POUGHKEEPSIE- The Archives & Special Collections Library at Vassar College will present Elizabeth Bishop’s Postcards, an exhibition of the beloved poet’s extensive postcard correspondence dating from her early life to her final years, from September 18 through December 15, 2023.
Spearheaded by Ronald Patkus, Head of Special Collections and College Historian at Vassar, and guest curated by Jonathan Ellis of the University of Sheffield and Susan Rosenbaum of the University of Georgia, the exhibition is composed of 55 postcards drawn from Vassar’s collection of more than 500.
An official opening will be Saturday, September 23, 2023 from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., in the Library’s Class of ’51 Reading Room, featuring talks by Patkus, Ellis, and Rosenbaum. The free event is open to all.
“One of the most valuable and heavily used collections in the Archives & Special Collections Library at Vassar College is the Elizabeth Bishop Papers,” said Patkus. “Elizabeth Bishop’s Postcards draws attention to this neglected portion of Bishop’s correspondence as, through Ellis’s and Rosenbaum’s collaborative research, we consider both the literary and visual aspects of the postcards and place them within Bishop’s larger oeuvre.”
Elizabeth Bishop, among the most important and influential American poets of the 20th century and a 1934 Vassar graduate, was a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner. She also served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950.
The exhibition has been financially supported by the Willson Center for Humanities & Arts at the University of Georgia, a Knowledge Exchange Grant from the University of Sheffield, and sponsorship from Vassar’s Archives & Special Collections Library, the Media Studies Program, the English Department, and Women, Feminist, and Queer Studies Program.
