Clearly, by the late 1950s, the then-Columbus Public Library neared the end of its story.
A year-long exhibit and architectural salute to be unveiled Saturday will highlight that page-turner and more in a city where Modernist buildings speak volumes.
The display to highlight the 50th anniversary of heralded I.M. Pei’s Cleo Rogers Memorial Library was designed by Columbus architects Daniel Martinez and Lulu Loquidis of LAA Office downtown.
It will include the following need-we-say-more notation: “When the … library, built with money donated by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, opened its new building in 1903, it contained 6,000 books, served 9,000 city residents, and circulated 26,000 volumes. As early as 1915, library staff reported the need for more space.
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“In 1958, the library contained 60,000 books, served 48,000 county residents, and circulated 288,000 volumes. A solution could no longer be delayed.”
There you have it, cut-to-the-chase, bottom-liners. In short, longtime librarian Cleo Rogers became a tireless catalyst for a new structure and a new chapter more than a decade before the structure was born and Pei began earning accolades.
The 20-foot-long, 10-foot-high exhibit will be part of a Cleo Turns 50 Saturday celebration that will include the annual birthday bash at 6 p.m. for late, world-renowned, British sculptor Henry Moore of the local Large Arch fame (born on July 30, 1898, he would be 121 if he were alive). That event will include an an all-ages art activity led by veteran Columbus sculptor Robert Pulley, who has exhibited his work nationwide through the years.
Plus, appropriately enough, cake and ice cream will be part of the affair, along with a Moore mini-exhibit. About 100 people gathered for last year’s celebration.
Tricia Gilson, archivist with the library’s Columbus Indiana Architectural Archives, has worked with others to develop the exhibit, done in a similar format as the library’s previous exhibit titled Avenue of the Architects. Her research turned up details such as the fact that the library once made elements such as Da Vinci and Matisse art prints available for a month-long checkout.
Plus, books from the existing library were moved through the windows by conveyor belt to the new, Pei-designed structure. Understandably, organizers were forced to sift and edit historical material to fit within a limited space.
“Whenever you’re doing a historical exhibit, there’s always way more information than you ever could possibly include,” Gilson said.
Support for the exhibit, costing about $15,000, comes from the Columbus Museum of Art and Design, Friends of Columbus Indiana Architectural Archives, the Columbus Area Visitors Center, the Custer Foundation and the Nugent Foundation.
Martinez, an assistant professor of architecture at Indiana University’s Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design, has provided an architectural analysis of Pei’s building design in the upcoming exhibit.
“I think it has a lot in common with some museums and other cultural buildings he was designing in the ‘60s, which, for me, is sort of my favorite era of his career, before he really became huge and was doing projects such as The Louvre and the East Building of the National Gallery of Art,” Martinez said. “We wanted to tell the story of the civic nature of the building (in the exhibit), of course, but we also wanted to include what is going on design-wise.
“So I believe that Columbus has a library that includes the kind of thinking that often goes into the design of a museum.”
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What: Opening of the new exhibit highlighting the 50th anniversary of the Cleo Rogers Memorial Library — and the annual birthday bash for Large Arch late sculptor Henry Moore.
When: Saturday. The library will open at noon with the exhibit in place. The birthday party for Moore will be from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: Cleo Rogers Memorial Library building and the Bartholomew County Public Library Plaza, 536 Fifth St. in downtown Columbus.
Information: 812-379-1297 or columbusarchives.org or mybcpl.org
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