Western Washington University Libraries to host photographic exhibit featuring Beat poets

Western Libraries Heritage Resources will host a new exhibition beginning April 1 featuring several important figures of the Beat Generation, including Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Jack Kerouac.

“Nobody Goes Home Sad: Photographs of the Gallery 6 Poets, 1955-2015,” is a traveling exhibition on loan to Western from Utah State University’s Merrill-Cazier Library, Special Collections & Archives Division.

On display through June 28, the exhibit will be available for viewing Monday-Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. (closed weekends and holidays) in Western Washington University Libraries’ Special Collections (Wilson Library 6th floor). The exhibition  is free and open to the public.

“Nobody Goes Home Sad” features black-and-white portraits and performance shots of Beat poets Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Michael McClure, Philip Lamantia, and Jack Kerouac. The photographic material comprises the work of two photographers, Walter Lehrman and John Suiter, who captured images of several of the Bay Area poets from the mid-1950s to around the 1990s.

In addition to 36 framed photographs, the show includes rare first editions, chapbooks, broadsides, and ephemera selected from Utah State’s extensive Beat Poetry and Little Magazine collection. Remastered audio-recordings of the poets reading at Berkeley’s Town Hall Theatre in 1956 are also featured.

For more information, please contact Tamara Belts, Special Collections Manager, Tamara.Belts@wwu.edu, (360) 650-3193.