Final AYPE Exhibit Tour Tonight

Former AYPE Forestry building being demolished, 1930.

This evening marks your last chance for a free tour of The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition: When the World Came to Campus, led by exhibit curator, Carla Rickerson.  No RSVP or pre-registration is necessary for this one-hour event.  Just show up at 6:00 pm in the Suzzallo Library Exhibition Room 102 (just inside the main entrance to the building).

Image credit: Post AYPE Building Collection. PH Coll 778.  University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections Order no. UWCO159

Race and Empire at the Fair Symposium at UW Libraries

A culminating Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition centennial symposium to be held at the University of Washington Libraries poses the following question:

How did the AYP reflect, reproduce, and perhaps challenge prevailing notions of race and empire?

The Race and Empire at the Fair Symposium, co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest and the University of Washington Libraries, will take place on October 16, 2009 (the day on which the exposition officially closed), 1:30-4:30 pm.  The symposium will feature a variety of speakers on two distinct panels, “Indigenous roles and representations” and “Local and transpacific imperial roots and routes.”  This event is open to the public, but requires an e-mail rsvp.  For full details and schedule, click here.

Igorrote men and women engaged in ceremonial dance, Igorrote Village, Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition, Seattle, 1909.

Image credit: Frank H. Nowell Alaska Yukon Pacific Photographs. PH Coll 727 / Universityof Washington Libraries Digital Collections Order no. AYP 727

Seattle’s Forgotten World’s Fair?

Front cover of final edition of the AYP Official Daily Program (Oct. 16, 1909)

Not around here, I think.

Amidst a final flurry of activity accompanying the winding down of Seattle’s celebrations of the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition centennial, an announcement for a documentary to be shown on KCTS 9 definitely caught our eye:

In collaboration with local historical gems such as the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI), The Burke Museum, Chinese in NW American Research Committee, the University of Washington and combined with thousands of historical images, rare archival footage, contemporary interviews and narration by Tom Skerritt, Seattle’s Forgotten World’s Fair, will take the viewer on an hour-long magical journey into a nearly forgotten chapter of the burgeoning city’s history.

The perfect nightcap to Home Movie Day 2009? But more about that later. If you can’t watch it on October 17th, check the KCTS schedule for other showings of this documentary.

Image credit: University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections ID# PAM0192.

Book Signing Tonight

Picturing the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition dust jacket cover

If you are looking for something to do this evening, why not head over to the University Bookstore?  At 7:00 pm, the Special Collections Division’s own Nicolette Bromberg will be on hand to discuss and sign copies of her new book, Picturing the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition.  This lavish volume features the Visual Materials Curator’s own selection of documentary photographs by AYPE official photographer, Frank Nowell, as well as recent photographs from a project led by John Stamets in which University of Washington students rephotographed various sites of the 1909 exposition on the current UW campus.

You also can see some of Nowell’s images for yourselves at the previously mentioned installations in the University of Washington Libraries and in glorious large-scale format at Picturing the Fair, the exhibition at the Museum of History and Industry.

Best AYPE Item Ever?

Front cover illustration from Official classifications, rules and regulations of the poultry and pigeon exhibit

I’m not sure how I feel about the actual contents of this volume, but I would love to find out who created the original illustration for its cover.  The same illustration appears on the front cover of a related publication, Official classifications, and lists of exhibitors of the poultry and pigeon exhibit, which may be the more interesting of the two.  So far, the University of Washington holds the only cataloged copies known to avian-kind.

Image credit: Scan of front cover of Official classifications, rules and regulations of the poultry and pigeon exhibit

Pacific Northwest Historians Guild Call for Presentations

The Pacific Northwest Historians Guild has issued a call for papers and presentations for its 24^th annual conference to be held on March 7, 2009 at Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry. The theme of this year’s conference is the centennial of the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. Submissions are due by October 15, 2008. You can go here for the full announcement.