Why collect Ashley Bryan? Why are his papers important? For this lecture, the Ashley Bryan Papers at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries will serve as a case study for exploring the role that curators play in determining not just what gets collected and preserved, but also what gets studied, exhibited, and otherwise shared with the public. Bryan’s papers reveal the many dimensions of his experience, including as a Black soldier during World War II, and illustrate how what is preserved from the past can affect how history, now and in the future, is written and remembered.

Lynne Farrington is Director of Programs and Senior Curator in the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, where she has worked since 1992. In additional to her curatorial duties, she is responsible for coordinating and organizing programming based in the Kislak Center. Over the years, in addition to collecting children’s books and the papers of their authors and artists, designers and literary agents, Lynne has developed and supported collections as varied as artists’s and fine press books; comic books and graphic novels; Japanese illustrated books and prints; cookery; early English fiction; history of chemistry; history of material texts; world's fairs and expositions; and graphic materials, including photographs, prints, drawings, and book illustrations. 

Lynne has curated numerous exhibitions on a range of topics, from Jonathan Swift to Wharton Esherick, American fine press books to Aristotle, Her current exhibition, The Time to Right All Wrongs: France, Haiti, and Philadelphia in a Revolutionary Age, is part of programming at the University of Pennsylvania around the Semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence. Her 2023 exhibition, The Creative Spirit of Ashley Bryan, explored the life and legacy of this truly extraordinary humanitarian, artist, and author through the resources in his papers, now at the University of Pennsylvania.