Contact: Aimery Dunlap-Smith For Immediate Release (212) 854-5573 ads34@columbia.edu"Reporting the 20th Century: Harrison E. Salisbury, 1908-1993" March 28, 1997-June 27, 1997 Tues.-Fri. 9 to 4:45 P.M., Mon. 12 to 7:45 P.M. Free Admission Kempner Exhibition Room, Rare Book and Manuscript Library in Butler Library, Columbia University, Broadway and 116th Street, New York City. Information: (212) 854-2231
SALISBURY'S CENTURY: A REPORTER'S LIFE Columbia University Exhibits The Harrison E. Salisbury Archive: Renowned N.Y. Times Journalist Covered the World During His Century- Straddling Life
From the Depression-era trial of Chicago gangster Al Capone to the trials of Tienanmen Square and, it seems, everything newsworthy in between, Harrison Salisbury saw it and reported it. His life and through it the life of this explosive century is retraced in "Reporting the 20th Century: Harrison E. Salisbury, 1908-1993," an exhibition at Columbia's Rare Book and Manuscript Library of dispatches, articles, books, letters, and photographs from the journalist's personal as well as public lives. Two years of digging through the 600-box collection of archival materials Salisbury gave to Columbia has yielded a first-hand record of not only the life of a century but the life of one of the century's keenest observers also. The exhibit begins with turn-of-the-century tintypes and prints made from Salisbury's father's glass-plate negatives. These tell briefly of the family in pre-World War Minneapolis, but reveal, too, the influence of Harrison Salisbury's own later interest in photography, examples of which are found farther along the exhibit. World War I memorabilia is followed by examples of Salisbury's earliest reporting and writing done while at the U. of Minnesota. His first dispatches for the United Press, where he started after graduation in 1930, evidence the beginning of his reporting the 20th Century--the beginning of a more than 60-year career in journalism, the only profession Salisbury would ever know. So, too, do his travels begin. "Reporting the 20th Century" follows Salisbury to assignments in the nation's commercial, cultural, and political capitals--New York, Chicago, and Washington--then to covering the Second World War from London, North Africa, the Pacific, and Moscow. A rich lode of dispatches and articles, letters and photos articulate Salisbury's eye-witness account to the world's most destructive war. The most space in the exhibit is devoted to the years for which Salisbury would best be known: '49-'54, when he was the Moscow correspondent for the New York Times. This section is highlighted by the original typescript with handwritten annotations of his file on the Nixon-Khrushchev "kitchen debate," the reporting for which he did literally at the Soviet premier's knees. The exhibition follows him back to the States where he finished his career at the Times in '73 as its first Op-Ed page editor. Before he does, however, "Reporting the 20th Century" shows Salisbury caught up in the events that re-shaped post-war America. From the marches for civil rights and against the Viet Nam War to presidential campaigns and a presidential assassination, Salisbury either reported, wrote, or edited the accounts of events that made history and the front page of the Times. "Reporting the 20th Century" closes with Salisbury's active retirement, during which he made several trips to China. Excerpts from the typescript of his book about following the route of the Long March as well as photographs taken with Zhou Enlai and at the barricades in Tienanmen Square attest to Salisbury's unending desire and uncanny ability to be where the great news of this century was made. 3/17/97 19,071