The Baby Boomer's Frontier

Richard H. Engeman, Special Collections and Preservation

"The Baby Boomers' Frontier" is the subject of a talk by noted Western American historian Patricia Nelson Limerick at the January 10, 1997 reception for a major traveling exhibition at the Allen Library. The Frontier in American Culture depicts the continuing influence of the frontier idea from many perspectives.

Historian Frederick Jackson Turner saw the frontier as a moving line of agrarian settlement across an empty land that held no Indians. To Buffalo Bill Cody, the frontier was a wild and fearsome place of Indian enemies and harsh conditions. These ideas have persisted, giving us an iconographic legacy of log cabins, covered wagons, the cowtown shootout, the vanishing Indian, and an agricultural Eden.

The exhibit originated at the Newberry Library, Chicago, curated by UW history professor Richard White, with a catalog written by White and Patricia Nelson Limerick. The traveling show is sponsored by the American Library Association with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The Frontier exhibit runs until February 6 in the Allen Library lobby. On the mezzanine is a companion exhibit, Northwest of the West: the Frontier Experience on the Northwest Coast, curated by UW Libraries staff. The Libraries is also co-sponsoring, with the College of Education, a workshop for educators, and, with the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest, a lecture series. The lectures on January 11 feature three noted historians who will speak on the American frontier as expressed in three areas of our culture: Brian Dippie (art), Phil Deloria (film), and William Kittredge (literature).

For more information on the reception, call Carolyn Aamot at 543-1929. For information on the lecture series, call the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest at 543-8656.