Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Exhibiting Steam: Curating Community Conversations Through Library Collections, Stefanie Hilles, Ginny Boehme, Rachel Makarowski

The STEAM Journal

This article discusses the successful collaboration of an art librarian, a science librarian, and a special collections librarian in their efforts to engage the community in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) conversations through the curation of a STEAM-based exhibition of artist books. The exhibition was an opportunity to showcase STEAM’s interdisciplinarity through library collections that, until this point, had remained unexplored. The goal was to demonstrate how scientific principles have inspired both contemporary artists and those throughout history, dispelling the myth that artists are not influenced by science. The Libraries’ Special Collections proved an excellent resource to investigate …