November Newsletter: Education Program
Gottesman Libraries
The Gottesman Libraries Education Program informs students, faculty and staff about the latest thinking in education, in ways that engage members of the community with one another and with a broad range of educational experts. The program also provides understanding of work being done throughout the College. Read more about offerings in November.
Workshops
Regularly scheduled instructional offerings include workshops, tours, orientations, and course-specific instruction in coordination with staff and faculty of the College.
Your Research Journey is a five-part library workshop series to help guide you in your research throughout the semester, by providing you with manageable tools and resources to use along your journey. Whether this is your first time conducting research, or you are a well-seasoned researcher and looking for a refresher, each workshop introduces fundamental information to lay a foundation of knowledge on which you can build your scholarly work. While the workshops in this series are designed to build upon each other, you are welcome to attend any workshop individually. All are held on Wednesdays, 3-4pm.
Elevate Your Research builds upon the foundational series, Your Research Journey, by presenting valuable new topics, resources, and methodologies to make you an even stronger and highly proficient researcher. Held on Thursdays, 11am-12pm, this series also invites deeper, collaborative work to strengthen academic research initiatives.
Managing Your Citations with Zotero, Wednesday, 11/5, 3-4pm
Learn how to download, install, and use Zotero to organize and manage your citations as you do research. This workshop provides a quick start introduction including: downloading; tour of the interface; nuts and bolts of how to ingest references through a web connector; and different ways of citing.
Instructor: Ava Kaplan, Research and Instruction Librarian
Where: 101 Russell / Online
Piecing It Together: Deconstructing and Interpreting Systematic Reviews, Thursday, 11/6, 11am-12pm
Systematic reviews are a core part of evidence-based research, but how are they made? This workshop is for graduate students who want to learn the methods and concepts that make up systematic and scoping reviews. By deconstructing published reviews, you will gain a deeper understanding of how evidence is synthesized and learn how to critically evaluate and use these reviews in your own research.
Instructor: Ava Kaplan, Research and Instruction Librarian
Where: 101 Russell / Online
The Literature Review, Wednesday, 11/12, 3-4pm
The Literature Review is an essential element of scholarly inquiry, allowing researchers to understand the context and conclusions around a specific topic. A literature review can be conducted as a section in a main project such as a thesis or dissertation, or it can be a standalone project for a course or publication. For whatever reason you are embarking on your literature review process, this workshop will introduce you to the concepts and guidelines behind the three primary types of literature reviews; the narrative review, scoping review, and systematic review. We will also cover strategies for locating the sources you need for your literature review.
Instructor: Ava Kaplan, Research and Instruction Librarian
Where: 101 Russell / Online
Article Screening for Literature Reviews, Thursday, 11/13, 11am-12pm
Writing a literature review? Getting a lot of results for articles related to your topic, but now need to make sure they meet your eligibility criteria? Screening is the process of identifying studies from the literature search for inclusion in the review. In this workshop, we will share useful tips and tools for the article screening process of the literature review, including how to apply inclusion and exclusion criteria to search results and how to use digital tools like Covidence to make article screening more manageable and less time consuming.
Instructor: Ava Kaplan, Research and Instruction Librarian
Where: 101 Russell /Online
Reading the Information Landscape: Principles of Source Evaluation, Tuesday, 11/18, 3-4pm*
In an era of AI-generated content and information overload, how can you confidently determine a source’s credibility? This workshop equips graduate students with a sophisticated toolkit for navigating the modern information landscape. We will move beyond basic checklists to master practical evaluation frameworks and review core principles like the peer-review process and source types. You will leave feeling empowered to critically analyze any information and enhance the quality of your scholarly work.
Instructor: Ava Kaplan, Research and Instruction Librarian
Where: 101 Russell / Online
Charting Your Path, Tuesday, 11/25, 3-4pm*
Graduate school research may feel daunting, but this foundational workshop will address the key concepts, strategies, and tools to help develop your research skills. Charting Your Path will start with a broad overview of what library research can look like, including the terms you may come across in your journey. We will also cover how to use Gottesman Libraries and the Columbia University Libraries to access physical and digital resources; discuss reference management tools; show how to create strong keyword searches; and end with a review of strategies for better search results. Attendees will leave this workshop with the information needed to be successful in Library research across all research disciplines.
Instructor: Ava Kaplan, Research and Instruction Librarian
Where: 101 Russell / Online
* calendar adjustment
Highlighted Databases
Every month we draw attention to select databases that strengthen learning, teaching, and research in academic areas and their relevance to current offerings and programs.
In November we highlight research resources that support teaching, learning, and research in all aspects of human communication, as well as the prevention and treatment of its disorders across the lifespan. Subjects within are speech, hearing, language, literacy, and bilingualism; disorders of human communication; and swallowing and remedial procedures for such disorders -- all of which draw upon a wide range of scientific, medical, and educational databases to help prepare students for a variety of professional opportunities.
Read more on the news feed.
Talks
We host a variety of talks, from book to guest to art, to encourage thinking , conversation, and action on a broad range of interesting and relevant topics and needs.
Book Talk: Second Life, with Amanda Hess, Thursday, 11/5, 5-7pm
Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age (Doubleday, 2025), is both a memoir and criticism about her digital identity crisis as a new mother under the influence of popular technologies.
Amanda Hess is a critic at large for the Culture section of The New York Times, covering the intersection of internet and pop culture. Hess has worked as an Internet columnist for Slate magazine, an editor at Good magazine, and an arts and nightlife columnist at the Washington City Paper. She has also written for such publications as ESPN The Magazine, Wired, and Pacific Standard, where her feature on the online harassment of women won a National Magazine Award for Public Interest in 2015.
Moderating discussion is Dr. Aurelie Athan, a clinical psychologist and Research Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. Dr. Athan's research interests embrace Maternal Psychology: Matrescence & Maternal Mental Health, Perinatal Risk & Resilience, and Reproductive Psychology: Reproductive Identity Formation and Reproductive Life Planning & Decision-Making. The author of numerous articles, her Ph'D is entitled, Postpartum Flourishing: Motherhood as Opportunity for Positive Growth and Self-Development (Columbia University, 2011). Dr. Athan is the founder of KHORA, the Maternal and Reproductive Psychology Lab at Teachers College.
This book talk is co-sponsored by KHORA and Gottesman Libraries. It is the first in a series of three book talks this Fall on matrescence, the "developmental passage where a woman transitions through pre-conception, pregnancy and birth, surrogacy or adoption, to the postnatal period and beyond." (Aurelie Athan, Ph.D., 2016)
Where: 306 Russell / Online
Book Talk: The Family Dynamic, with Susan Dominus, Thursday, 11/13, 5-7pm
The Family Dynamic: A Journey Into the Mystery of Sibling Success (Crown, 2025) combines narrative with science to explore the circumstances of families with multiple children who achieve extraordinary successes.
Susan Dominus is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine where she covers a variety of topics. She worked as an editor for the first eight years of her career at magazines including Glamour, The American Lawyer and New York before switching to reporting and writing. She freelanced for The New York Times Magazine and other outlets before joining the Times staff in 2007 to write the “Big City” column for the Metro section. Dominus joined the staff of the Magazine in 2011 and was a member of the Times team that won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for reporting on sexual harassment in the American workplace. In 2024, Susan Dominus won a National Magazine Award for an article about menopause.
Moderating discussion is Dr. Aurelie Athan, a clinical psychologist and Research Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. Dr. Athan's research interests embrace Maternal Psychology: Matrescence & Maternal Mental Health, Perinatal Risk & Resilience, and Reproductive Psychology: Reproductive Identity Formation and Reproductive Life Planning & Decision-Making. The author of numerous articles, her Ph'D is entitled, Postpartum Flourishing: Motherhood as Opportunity for Positive Growth and Self-Development (Columbia University, 2011). Dr. Athan is the founder of KHORA, the Maternal and Reproductive Psychology Lab at Teachers College.
This book talk is co-sponsored by KHORA and Gottesman Libraries. It is the first in a series of three book talks this Fall on matrescence, the "developmental passage where a woman transitions through pre-conception, pregnancy and birth, surrogacy or adoption, to the postnatal period and beyond." (Aurelie Athan, Ph.D., 2016)
Where: 306 Russell / Online
Book Club: Let's Pretend This Never Happened, by Jenny Lawson, Tuesday, 11/17, 12-1pm
"When Jenny Lawson was little, all she ever wanted was to fit in. That dream was cut short by her fantastically unbalanced father and a morbidly eccentric childhood. It did, however, open up an opportunity for Lawson to find the humor in the strange shame-spiral that is her life, and we are all the better for it.In the irreverent Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Lawson’s long-suffering husband and sweet daughter help her uncover the surprising discovery that the most terribly human moments—the ones we want to pretend never happened—are the very same moments that make us the people we are today. For every intellectual misfit who thought they were the only ones to think the things that Lawson dares to say out loud, this is a poignant and hysterical look at the dark, disturbing, yet wonderful moments of our lives." -- Publisher's Description
By popular vote, our third memoir of choice for the Fall Semester is Jenny Lawson's Let's Pretend This Never Happened : A Mostly True Memoir (Berkley, 2013). Veering towards the funny, impudent, and certainly uplifting comes this New York Times #1 Bestseller.
A graduate of Angelo State University, Jenny Lawson is a highly popular journalist and blogger who has been writing about her "strange life" for over a decade -- a life that includes dealing with physical and mental illnesses, among them: rheumatoid arthritis, depression, anxiety, avoidant personality disorder, and mild obsessive-compulsive disorder.
She’s been featured on the New York Times, Gawker, Salon.com, Mashable, The London Times, The Washington Post, People, O Magazine, CNN, Time Magazine, The Today Show. MSNBC calls her an “internet rockstar”, Forbes repeatedly lists thebloggess.com as one of the Top 100 Websites for Women, and Katie Couric calls her “Hilarious.” She is a repeated finalist (and an occasional winner) in the Weblog awards for Best Writing, Most Humorous Writer, Shorty Award, Best Design, Blog of the Year, and Lifetime Achievement.
Fall Memoir Book Club is co-sponsored by GSLD Student Success and meets once a month. The first 10 students to register will get a free copy of the book.
Where: 305 Russell
Opening Exhibition: The Ground of Being: Ceramics and Depth Psychology, with Michael Headrick, Wednesday, 11/19, 5:30-7pm
Please join us for the opening of Exploring the Ground of Being: Ceramics and Depth Psychology and informal conversation with Michael Headrick, 2025 Myers Awardee for Gottesman Libraries' Commissioned Art.
Exploring the Ground of Being depicts Michael Headrick’s personal and community process at Teachers College, Columbia University. The exhibition is as much an artistic exploration of ceramic materials, as it is a symbolic exploration of the unconscious. Michael Headrick presents work that stems from dreams, synchronicities, fantasies and intuitions; and the operations taken through the various iterations in ceramic material. The work engages personal material that links the artist to the collective.
Michael Headrick is an educated architect and technologist, who now focuses on research in psychology and ceramics. His practice focuses on bringing the unconscious or immaterial into physical form. Working with materials like clay, plaster and cement to create three-dimensional sculptural and functional objects led to a primary focus on work in ceramics: a practice that engages many permutations, iterations and processes before arriving at its final form. Deeply connected to this physical process, Michael seeks to express the movement of the inner life in a physical way. Michael, who also works at Teachers College, is pursuing a Masters of Arts in Psychology, and previously earned a B.A. in Architectural Studies at The University of Hong Kong. Michael also serves on the board of directors for CO-RESIDENCY, a fully digital Art Residency program.
Refreshments will be provided.
Where: 305 Russell / Offit Gallery
Live Music
The Everett Cafe Music Program sponsors performances by TC student and affiliated musicians. Please contact us if you are interested in playing! We welcome solos, duets, and trios.
John Koozin and Pele Greenberg, Wednesday, 11/5, 5-6pm
John Koozin and Pele Greenberg have been performing music together— from trio jazz and improvised music to accompanying singers and large ensembles— since they met almost ten years ago as students at The New School. They unite for a rare duo performance on snare drum and upright bass.
John Koozin is a New York-based bassist, composer, and educator whose narrative-driven playing draws inspiration from cinema, visual arts, literature, faith, video games, and close collaborators. Koozin seeks to spark dialogue and unity through sound. His venues include: 55 Bar, The Jazz Gallery, Zinc Bar, Minton’s Playhouse, Mercury Lounge, The Museum of Moving Image, and The United Nations. Beyond New York, Koozin has performed at Cezanne’s (Houston), Monk’s (Austin), The Jazz Kitchen (Indianapolis), the Pashkevich Jazz Club (Latvia), and Joffrey School of Ballet, and he has e has shared the stage with acclaimed artists such as Jason Moran, Joel Ross, Adam O’Farrill, Antonio Hart, Kalia Vandever, Matt Wilson, Arta Jēkabsone, François Rabbath.
Pele Greenberg is a percussionist and drummer based in Brooklyn, New York. "Known for his infectious joy and attentive touch on the instrument, Pele has performed with a diverse range of artists including Samora Pinderhughes, Pearla, Bloomsday, Olivia Reid, Lily Talmers, DBA James (Bay Faction), Izzy Oram-Brown, The Slide Stops, Camille Schmidt, The Clements Brothers, Carolyn Kendrick, Koa Ho and Sofia Wolfson among many others. He has also worked with producers including Phil Weinrobe (Adrianne Lenker, Cass McCombs), Jack Deboe (Yebba, Jon Batiste), Dylan Mckinstry (Upstate), Jake Cheriff (Talk Bazaar, Daisy the Great) and Lucas Saur (Melt). He is also lucky enough to call these people friends and sources of inspiration."
Nicholas DiMaria Jazz Trio, Monday, 11/10, 6-7pm
Nicholas DiMaria is a trumpeter, teacher, and composer based in New York City. He draws inspiration from multiple genres and art forms in his compositions and is continuously inspired by expressing visual art in a musical medium. His music is described by audiences as introspective, passionate, and eclectic; influenced by jazz, hip-hop, and classical music.
In addition to leading groups at Carnegie Hall, The Northeast Wine and Jazz Festival, The Syracuse Jazz Festival, The Central New York Pride Festival, and restaurants and clubs across New York State, he has performed at The Great New York State Fair, The CNY January Jazz Festival, the Disneyland All-American College Band, and opened for Grammy-Winner Lalah Hathaway. Nicholas is well-adapted to playing with jazz ensembles, wedding bands, and funk groups. He currently holds a weekly performance residency at Oliva Tapas, NYC (Thursdays and Fridays from 6-8pm). Nicholas is also a faculty member at Larchmont Music Academy, where he teaches trumpet and a jazz ensemble. In 2020, he received his Bachelor's in Jazz Arts from Manhattan School of Music where he studied with Scott Wendholt, Ingrid Jensen, Jim McNeely, and Jon Faddis.
Claremont Strings and Ensemble, Wednesday, 11/19, 4-5:30pm
Claremont Strings, our longest-running ensemble, features music for classical strings, from the symphonies of Mozart and Haydn, to well known arias from the operas of Puccini and Bizet. You may hear a selection of continental Viennese waltzes and French cabaret. Musicians of The Claremont Strings Ensemble have performed collectively at Weill Hall, Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall and throughout the Northeast, playing a diverse range of symphonic and chamber music, eclectic jazz, and gypsy swing. Wadsworth Strings, emanating from the Washington Heights area, is a division of Claremont Strings, founded by Vivian Penham, a graduate of the Juilliard School and Columbia University.
Book Displays
Book displays are curated and designed by library staff to share the joy of books and reading, while encouraging greater awareness of available resources and their significance to the Library and College.
Everett Cafe: With Thanks
As we head into the Thanksgiving and winter holidays, we recognize the impact that others have had on our lives – among them, our family, friends, writers, artists, teachers, and muses, known, less known, perhaps even unknown. Their gifts, contributions, and influences help us see that we are all richly and deeply connected by human experience. And, in being part of the relational whole, our individual accomplishments and achievements rarely stand alone, with strength in our interdependence.
This book display brings together anthropological, cultural, educational, historical, philosophical, psychological, and religious perspectives on gratitude, in recent years a conscious element of the school curriculum.
While today’s world has its share of social, political, economic, and educational challenges, and there is fragility in the human condition and life on Earth, we hope that With Thanks allows us to pause and reflect -- and ultimately to draw deep appreciation for all that is good.
-- Curated by Jennifer Govan, Library Director ad Senior Librarian, and designed by Kate Scott, Library Associate / Art and Design
When: November-December
At Everett Cafe, you'll find a new book collection every few weeks that relates to current events, education, or learning environments.
Staff Picks: Pictures Speak Louder Than Words: How Graphic Novels Can Teach Us to Listen
"Stories have always been how we make sense of what feels too large to name. For some, that understanding comes through novels and essays, and for others, through images that speak where words cannot. Graphic novels open that door for us as a way to see, feel, and learn through art and literature. They make difficult conversations about war, grief, displacement, or identity accessible and real. Each image becomes a language of its own, reminding us that understanding does not begin with reading more but with seeing differently. From survival and displacement to identity and belonging, each page becomes an act of empathy. Together, these works remind us that every story, no matter how it is told, can lead us home."
-- Curated and designed by Library Associates Rhia Mittal and Kai Oh
Staff Picks is curated and designed each month by the Gottesman Libraries' staff to highlight resources on educational topics and themes of special interest.
Rocket Display: Feasts and Food Traditions Around the World
Treat yourself to a selection of titles which explore food and feasting traditions across cultures. Feasts and Food Traditions Around the World celebrates the importance of food within communities and families, and explores children's experience of connecting with loved ones around the table.
This display is curated by Abby McGuire, Library Specialist for Circulation and User Experience.
Where: Second Floor
The Rocket Cases feature award winning and notable children's pop up book displays, with seasonal, educational, or other themes drawn from the juvenile collections.
Curiosity Cabinets: Timeless Beauty: Selections from The Ellen Walters Avery Collection
Born in Brooklyn, New York, on January 1st, 1861, Ellen Walters Avery was the youngest daughter of Samuel P. and Mary Ogden Avery, and sister to the architect Henry Odgen Avery. Described as modest, retiring, and intellectually gifted, Ellen Walters Avery was a bibliophile with a curious and passionate love of nature and the humanities, especially literature, poetry, music, the classics, and Church history. Her carefully curated collection, comprising 609 titles – many of them multi-volume, exquisitely illustrated and bound – was gifted by her devoted mother to the Library of Teachers College, Columbia University, four years after her untimely death from acute pneumonia on March 25, 1893.
A Catalogue of the Ellen Walters Avery Collection of Books is a delightful glimpse into her taste for literary, historic, and artistic treasures – a window onto a beloved young woman’s aesthetic sensibilities and rich intellect. Many of these works combine disciplines – children’s books with education; natural science with religion, botany with linguistics; etiquette with ancient cultures – while individualism, imagination, and nature are central, suggestive of a Romantic spirit. Miss Avery was also drawn to the science of collecting, private libraries, bookplates, and women’s creative contributions.
Timeless Beauty is curated and designed by the staff of the Gottesman Libraries, including: Jennifer Govan, Library Director and Senior Librarian; Conrad Lochner, Special and Digital Collections Librarian; Victoria Santamorena, Processing Archivist; and Soeun Bae, Library Associate for Art and Design. It complements the upcoming Offit Gallery exhibit, Ethereal Creations, mid-October through mid November.
Where: Third Floor
The Curiosity Cabinets showcase interesting and insightful material from the historical collections to inform and enhance concomitant art exhibitions and book displays. Read more here.
Offit Gallery: On the Ethereal
Drawing attention to the beauty, delicacy, and lightness of both the natural and other worlds, On the Ethereal is a selection of children's books and curriculum that complements the artworks in Ethereal Creations. Butterflies, birds, wildflowers, fairies, angels, seahorses, the forest, constellations, animals, and other elements are pictured to symbolize our connection to the spiritual and magical and evoke our temporal states of being. Swathed in poetry and pastels, this gallery book display combines art with science, fact with fable and fantasy, literature with philosophy, while also complementing the adjoining Curiosity Cabinet display, Timeless Beauty: Selections from the Ellen Walters Avery Collection.
News Displays
Need to keep current, look to the past, teach a topic? The Everett Cafe features daily postings of news from around the world, and also promotes awareness of historical events from an educational context. Be sure to check the Cafe News postings on the library blog.
Religious Exhibition On View at the TC Educational Museum, Monday, 11/3
Primary School Teachers Meet Dr. Harold Rugg, Tuesday, 11/11
International Students Day, Monday, 11/17
Ann Sewell Publishes Black Beauty, Monday, 11/24
Exhibits
Educational exhibitions are mounted in partnership with the Teachers College community and others with an interest in displaying unique and innovative educational materials, while also regularly showcasing Teachers College's Historical Art Collections.
The library has several spaces in Russell Hall to exhibit diverse materials, and also features digital and web-based exhibitions when possible.
Select Works from Carol Cade Children's Art: The Artistic Development of Children, Part Two
The Carol Cade Children’s Art Collection comprises 532 mostly drawings and paintings, with some mixed media, created by young artists whose work was collected over decades by Carol Beth Cade, an avid teacher and painter from the South. Children of varying ages made them in family or neighborhood groups. College students asked them to draw pictures of themselves, something they enjoyed, or something they would like to do when they are older.
Cade’s collection presents a charming, comprehensive view of the artistic development of children, one that illustrates key stages of their artistic growth, from Scribbling and Pre-Schematic, to Schematic and Early Realism, through to Pseudo Naturalistic and Decision. In coordination with the Program in Art and Art Education, it was gifted to the Milbank Memorial Library (now Gottesman Libraries) of Teachers College, Columbia University in the early 1990s, building upon children’s art collections as a unique resource in the study and teaching of art.
Portions of the Carol Cade Children’s Art Collection were first shown at Pace University in 1991. Summaries of the artistic stages are drawn from Cade’s own narrative descriptions which include recommended classroom art materials for each stage of development. Cade’s curation lends interesting historical insight into her doctoral research at Teachers College and how the program in Art and Art Education would evolve innovatively in the following decades, with an examination of the role of the senses, emotions, and intellect in artistic development, and of the layered integrations they form over time, and with critical starting points for research.
The Schematic Stage typically begins around the age of 6 or 7, when according to Cade, “the child’s way of drawing settles for a time into a simple geometric style (the ‘schema’) which is considered so charming by adult viewers…. People and objects are drawn with a combination of geometric shapes and straight lines with each child developing his/her own combinations.” While “standard formulas” may appear, -- such as trees, the sun, houses with chimneys, and planets -- chosen colors correspond to common perceptions (blue sky, yellow sun, green tree tops).
“Early Realism” tends to emerge between the ages of 9 and 11, though with gifted young children it can be seen earlier; figures have more “continuous lines”, often with overlapping images, perspective, and shading --rendering drawings more three-dimensional. There is a growing interest in friends outside the family, details of their clothing, social awareness, often indicative of what the children would like to be or do. Hobbies and activities are prevalent, including chess, dance, art and movie making, cheerleading and student government, while some children reflect on fairy tales, magic, and fantasy.
From the ages of 6 through 11, children continue to develop cognitively, physically, and socially, as they gain a greater understanding of concepts, people, and the world around them. They may become more logical and organized in their thinking, while their confidence, self esteem, and friendships grow.
Where: First Floor
When: October 14 - November 25*
* Part Three will be shown November 26 - January 12.
Tools and Toys for Knowledge Construction: The Garden, by MSTU 5027
MSTU 5027: Tools and Toys for Knowledge Construction is a hands-on design course offered in the Technology, Media, and Learning program that introduces students to the core tenets and techniques of constructionist design. Simply put, constructionism proposes that learning happens best when learners are engaged in the construction of a personally or communally meaningful public artifact or object.
To this end, students encounter and connect to constructionist design by exploring, using, and evaluating existing educational technologies and fabrication equipment specifically designed to engage learners in meaningful construction.
The “paper mechatronics'' artifacts displayed here are one of six projects completed by students. In this project, students were asked to create an interactive art exhibit. Students collectively chose the theme “The Garden” for their exhibition and have worked in pairs for three weeks to design and construct the artifacts you see before you out of wood, paper, cardboard, cloth, and a lot of glue! Interactive behaviors are programmed by students using the GoGo Board–a microcontroller developed by Teachers College Professor Paulo Blikstein.
We invite you to play with the exhibit! Push a button or touch a sensor to see what happens. While you play, think about how the students may have programmed the behaviors, or what physical mechanisms might be used to make the motion. And also consider how designing both the physical objects and the digital code may alter how one comes to understand things like gear ratios, simple machines, circuitry, material properties, engineering, and a whole host of ideas, concepts, and practices!
Where: Second Floor
When: October 23 - November 25
Ethereal Creations
Delicate, light, airy, fragile, or tenuous in tone, many artworks from the historical collections of Teachers College evoke beauty, grace, and the sublime. From the natural to the “other” world – animals, flowers, landscapes, the elements, fairies, angels, dreams, and states of being are depicted to inspire wonder and awe – of children’s drawings and paintings, art created by students for their courses at Teachers College, and prints by well known artists. Classic pieces invite our aesthetic experience, imagination and memory, and reflections on thinking and perceiving at a time when many artworks challenge the traditional.
Ethereal Creations complements Timeless Beauty: Select Works from the Ellen Walters Avery Collection, on display for the first time in the nearby Curiosity Cabinets. Paired with a beloved young woman’s aesthetic sensibilities and poetic mind, this exhibit draws upon the Ziegfeld Collection of International Children’s Art; Ukrainian Children’s Art Collection; Passow Collection of Israeli Children’s Peace Art; Students of Arthur Wesley Dow Collection; and the Federico Castellon Memorial Print Collection. Miss Avery curated her late nineteenth century interests in the natural sciences and the humanities, joining topics together with fresh delight. So we join art from different decades in the 20th century, offering a glimpse into the ethereal to spark creative learning and appreciation for beauty in similar subjects.
With thanks to the continuing generosity of the Myers Foundations, Ethereal Creations, with an integrated book display, is designed by Kai Oh, Library Associate / Art and Design and curated by Jennifer Govan, Library Director and Senior Librarian.
Where: Offit Gallery
When: October 20 - November 14
Exploring the Ground of Being, by Michael Headrick
Exploring the Ground of Being depicts Michael Headrick’s personal and community process at Teachers College, Columbia University. The exhibition is as much an artistic exploration of ceramic materials, as it is a symbolic exploration of the unconscious. Michael Headrick presents work that stems from dreams, synchronicities, fantasies and intuitions; and the operations taken through the various iterations in ceramic material. The work engages personal material that links the artist to the collective.
Michael Headrick is an educated architect and technologist, who now focuses on research in psychology and ceramics. His practice focuses on bringing the unconscious or immaterial into physical form. Working with materials like clay, plaster and cement to create three-dimensional sculptural and functional objects led to a primary focus on work in ceramics: a practice that engages many permutations, iterations and processes before arriving at its final form. Deeply connected to this physical process, Michael seeks to express the movement of the inner life in a physical way. Michael, who also works at Teachers College, is pursuing a Masters of Arts in Psychology, and previously earned a B.A. in Architectural Studies at The University of Hong Kong. Michael also serves on the board of directors for CO-RESIDENCY, a fully digital Art Residency program.
Where: Offit Gallery
When: November 14, 2025 - January 5, 2026
Upcoming:
Opening Exhibition: Wednesday, 11/19, 5:30-7pm
Meet the Artist, Talk, and Tour: Thursday, 12/11, 3-4pm
