This summer, the Archives received an addition to the Department of Arts & Health at Duke Records collection that individuals familiar with the Morris Clinic Building at Duke South will recognize: the Gathering in the Stories installation. It was curated by Linda Belans and the Health Arts Network at Duke (HAND) with photographs by Jim Lee and Leah Sobsey. This exhibit, installed from 2006 to 2016, displayed 12 large portraits of Duke University Hospital employees and 35 smaller transparencies comprised of both text and images in which the Duke University Hospital employees discussed the impact Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement had on their lives. Because of deterioration of the installation and building code changes, the exhibit was de-installed and is now housed in the Archives. Information about and images of the original collection can be viewed here.
The format of these materials posed a bit of a challenge when taking the exhibit down and processing the addition. Each portrait, a large transparency, was affixed to a light box, and each of the smaller transparencies were attached to mirrors and plexiglass. After ten years, it required a lot of patience and care to remove the transparencies from the plexiglass, mirrors, and lightboxes. But with diligence and a light touch, the Archives is happy to announce these materials documenting the personal stories of members of the Duke University Health System community are now available as part of our collections. Also included in the collection are transcripts of the employees’ interviews with the artists, which delve further into their experiences with the Civil Rights Movement and race in American since the 1960s.
To learn more about these materials, visit the finding aid or contact the archives staff.
This blog post was contributed by Archives Intern Kahlee Leingang.