 | George Berkeley -- Berkeley College's namesake -- is among the men featured in "The Eponymous Dozen." |
The ages-old question "What's in a name?" will be explored -- at least as far as Yale's 12 residential colleges are concerned -- in an exhibition on view May 1-
Titled "The Eponymous Dozen," the exhibit sketches the lives of the men that the colleges were named after: John Davenport, Abraham Pierson, Jonathan Edwards, two Timothy Dwights, Jonathan Trumbull, John C. Calhoun, Bishop George Berkeley, Benjamin Silliman, Ezra Stiles and Samuel F.B. Morse. It also includes background on how Branford and Saybrook Colleges got their names.
The lives of the 11 men spanned a little more than three centuries, from the late 1500s to the early 1900s. Six were Congregational ministers; some of them were ousted by their congregations, including Edwards, the best-known of them all. Trumbull and Calhoun had active political careers, while Morse ran for office without success but found fame in art and telegraphy.
"All made their mark on their times, some on history," notes Richard E. Mooney, Class of 1947, curator of the exhibit.
The exhibition offers little-known information about the colleges' namesakes -- for example, geologist Silliman bottled and sold carbonated water as a sideline. It also considers such questions as: Why did Yale, with its Congregational roots, name one of its colleges for an Anglican bishop? What explains the spider as mascot of Jonathan Edwards College? How did Trumbull rate membership in the Society of the Cincinnati although he was never an officer in the Revolutionary War? How many of the named men owned slaves? Who is Hank Statuam? And how is Saybrook College linked to the film "Shakespeare in Love"?
The first of Yale's 10 residential colleges opened in the 1920s and early 1930s, the 11th and 12th in the 1960s. The exhibit also suggests possible names for the proposed two new residential colleges now under consideration.
Exhibited materials come mainly from the Manuscripts and Archives Department housed in Sterling Memorial Library. Original letters and some documents are from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. There are rocks from Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History, books from the Arts of the Book Collection and miscellany from the 12 colleges' own collections. Artworks by Morse included in the display are on loan from the Terra Foundation and the National Academy of Design.
Mooney is retired from the editorial board of The New York Times and was formerly editor of the Hartford Courant. This is his third exhibit in the same space. The first was in 2003 about the Yale Daily News, of which he is an alumnus, followed by an exhibit on Nathan Hale in 2005.
There will be an opening lecture and reception at 4 p.m. on Thursday, May 3. The events are open to the Yale community.
The Sterling Memorial Library, 120 High St., is open for exhibition viewing 8:30 a.m.-4:45 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday; 8:30 a.m.-9:45 p.m. Thursday; 10 a.m.-4:45 p.m. Saturday; and noon-4:45 p.m. some Sundays (check the website at www.library.yale.edu/rsc/sml). The library is closed July 4. For information visit the website or call (203) 432-2798.
T H I S
Show sketches the lives of
residential college namesakes
July 31 at Sterling Memorial Library.
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