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February 11, 2000Volume 28, Number 20



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Beinecke show traces Americans' utopian visions

Ever since the Pilgrims first landed on the shore of the New World in the early 17th century, Americans have aspired to more perfect ways of living and better places to live.

That quest for the American utopian dream is the subject of "No Place on Earth," the newest exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

The exhibit explores the various ways in which Americans have expressed their utopian visions -- from the colonial days, when a band of Calvinist Pilgrims launched an experiment in communal living at Plymouth Plantation, to the contemporary quest for concord and fellowship in the world of cyberspace.


From Shakers to "hippies"

Through books, letters, photographs, printed ephemera and a CD-ROM presentation, the exhibit documents about 25 utopian "experiments," including various Pennsylvania German groups; the Shakers (1784); George Rapp's Harmony (1805); Robert Owen's New Harmony (1825); Brook Farm (1841), which was depicted in Nathaniel Hawthorne's satirical novel of 1852, "The Blithedale Romance"; the Kingdom of St. James (1844-56), a schismatic Mormon group led by James Jesse Strang; Kaweah (1885-92), a Marxist community that settled in what is now Sequoia National Park; "Peace Mission (1932-73); and Drop City (1965), a "hippie" community in Trinidad, Colorado, known for its geodesic domes inspired by Buckminster Fuller.

"There is something very American about the utopian movement," says Michael Kavanagh, a Yale senior who helped organize the exhibit with Patricia C. Willis, curator of the Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke, and Yale senior Micaela Blei. "The New World was the land of the frontier, that clean, clear space beyond which one could remake oneself into a better human being. America itself can be seen as the biggest utopian experiment of all -- embodied in the credo of the Land of Opportunity is the promise that it is always possible to reinvent one's relationship to society, work and nature."

Yale's home city of New Haven is considered the second American experiment in communal living (the Pilgrims at Plymouth Plantation began the first). In 1637, John Davenport, an English clergyman, claimed the land surrounding the bay of New Haven on which to "build a new utopia." His vision was a Christian theocracy in which the settlers agreed to be guided in civic affairs solely by the Scriptures. Nine squares were laid out for the Puritans' new settlement, making New Haven America's first planned city. A 1748 map of New Haven, showing its nine squares, is on view in "No Place on Earth."

One section of the exhibition is devoted to literary and philosophical representations of utopias, beginning with the first edition of "Utopia" by Sir Thomas More (1478-1535). More, an English statesman and martyr who served as diplomat and lord chancellor under Henry VIII, coined the word "utopia." The exhibit's organizers point out the ironic nature of the word: While it comes from "eu," meaning "good," and "topos," meaning place, the homonymous prefix "ou," meaning "no," also resonates in the word, and thus, the perfectly "good place" can also be interpreted as "no place," they say.

Other literary or philosophical works on view are Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" (1776), Henry David Thoreau's "Walden, or Life in the Woods" (1854), B.F. Skinner's "Walden Two" (1948); Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" (1953); and Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End" (1953 and "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968). The latter was made into a popular film directed by Stanley Kubrick.

"No Place on Earth" includes an interactive CD-ROM presentation about Llana del Rio, a Socialist community founded in 1914 near Los Angeles. New York artist Brian Tolle used archival documents from the Beinecke collection to create images, in virtual space, of what the community might have looked like had it been successful in achieving its goals. The CD was designed by Brian Clyne, who also provided some of the photographs.

The exhibit also suggests how utopian dreams change as technology advances. For example, today's modern utopians are science fiction writers, says Micaela Blei.

"Authors like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke imagine the possibilities for social perfection in the great wilderness of space," she says. "More recently, as computer technology and the internet opened up a whole new sphere of discovery, cyberpunk authors like William Gibson and Neal Stephenson have portrayed the newest frontier, cyberspace -- an infinite realm with infinite possibilities for the utopian dream."

"No Place on Earth" will be on view through the end of March.

The Beinecke Library, located at 121 Wall St., is open for exhibition viewing Monday-Friday, 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m., and on Saturdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. The library will be closed March 4, 11 and 18. For general information, call (203) 432-2977.


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