Humanities Council awards grant for Kent Library celebration

The Missouri Humanities Council has awarded a $7,168 grant to help underwrite events for the 75th anniversary celebration of Kent Library at Southeast Missouri State University, according to a news release.

The yearlong celebration began in November and will include a free speaker series featuring experts on Southeast Missouri history.

The first speaker is Henry Sweets, a Mark Twain expert and executive director of the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum in Hannibal, Mo., who will speak on campus and in the community Sept. 4 and 5. Sweets will discuss Twain and his connections to this area.

Gay Walker, special collections librarian at Reed College in Portland, Ore., will speak Oct. 8, providing the context and history of stained glass artist G. Owen Bonawit's glass panels, the release said. The collection includes 33 illuminated printers' marks and two smaller collections. One collection of six windows celebrates Missouri's history and another collection of six windows focuses on Twain and characters from his novels.

To culminate the yearlong celebration, Special Collections and Archives plan to remount these stained glass panels for public view. The panes will be mounted on shelves along the glass wall of the Quiet Reading Room, to be rebuilt over the summer on the library's third floor. A sneak peak of the remounted panels will be available Oct. 8 as part of Walker's presentation.

Southeast will celebrate the library's 75 years of service to the campus with a birthday party from 6 to 9 p.m. Nov. 7. Participants may take tours of the Rare Book Room, hear special community speakers and view the unveiling of the reinstalled Bonawit stained-glass windows.

A cash bar will be available and food will be served. Tickets are $40 or two for $75. To request an official invitation to the celebration, contact Roxanne Dunn at 986-7446 or rdunn@semo.edu.

For further information, call program directors Mary Christy at mchristy@semo.edu, or 651-2744; or Dunn at rdunn@semo.edu or 986-7446.

The library is named for Sadie Kent, who served as head librarian at Southeast from 1910 to 1943, according to information from the library. During Kent's tenure, she submitted floor plans that were used -- with some modifications by the architect -- for the new library building in 1939.