Buffalonians can spend the summer strolling through a forest of historical photographs, musical presentations, official documents and ephemera ranging from political cartoons about anarchists to discussions of scientific marvels.

"Illuminations: Revisiting Buffalo's Pan-American Exposition" is a summer series of collaborative, on-site and online exhibitions produced by eight of the University Libraries and Special Collections. It will illustrate the cultural and historical underpinnings of Buffalo's 1901 Pan-American Exposition, a Gilded-Age international celebration of technology and industry that heralded the dawn of the 20th century.

	The “President’s Day” program is part of the libraries’ exhibits.

The exhibitions will open with a gala public reception July 12 in the Special Collections and University Archives Reading Room, 420 Capen Hall, North Campus.

Each library will offer on-site and online exhibitions focused on its own area of expertise, and walking tours of the exhibitions will be conducted. They will be tied to a program of symposia, lectures, public demonstrations, period concerts and on-line presentations developed along with academic departments and faculty members. Graduate students in the School of Informatics provided assistance to the libraries.

Lockwood Memorial Library will mount exhibitions of varying themes. One will look at the "melting pot" ideal of 1901 America and the reaction of Buffalo's foreign populations to Pan-Am depictions of their homelands and to the enterprise of defining ethnic characteristics in the exposition milieu.

Librarians Jean Dickson and Susana Trejada, who are supervising the construction of the exhibit, say it will focus on the experiences of Buffalo's ethnic minorities and their experiences of the Pan-American Exposition-Italians, Germans, Poles, Irish, African Americans and Native Americans who helped build the exposition but often were too poor to attend. Their music and culture, and the ways in which the Pan-Am presented foreign cultures and native minorities will be featured.

Lockwood also will present an exhibition titled "Food, Drink and Eating at the Pan-American Exposition: Images, Memories and Analysis," curated by librarian Charles D'Aniello. He notes that food and drink, served elegantly or simply, were abundant and diverse at the exposition. Although digestive ailments were among the most common visitor complaints, they enjoyed turn-of-the-century culinary favorites and foods from distant lands in restaurants and at concession stands.

A third Lockwood exhibition will focus on the works of more than 650 American artists, as well as artists from Canada and Latin America, that were shown at the Pan-Am. It also will exhibit aspects of the exposition's grounds and the work of those who contributed to the overall mis en scene of the Pan-Am.

The University Archives, Special Collections and Poetry Collection will present an exhibition titled, "Land, Lust and Murder: An Expose of Historic Deeds Done Circa 1901." It will feature assassination scrapbooks compiled by Roswell Park and Stockton Kimball, both of whom attended President McKinley during the period of his mortal wounding.

U.S. geological maps from the Maps Collection will show the extensive network of paved streets in Buffalo at the time. It was one of the first cities in the country to have them, a rarity since the era of the automobile had not yet begun. It also will feature photographs of Native Americans by noted photographer Edward S. Curtis, and will look at contributions by Native Americans to the Pan-Am.

The Charles B. Sears Law Library in O'Brian Hall will approach the Pan-Am from a legal perspective. It will focus in particular on legal and legislative proceedings surrounding the arrest, trial and execution of presidential assassin Leon Czolgosz. Among the items on display will be a first-hand account of the events surrounding the McKinley assassination by famed anarchist Emma Goldman.

The Science and Engineering Library (SEL) in Capen Hall will present exhibits on the presentation of electricity, chemistry and architecture at the Pan-Am, a grand industrial show that celebrated the wonders of technology and industry.

Bach and African drumming were among the musical entrees at the Pan-Am, and the Music Library in Baird Hall will exhibit texts and documents related to its extensive musical programs.

Music librarian and exhibition coordinator John Bewley says there will be descriptions of music played at the Pan-Am musical memorials composed in commemoration of the president's death. In addition, the department's annual June in Buffalo festival will devote an entire day to music related to the Pan-Am.

A bullet-probing set circa 1901 is just one of the items contemporaneous with the Pan-Am to be shown by the Health Sciences Library in Abbott Hall in its exhibit, "Birth, Death and Everything in Between: Keeping People Healthy at the Pan-American Exposition." It will focus on the enormous task faced by Pan-Am medical director Roswell Park in protecting the exposition visitors from contagious diseases, food contamination and unhygienic facilities.

The exhibit to be mounted by the Oscar Silverman Undergraduate Library in Capen Hall, titled "The Uncrowned Queens," is based in research by Barbara Seals Nevergold and Peggy Brooks Bertram, and will celebrate the accomplishments of African-American women of Western New York from the past and present.