That International Rag: Global Identities in Illustrated Sheet Music 1898–1948 exhibit at Ralph Brown Draughon Library

Auburn University Libraries’ Special Collections and Archives, or SC&A, department invites the public to view its newest exhibit, “That International Rag: Global Identities in Illustrated Sheet Music 1898–1948.”

The exhibit features sheet music from the Piano Bench Collection held in SC&A. Located on the ground floor of the Ralph Brown Draughon Library, the exhibit is available during all hours the SC&A is open and will be accessible to visitors through May.

View a full listing of SC&A hours.

Curated by Theresa Leininger-Miller, professor of Art History at the University of Cincinnati, the exhibit was made possible by a Diversity Fellowship grant from the Auburn University Office of the Provost.

The sheet music collection was started by Auburn University librarian Fred Edmiston. While summering in Mobile with his sister in the mid-1940s, Edmiston gathered sheet music from his brother-in-law’s piano store and brought it back to Auburn. This formed the nucleus of the Piano Bench Collection at the Ralph Brown Draughon Library, a collection that currently totals approximately 3,500 pieces.

Leininger-Miller found out about the Auburn University collection four years ago when SC&A digitized 478 pieces from that collection, making available to the public works in the public domain. It formed the basis of her competitive grant application that ultimately saw her visit Auburn in October 2022.

During Leininger-Miller’s two weeks at Auburn, her project was to contextualize illustrated sheet music by two composers of color, the African American, W.C. Handy and the indigenous Hawaiian, Lili’uokalani. Her goal was to better understand compositions by the Father of the Blues and the Queen of Hawaii.

This exhibition is an expansion of her initial study to include depictions of diverse people on 63 music covers spanning half a century, representing (white Americans’ perceptions about) 20 distinct nationalities, ethnicities, identities and characters. Such democratic and popular visual culture, once frequently used and displayed on pianos in millions of homes, offers a valuable window into understanding the ways in which U.S. citizens envisioned themselves and others in the early 20th century.

Auburn University Libraries serves the more than 30,000 students and faculty of Auburn with a collection in excess of 7.5 million volumes. The Special Collections and Archives Department collects, preserves and houses rare and unique items relating to the histories of Auburn University, the state of Alabama, the southeastern region, the Civil War, Native Americans and aviation.

The Auburn University Digital Library develops accessible digital collections of materials that support the teaching and research of Auburn faculty and students, and that, in turn, further the mission of Auburn University. These collections are made available to researchers, educators and students in the state, nation and the world.