Library Exhibit & Counter-Exhibit Examine Parks & Displacement 

Multimedia Lab, 1st Floor, Gordon Library

The Gordon Library is hosting two exhibits to mark the bicentennial of Frederick Law Olmsted. 

“Frederick Law Olmsted: Landscapes for the Public Good,” created by National Association for Olmsted Parks and Oak Spring Garden Foundation, is a free exhibit commemorating Olmsted’s “democratic vision of public parks” as public good. A curated digital counter-exhibit asks, good for whom? 

“Good for Whom? Olmsted, Parks, and Public Good” is a digital counter-exhibit that can be accessed online via QR code within the installation that spotlights digital scholarship, digital archives, and additional resources that challenge the viewer to consider whose perspectives may be missing from the narrative presented in the Olmsted 200 celebration exhibit. Specifically, the counter exhibit explores the roles of systemic racism and settler-colonialism in the creation of parks through land dispossession and forced removal of Black, Indigenous, and immigrant communities with special attention to Central Park and Yosemite National Park. 

The counter-exhibit is a project from the Gordon Library’s Digital Scholarship With Purpose, a grant-funded initiative that seeks to foster critical diversity, equity, inclusion, and sustainability inquiries in digital scholarship.