This exhibition of government posters, photographs, fine art, and rare editions of poetry has been gathered from the collections of the Hoover Institution Library and Archives, the Cantor Center for Visual Arts, and the Special Collections of Stanford University Libraries. Members of Professor Peter Stansky’s class, Art and History: Modern Britain, were the guest curators.

Imagine a wall plastered with the posters of all the parties to the Northern Ireland conflict during the three decades of “the Troubles.” It is of course inconceivable in a divided world of one-sided walls where parties tend to mark their own terrain. Except, that is, in Belfast’s historic Linen Hall Library, where the “Troubled Images” exhibition created new space for all sides of the community in October 2001.

Quicktime Slideshow of the Northern Ireland Political Collection

The shah grasps at the coattails of Uncle Sam as a fire-tongued dragon prepares to devour him; women with clenched fists raised march in the shadow of Shi‘i heroine Zeinab; awaiting execution, a row of men, blindfolded with hands tied behind their backs, yell “Long Live Iran!”

Two exhibits will be on display:

• "Forward to Victory" and
• "Notes from the Underground"

Exhibit components discuss the emergence of the profession of civil engineering, the relationship of disease to contaminated water, the evidence of social classes in the design of water closets, and the role Victorian values played in the sanitary reform debate.