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Gary Smith wins photography award

Lawrence photographic artist, author and educator Gary Mark Smith has been named a winner in the American Photo magazine's Year 2000 Readers Photo Competition.

His winning photograph of a distressed man during the eruption of the Soufriere Hills Volcano on the Caribbean island of Montserrat is from Smith's recent book, "Molten Memoirs: An Artist's Account of the Volcano Holdouts of Salem, Montserrat."

The American Photo magazine competition is among the most influential and prestigious publication competitions in the world. This year's competition attracted more than 50,000 entries from photographers in all 50 states and from more than 100 international locations.

In 1991 Smith was one of four winners in the magazine's American Photo Career Photographers Competition. His winning entry was photographs he made on the streets of Suchitoto, El Salvador, while working there as a free-lance combat photographer.

Both of the winning American Photo photographs are in Smith's newly released "Searching for Washington Square: A Celebration of Life on the Global Street," a volume of images he has collected during a 20-year and 48-country career as a global street photographer.

Library displays maps of early New England

"The Early Maps of New England," on display at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library on the Kansas University campus, explores the conceptual and political development of New England through an impressive array of maps from the 1500s to 1800.

The exhibition is drawn from the holdings of the library's special collections department. Barbara Backus McCorkle, retired curator of the map collection at Yale University, assembled the exhibition with the assistance of Jim Helyar, curator in graphics in Spencer's department of special collections.

McCorkle began her career in map librarianship at the Spencer Research Library in the late 1960s when she served as associate librarian and curator of the historical map collection. She returned to Lawrence in 1994 after her retirement from Yale.

McCorkle is the compiler of the forthcoming book, "New England in Early Maps, 1513-1800," a reference work that attempts to list every map of the New England region printed prior to 1801. All the maps displayed in the Spencer Research Library exhibition are included in the book.

"The Early Maps of New England" will run through Jan. 28. The exhibition gallery is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays-Fridays and noon to 4 p.m. Saturdays when the university is in session.

Exhibit describes Charlemagne's crowning

"The Coronation of Charlemagne, 25 December 800," an exhibition now on view at Watson Library on the Kansas University campus, commemorates the 1,200th anniversary of the coronation of Charlemagne, who inaugurated what became known as the Holy Roman Empire.

On display are texts describing the event, depictions of the coronation by later artists and pictures of Charlemagne's chapel in his capital city Aachen.

The exhibit will be on view through Jan. 28. Rich Ring, KU librarian, assembled the exhibit.

KU art museum enjoys record year

"The Gilded Age: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum" contributed to a golden year for the Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art on the Kansas University campus. Attendance at the art museum climbed in 2000, due in part to the popular exhibit and its related special events.

The Smithsonian exhibit, which highlighted American paintings and sculpture of the late 19th century, was at the art museum from Sept. 22 to Nov. 19. During that period, more than 25,000 people visited the museum.

In November, the art museum's attendance was 12,037, far outpacing the November 1999 total of 7,624. The November attendance also broke the previous monthly records of 10,855 guests in October 1999 and 11,569 in October of this year.

Attendance for 2000 was 83,266 at the end of November, already surpassing the 1999 total of 77,127. Total attendance was 54,693 in 1998 and 46,323 in 1997.

The art museum's current feature exhibit is "A Writer's Vision: Prints and Drawings by Gunter Grass," which will be on display through Saturday. Spring semester exhibitions include "Contemporary Art from Cuba: Irony and Survival on the Utopian Island," Jan. 13 to March 18, and "Ming Painting Through the Eyes of Connoisseurs," Jan. 20 to March 4.