The Long View

Claudia Strong and Ken Harper, members of the visual communications faculty, curated the photo galleries that adorn the walls of Newhouse this year in honor of the school’s 60th anniversary. Here, Strong recounts the work behind assembling the commemorative exhibits. 

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I’m not sure I knew exactly what I was getting myself into when I agreed in the spring to contribute to the 60th celebration in the form of exhibits, but Ken Harper and I knew it would be a tough climb, especially given that the bulk of the work would occur during the summer while I worked abroad and Ken tackled his new post as the graduate program director for visual communications.

After reviewing thousands of images provided by various departments, our strategy was to lean into vintage visuals while weaving disparate images into meaningful stories that reveal a relevant but mostly unknown history to the people now benefiting from it—whether student, faculty or staff. We sought to engage them with imagery that felt at once familiar and not quite so.

This decision led quickly to four of the eight exhibits: one for the dedication of Newhouse 1; one for the school’s pre-Newhouse history; one for the construction, remodeling and dedication of each of the three Newhouse buildings; and one that recounts the history of the television, radio and film department and Newhouse 2.

We pinpointed ideal spaces for exhibits based on size and editorial relevance, also accounting for traffic patterns, celebration plans and the official Newhouse tour route. Still there was additional content to display and, significantly, a few prominent spaces to fill.

Most pressing was how to populate the school’s official gallery on the second floor of Newhouse 1. I dubbed this space, which includes the digital alumni wall, the “People Gallery” for easy reference.

It is a large space with high traffic, and we had little idea of what to put there. Then, I remembered we had staff and faculty photos from the past couple decades. We also had a beautiful vintage catalog from the 1950s of Newhouse faculty that was perfect for the overall concept, but, as you might imagine, it did not feature a diverse group of people, and I hesitated to use it without other content for balance. Many of the more recent staff and faculty pictures were of people who’d come and gone and who’d each left an indelible mark on the school and the people in it, so combining these “Newhousers” and legacies—separated by decades and seismic societal shifts—seemed like a solid solution for the space and a way to honor both their contributions and our progress as a school.

To round out this gallery space, anchored by four beloved Newhouse deans, we included an exhibit of books published by Newhouse faculty and staff. To round out the exhibits in the complex overall, we added a mural of candid images from throughout the school’s history as well as a visual timeline of milestones.

Upon my return to town and after I’d finished most of the exhibit designs, Ken and I spent the final two weeks leading up to the Aug. 28 anniversary event in a mad dash to usher these as-yet pixel-only exhibits into their real-world destinies. It was time to print and install. This required that we first prepare all the final images for printing, which involved meticulously checking and setting file sizes, resolutions and color profiles for each of the more than 350 images now on display.

Given that many of the files we received were too small to print at target size, Ken dove into the brave new world of artificial intelligence-driven image upsizing, which in most cases worked quite well. Meanwhile, I finished the exhibit designs, wrote copy, created signage and recruited helpers for the installation phase.

Ken worked full days at Light Work to print the largest images, 60- and 42-inch prints, while I tackled the remainder on the smaller-format printer in the Steele Center long into the nights at Newhouse 1. We managed to print enough after the first week to begin the surprisingly time-consuming process of installing an adhesive exhibit, made trickier by the enormous size of some panels that would have been ever trickier without help from a cadre of mostly tall volunteers.

Now on the other side of deadline, having experienced the response to the exhibits and hearing about the happiness it brought to the Newhouse family, what once seemed like an insurmountable task has become a moment of joy that I get to experience daily as I see students, faculty and staff engage with the school’s story as they help write the next chapter.  

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A special thank you to the following Newhouse faculty and students for their invaluable assistance with installing the galleries.

Faculty:  Dennis Kinsey, Bruce Strong and Jason Webb 

Students: Jacob Bergh, Rio Harper, Matt Hoffman, Tyler Slavicek, Surya Vaidy, Maxine Wallace and Joati Zobayer