Current Exhibit

How to Practice Compassion

The inspiration for the library exhibit this year in the Stendahl Lobby (on the library's second floor) comes from the series of prints entitled How to Practice Compassion by Deborah J. Haynes displayed in the top sections of the upright cases. The originals were inspired by her work in hospice care and executed in 2006 following the deaths of several of her friends and family, including her mother and her closest friend. Haynes, who describes herself as a "multidisciplinary conceptual artist and writer" and teaches art and art history at the University of Colorado, Boulder, received an MTS in 1986 and a PhD in 1991 from Harvard. She is the author of several books including Art Lessons: Meditations on the Creative Life [N71.H335 2003] and The Vocation of the Artist [N8350.H39 1997]; she was a co-editor of The Subjective Eye: Essays in Culture, Religion and Gender in Honor of Margaret R. Miles [BR50.S865 2006].

The exhibit focuses on the themes of compassion and healing with items from the library's collection. It explores those themes more specifically in relationship to Christian saints and the Protestant clergy, in the wider community, and at Harvard Divinity School.

Some of the items on display include:

• The letter of St. Jerome to his patroness, companion, and colleague, Paula, on the death of her daughter Bleasilla, in Erasmus's 1516 critical edition of the works of Jerome
• The first printing of Ulrich Zwingli's Der Hirt (1524), in which he sets as a model for pastors the biblical character of the true shepherd
• The first American edition of Jeremy Taylor's The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying (1811)
• Several printings of Richard Baxter's The Reformed Pastor, including an early modern Syriac translation (1864)
• The Picturesque Pocket Companion and Visitor's Guide through Mount Auburn, an early guidebook to Mount Auburn Cemetery (1839)
• Heather D. Curtis's 2005 Harvard ThD dissertation, The Lord for the Body: Pain, Suffering and the Practice of Divine Healing in Late-Nineteenth-Century American Protestantism

  Beginning of St. Jerome's letter to Paula

• The Art of Ministering to the Sick by Richard C. Cabot and Russell L. Dicks (1936)
• Selected items from the records of the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education, Northeast Region, one of our archival collections (bMS 542)
• Katrina M. Scott's 2005 MDiv senior project in video and script format, Hospital Chaplaincy: A New Look
• News items about HDS students and graduates engaged in compassion and healing
• An altar installed by Maria Cristina Vlassidis (MDiv '07, ThD candidate)

A gallery talk is scheduled on October 29, 4-4:30 pm, in the Stendahl Lobby, as part of Theological Libraries Month.

This exhibit was organized by the Library Exhibits Committee: Michelle Gauthier, Renata Kalnins, Fran O'Donnell, and Clifford Wunderlich.

HDS photographs/Kristie Welsh.