Current Exhibit

Vineland: Shaping Paradise
The Lewiston-Clarkston Improvement Company Records, 1890-1920

Opened on April 4th 2012

The history of the American West is littered with boom towns, failed utopias, and ghost towns. Many of these places tell a variation on the story of Vineland. From seventeenth-century "cities of gold" to twenty-first century suburban subdivisions, successive waves of newcomers have reached toward what they believed was the region’s promise of natural and financial bounty. The powerful image of the West as a garden often stood at the center of these fables of abundance, beauty, and health. Yet in the arid West, the existing landscape rarely satisfied such high hopes. Undeterred, where the land did not match their dreams, westerners often sought to make places—like the Snake River Valley —conform to their imaginations.

By the end of the nineteenth century western boosters had perfected this west-as-garden image, just as they began to transform the ecology of the arid West to match their expectations. Boxes of Sun Maid Raisins, crates of California oranges, and railroad company pamphlets beckoned to a rising class of consumers and health seekers in this era of rapid urbanization and industrialization. In the Northwest too, investors and local business people armed themselves with the modern tools of this transformation, including capital, federal subsidies for railroads and irrigation projects, new forms of mass communication and advertisement, and a comprehensive planning philosophy for urban spaces. In this context, the planners of the Lewiston and Clarkston Land Company turned their attention to creating and selling this common western image of paradise in Vineland.

This student-designed exhibit, drawn from the collections of the Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections, highlights the booster pamphlets, plans, and professional photographs (by influential northwest photographer Asahel Curtis) that attest to the power of the garden and of the imagination in constructing the modern West in eastern Washington. But as with any advertising, the booster images only tell a part of the story and may obscure even more. Rarely do these pictures and plans, for instance, suggest the social consequences or contests that accompany any attempt to create one version of paradise. This exhibit invites visitors to think about the images, realities, and legacies of a century-and-a-half of garden dreams in the West.

Signature History: Celebrity Manuscripts from the Paul Philemon Kies Collection

January 17, 2012 - March 16, 2012 (Extended!)

These selections from the Kies autograph collection are original manuscripts, primarily letters, of prominent American and European writers, monarchs, statesmen, military figures, and performers. Most of the items are autograph letters (written in the hand of the sender), some with transcriptions and translations.

Underpinnings

December 1st, 2011 - December 14th, 2011

A history of undergarments and their effects on fashion, illustrated through items drawn from the historic costume collection in WSU's Department of Apparel, Merchandising, Design and Textiles. Curated by Hannah Tyo, a WSU Apparel Design student.

Cabbages to Campus: Tales From A Dozen Decades

August 19th, 2011 - November 28th, 2011

Read a short WSU News promo on the exhibit.

Comic Society: Reflections

December 9th, 2010- August 12th, 2011

Baskets, Bonnets, and Pincushions: Interpreting the Life and Work of Mary Walker

March 5th, 2010- October 4th, 2010

Win the Victory: The Early Days of Football at Washington State

September 4th, 2009 - February 16th, 2010

This exhibit shares stories from the early days of WSU's football history, from its first game in 1894 up to the 1931 Rose Bowl. More...

The Compleat Angler

Preserving the Past for the Future: Conservation of Book and Paper Materials

August 19 - November 21, 2008

Learning Each Other's Language: L.V. Mcwhorter and the Columbia Plateau Tribes

This exhibit seeks to integrate disparate parts of the Lucullus Virgil McWhorter Collections held in the Museum of Anthropology and Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections at Washington State University. More...

Chasing A Dream: Explorations in Embroidered Wearable Art

Through the ages embroidery has been recognized as one of the fine arts of fabric embellishments. Just like the warp and weft of the threads that comprise fabrics and textiles, the great fashion designers interweave our thoughts and influence our work. More...

Heritage and History of the Plateau Peoples: Featured Collections

The seven collections featured here represent just a small sample of the resources available in MASC. They consist primarily of manuscripts (letters, Indian agency records, and other written documents), photographs, and maps; some of the images have also been digitized and are available online. More...

"A Lot of Chaos, A Little Control"-MA Thesis by Mary Pedersen

I find that the natural world and the forces of nature strongly influence my sense of aesthetic, therefore influencing my textile art and textile design. More...

World Civilization Image Repository

The World Civilizations Image Repository (WCIR), consists of a series of image databases drawn from donated personal faculty collections and images located in Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections (MASC) at the WSU libraries. More...

Paris Inspired Fashion 2003-Honors Thesis by Lisa Appel

In studying fashion design, it is very important to understand how a designer's inspiration is manifested in the final garment. By understanding how a designer does this, and by understanding what I find inspirational, I can then utilize their methods of incorporating inspirational elements into my final designs. More...

Washington Territory 1853-1889

The year 2003 marks the sesquicentennial of the establishment of Washington Territory. The 36-year territorial period was documented in official government reports and publications, business and personal correspondence, printed works (produced by companies, organizations and institutions),drawings, photographs, diaries, and artifacts. More...

Pullman: Early Downtown Businesses

Pullman: Early Downtown Businesses is the first joint exhibit between the Whitman County Historical Society (WCHS) and the Washington State University Libraries Department of Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections (MASC). More....

Challenging The Advice Of "Experts"...Fashionable Plus-Size Apparel

The purpose of this project is to investigate the accuracy of "how to dress" advice directed toward plus size women in popular literature. Examples of the advice given to plus size women include: they shouldn't wear large prints or pants with straight legs; do not tuck in shirttails; cover up the hips and derriere with a blazer; and wear elastic waist skirts. More...

First Women in Graduate Education at Washington State University

Washington's land-grant college, the Washington Agricultural College & School of Science (WAC & SS), opened its doors to individuals seeking preparatory educations and undergraduate degrees in January of 1892. More...

A Century of Graduate Education

To celebrate the centennial of graduate education, we present this exhibit drawn from the collections of Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections (MASC), at the Washington State University Libraries. More...

Early Modern Printing 1480-1707

Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections has a surprisingly large but generally unknown collection of early printed books. Most of the books selected for this exhibit were acquired prior to 1958. More...

Presidential Politics 1824-1992

Collections often begin purely by happenstance and develop quite haphazardly. This exhibit of American political memorabilia from 1824 to 1992 is no exception. In 1970, a dear friend and WSU colleague, James Thurber (who now teaches at American University and often comments on presidential politics for National Public Radio), gave my late husband Frank Mullen some duplicates from his collection of American political buttons, and we were off and running. More...

Urban Spaces, Urban Places: The Architectural Visions of Kenneth W. Brooks

Born in Cedarvale, Kansas, in 1917, Ken Brooks grew up in a family whose Protestant values emphasized hard work, perseverance, and public service. More...

Celebrating Book Arts in the West

View Pictures from this exhibit. More...

Audubon's Birds

Audubon, John James (1780-1851), American naturalist, is said to have been born on the 5th of May 1780 in Louisiana, his father being a French naval officer and his mother a Spanish creole. More...

Selected Bindings of Virginia Woolf

This online exhibit of Selected Bindings by Virginia Woolf highlights one of the unique features of the personal Library of Leonard and Virginia Woolf located in Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections at Washington State University. More...

WSU Buildings

Campus architecture before ca. 1905 largely follows common designs used in 19th Century civic buildings. These early buildings were chiefly of brick masonry construction, with designs that reflect their purposes as classroom and laboratory buildings. Murrow East is an example of one such structure. More...

An Exhibit on the life and work of George Mathis

The George Mathis collection of photographs, artwork, and historical ephemera, was donated to WSU Libraries in October 1991 by Jean and Carol Mathis, the wife and daughter, respectively, of the late George Mathis. More...

From the Westin Archives

The records of the Westin Hotels and Resorts were transferred to the Washington State University Libraries in 1997 by the Company. The records had previously been managed as the Westin Archives, a project of J. William Keithan, the Westin Vice-president who founded the corporate archives in 1975 and who was instrumental in arranging the transfer to the University Libraries. More...