Making a difference in coastal restoration: CWPPRA traveling exhibition at Hill includes archival materials from Special Collections

March 31, 2014

What do Father Louis Hennepin (member of La Salle’s first expedition), naturalist John James Audubon, celebrated poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and former U.S. Senator John B. Breaux all have in common? Evidence of their work documenting, illustrating, and preserving the Louisiana coastal wetlands are all on display at LSU’s Hill Memorial Library as part of the exhibition, “I Remember: An Art Show of Environmental Significance.” The exhibition is open from March 31 – August 30, 2014, and is free and open to the public.

The traveling exhibition “I Remember” is the product of a partnership between the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act Task Force and the T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History, LSU Libraries. “I Remember” is composed of oral histories, photographs and original art depicting individuals who work, live, and play in Louisiana’s coastal wetlands. The exhibit features environmental portraits and landscape photographs by Lane Lefort and oil paintings by Marian Brister Martinez (pictured above). Both artists are Louisiana natives and have used their artistic talents to capture the culture and heritage of the communities in coastal Louisiana. This interactive art show also includes QR codes that allow visitors to hear the stories of 11 coastal stewards on their smart phones and an interactive kiosk that includes video and audio clips from wetlands steward. blog_image1

Click here to access oral histories and links to the artists’ works online.

The traveling exhibition is supplemented with materials from the holdings of LSU Libraries Special Collections, among them Hennepin’s Description de la Louisiane (Paris, 1683), an octavo edition of Audubon’s Birds of America (Philadelphia, 1840; pictured above), Longfellow’s Evangeline (Boston, 1847), and Senator Breaux’s speech and first issue of the federal legislation that would eventually become known as the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act (1986). For a full description, visit the exhibitions page at https://exhibitions.blogs.lib.lsu.edu.

For information on visitor parking, visit:
https://sites01.lsu.edu/wp/parking/visitors/.

The LSU Libraries includes the LSU Library and the adjacent Hill Memorial Library. Together, the libraries contain more than 4 million volumes and provide additional resources such as expert staff, technology, services, electronic resources, and facilities that advance research, teaching, and learning across every discipline.