UVA Exhibition “Sacred Spaces: The Home and Poetry of Anne Spencer” featured in Lynchburg Paper

The Lynchburg News and Advance article “Sacred Spaces: UVa exhibit honors Anne Spencer” features the story behind a new exhibition in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, “Sacred Spaces: The Home and Poetry of Anne Spencer.” The exhibition brings together books, letters, and manuscripts of the Harlem Renaissance poet with John M. Hall’s photos of Spencer’s home, itself a work of art, the indoor phone booth adorned with numbers and notes, and the kitchen cabinet with verse.

The exhibition’s genesis began when UVA Library Development Coordinator Sara Lee Barnes urged Hall to visit the Anne Spencer House and Garden Museum. Hall collected the photos into a book. The book inspired a photo exhibition at the University of North Carolina (UNC). And the UNC exhibition inspired UVA Special Collections Curator Molly Schwartzburg to combine Hall’s photos with UVA’s eclectic Spencer family Collection.The collection includes Spencer’s correspondence with literary figures and civil rights leaders, as well as writings that she scribbled down on whatever was at hand, like a seed packet with the seeds still inside.

57d3233bad435.imageThe exhibition, curated by Kelly Fleming—assistant curator and UVA doctoral candidate in English—is open to the public in the first floor gallery of the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library through Jan. 27, 2017.

Read the full article ‘Sacred Spaces’: UVa exhibit honors Anne Spencer (The News and Advance, 9/12/2016)

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