

Robert Penn WarrenMarking the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of the University's celebrated alumni are three displays recently Invitation to the White Houseinstalled in the Memorabilia Room on the second floor of Kirkland Hall. Born April 24, 1905 in the small town of Guthrie, KY, Robert Penn Warren came to Vanderbilt at the age of sixteen. Here he was active in the campus publications, The Hustler and The Commodore. He also became part of a group of writers who published for a short time a literary magazine they called The Fugitive. This group was influential in beginning the Southern Literary Renaissance. Warren went on to become a nationally recognized man of letters receiving the Pulitzer Prize on three occasions and becoming America's first Poet Laureate. "Red" Warren, who died in 1989 in Stratton, VT, is memorialized on our campus by the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities.

The Warren exhibits, along with "Old Main - Kirkland, the Evolution of a Landmark" and "Cornerstones" (current campus construction), will remain on display through the summer.