Acknowledgments

Dr. Robert Montgomery Bird's literary remains have long constituted an important Penn collection documenting America's early national period dramatic and literary culture. Indeed, the majority of Dr. Bird's printed books and literary manuscripts seen here come from Penn's own Library collections, where they are preserved in the Department of Special Collections. As the gifts, extending over many years, of several generations of Dr. Bird's descendants, they testify to the ongoing generosity of his family. Considering both the long presence of the "literary" Dr. Bird at Penn and his status as a Penn alumnus, the present exhibition is thus an especially appropriate one for us to present.

Nonetheless, there can be few pleasures in any curator's professional life as intense as those occasioned by bringing to public notice something hitherto almost completely unknown but which is also worth knowing. This exhibition provides an exemplary instance of just this kind. The literary Dr. Bird is well known. The artistic Bird, till now, has not been.

The Library and the University are thus grateful for the generosity of Dr. Bird's family, especially that of the present Mr. and Mrs. Robert Montgomery Bird, who have loaned us his art works and some additional materials for public exhibition. Quite simply, without their willingness to allow these materials to be seen--most for the first time--this exhibition would have been unthinkable.

In addition, both the Curator and this exhibition's audience owe a major debt to the preliminary work that Mr. Bird undertook with Dr. Bird's art works long before this exhibition was a gleam in anyone's eye. Over years of patient and necessary spadework, he gathered together, organized, cataloged, described, and began efforts to preserve Dr. Bird's hitherto scattered art works. Simultaneously, he undertook the reading and research required to relate them to the known chronology of Dr. Bird's life and to his already published and well-studied dramatic and literary works. He thus provided a framework for what would otherwise have seemed merely a disorganized mass of materials. That framework has made it possible to see Dr. Bird's works by locating them within a context that made them understandable.

This exhibition has benefitted also from the ongoing interest and support of Michael T. Ryan, Director of Special Collections. That the physical installation looks as good as it does is due to the exceptional work and eye of Greg Bear, exhibition coordinator for the Department of Special Collections, and Clare Chae, his assistant. Creation of the "virtual" (web) exhibition would have been impossible without the assistance of Laura Blanchard and Jamey Saeger.

Dr. Robert Montgomery Bird's University is pleased by this occasion to mount an exhibition that shows how much remains, even at this late date, to be learned about his activities in fields he is not generally known to have explored. It is no small additional benefit of this exhibition that, by also providing an occasion to look again at his writing career, it shows how much sheer pleasure Dr. Bird continues to provide, both as author and as artist.

Daniel Traister
Exhibition Curator

Robert Montgomery Bird Contents

Last update: 22 April 1996.