For the 200th anniversary of Herman Melville’s birth, this exhibition highlighted the many facets of his work, illustrating how he has been perceived and repurposed over the past 200 years.
Drawing on the Newberry’s huge collection of Melville’s works, gathered during the work of editing the definitive 15-volume Northwestern-Newberry Edition of The Writings of Herman Melville, the exhibition invited viewers to explore Melville’s interests in democracy, spirituality, Indigeneity, morality, sexuality, labor, nature, and human consciousness. It contextualized his works as the product of a period of spectacular growth, rapid change, horrifying trauma, and grave injustice in the United States, and also demonstrate the ways his work continues to resonate for artists and writers today.
Melville: Finding America at Sea was curated by Will Hansen, the Newberry's Curator of Americana, and was sponsored by Elizabeth Amy Liebman and The Gladys Kreible Delmas Foundation.
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