Atla Digital Library Launches Online Exhibitions and Seeks Curators

This summer, Atla began work to host, through Omeka, curated online exhibitions featuring works found in the Atla Digital Library. Atla partnered with pilot curators to refine our curatorial guidelines and prepare exhibitions for the launch of the Atla Digital Library Exhibitions site, which we invite you to now explore.

We are grateful to Robert Burgess (Mississippi College), Marian Ekweogwu (University of Illinois student and 2020 recipient of an Atla Diversity Scholarship), and Natalie Whitaker (Concordia Seminary) for curating the first exhibitions for the Atla Digital Library. Robert Burgess has curated an exhibit on “The Life and Ministry of Charles Wesley,” which highlights Wesley’s family and hymns for the purpose of informing his significance to the early Methodist movement. Marian Ekweogu’s exhibition “Wish You Were Here” utilizes postcard images of Anglican and Catholic churches in West Africa as a means of answering the question of whether such “ephemera [can] contain or convey the sacred hush or grandeur of a sacred place.” Finally, Natalie Whitaker’s exhibition presents a chronological visual history of the topic of anger, morality, and religion in “Look Back in Anger: Anger, Religion, and Morality through the Ages.”

We invite others to prepare exhibitions for online display in the Atla Digital Library. Atla Digital Library Exhibitions provide a unique opportunity to further discover, engage, explore, and promote the diverse collections included in the Digital Library by bringing together and highlighting resources from across institutions by incorporating individual works from multiple contributors to the Digital Library into a cohesive and centrally themed exhibit.

We are currently seeking volunteers to curate exhibitions. If you are interested in curating an exhibit for the Atla Digital Library, please contact us.