While planning our 150th anniversary, we knew we must heighten awareness about the library’s activities and impact. We wanted to tell the story of our illustrious history and importance to the 1867 community, while also telling our story as a creative and educational catalyst now and into the future. We have an extensive art collection that fills our public locations and some hidden gems that impact and inspire people’s lives through visual stories.

We invited 11 artists to select any work from our collections, create a response piece and tell the story of their creative process. During the seven-week exhibit, we held public receptions on First Friday Art Walk and our annual Donor Appreciation gathering to celebrate the library’s impact. These are special opportunities to tell the story of the library’s remarkable founding and continuous impact, by displaying contemporary and engaging original artwork inspired by our visual history.

As a burgeoning art city, we anticipate drawing a larger audience than most of our exhibits, exciting and inspiring visitors to appreciate and create stories like these artifacts and art, while inviting new awareness of the library’s collections, connections and creative impact. Our great discovery of details about our history has inspired us to weave the continuity of our founding as “an atmosphere of philosophy, knowledge, and fancy” into the catalyzing role we play today.