Jan. 14--"Love on Paper" is the animating idea behind a new exhibition at the Newberry Library. As you type that title onto a screen, or read it from a screen, you have to wonder if future such shows are going to be purely historical.
The sentiment we all chase is finding its way onto processed tree pulp with ever less frequency. Even if, say, the love letter were to make a comeback the way the LP has, latter-day historians of love would be forced to assess the emotion via the thoughts of a relative handful of retro hipsters, probably writing with fountain pens.
Back in the day -- which in this show stretches all the way back to Dante swooning in writing over Beatrice in the 13th century -- people put it all on paper.
The show features elaborate Valentine's Day card constructions, heart-shaped maps from the early days of printed cartography, and the diary of a 19th-century Chicago gentleman open to a page on which he rhapsodizes about the "noble bearing" and "refinement" of the man he loves.
An article gives advice on kissing with a mustache. A "vinegar valentine," from a well-established genre treating love with acidity, warns public lovers that their "spooning" is "In Disgustingly Bad Taste!" "Are you too stupid and senseless to know," it asks, "That this sort of thing makes a sickening show?"
Yet that sort of thing -- the judgmental card -- helps make an insightful, often amusing show.
"We knew we had this fabulous collection of historical valentines," said Diane Dillon, interim vice president for research and academic programs at the River North institution. "That seemed like a natural thing to show around Valentine's Day. But we wanted to contextualize them. We experimented with a new method of curating the show."
Although the Newberry exhibit celebrates a diminishing, if not vanishing, asset, and although it stretches well back into the last millennium, it was developed using an of-the-moment idea: crowdsourcing.
To find the almost five dozen objects now displayed in cases in a first-floor gallery, the library "put out a call to everyone in the Newberry, inviting them to suggest items that related to the theme of love on paper," Dillon said.
One of the respondents was Shawn Keener, a project cataloging assistant and music historian, who recalled that the staff email asked for items with visual appeal and may have even used the word "crowdsourcing."
"It's a great idea because all of us in the library are coming across a variety of materials every day," Keener said. "I thought, Surely, I can come up with something interesting.
"A colleague of mine and I, we cataloged hundreds and hundreds of opera librettos, almost all of which are about love in one way or another. We had a few with some sketches in the margins, some chaste, some not. That came to mind."
Two Keener suggestions did make the final cut, she said: "One is a very arcane law from 1786 in France. It prohibits newlyweds from being forced to jump over a hole filled with water. This was apparently a very old tradition in this particular parish."
In addition to the law banning puddle jumping, apparently to enforce modernity, Keener suggested a 1509 Italian songbook for lute, the title of which translates to "Intabulated tenors and basses with the soprano parts in metered notation to sing and to play with the lute."
"In a way it's kind of cheating because most songs are about love in one way or another," Keener said. "But these songs are important from a musical historical point of view. This is in the first decade of music publishing. And in terms of the trope of someone with a lute singing love songs to their beloved, that's a timeless image for a good reason."
In all, 19 staffers -- about 20 percent of the library's workers -- suggested 107 items for the show. Drawing on the entire staff's experience, instead of just a lead curator or two, "definitely paid dividends," said Dillon. "We got a much richer assemblage of things."
On Feb. 11, from 4 to 7 p.m., an associated program, "Make Love on Paper," will featured paper artist Becky Saiki leading a Valentine-making workshop.
In addition to the many Valentine's cards it displays, the show culls the library's collection of sheet music, popular songs with beautifully illustrated covers: "Send Me a Night Letter, Dearie," the lesser-known Irving Berlin tune "When You Kiss an Italian Girl," and a nod to developing radio technology, "There's a Wireless Station Down in My Heart."
There is a gorgeous edition of Chaucer by English designer William Morris, and a German book depicting love as a journey through "Exasperation Heath" and "Bachelor Country" to the "Forest of Love."
"It's sort of like Candyland," Dillon said.
Readers for centuries were scandalized (publicly) or titillated (privately) by a 17th century French book that purported to be letters from a nun in Portugal to the cavalier who had seduced and abandoned her. A 1701 English edition is on display.
Not until the 20th century was it proved to be a work of fiction, Dillon said.
A couple of the show's gems are from Chicago, including a newspaper that has somehow not survived. The Matrimonial News and Special Advertiser, from 1877, promised "Marriage Made Easy." It noted the "superabundance of men in the West, and a corresponding ratio of women in the Eastern States," and pledged to bring them together through its personal ads.
Another Chicago artifact, an event flier for the city's progressive Dill Pickle Club, from the early 20th century, promised a debate on the question, "Is Free Love Possible?"
No word on how that turned out, but the "Love on Paper" exhibit offers one, affirmative answer. This "Love," as with all Newberry exhibits, is free.
sajohnson@tribpub.com
Twitter@StevenKJohnson
'Love on Paper'
When: Through April 4
Where: Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton St.
Tickets: Free; 312-943-9090 or newberry.org
