Artist Statement
I am seeking my inner bridge between the Western and Eastern. I have practiced Chinese calligraphy since childhood. By using acrylic paint as medium, I try to talking about a correlation between stories and symbols, a try to expressing my abstract language on the canvas. I understand my own traditions and reconstruct the relationship between myself and the contemporary world. It takes me a lot of visionary strength to enact words that evolving into a mountain scape, evoking parallels with Classical Chinese landscape painting in pen and ink. The simplicity of technique and arrangement allows my paintings to achieve an abstract and pure visual effect. My artworks are seen as a compensation, poems of homesickness.
columbiaartleague.org/village/weihuazhu
The Sandi and Barry Garron Campaign collection represents a lifetime of collecting by 1971 University of Missouri Political Science and Journalism alumnus Barry Garron. Garron is the former president of the Television Critics Association and is a longtime reporter and television critic for the Kansas City Star, The Hollywood Reporter and numerous other publications. He is also a prolific collector of presidential campaign buttons, something he has done for most of his life. In 2021, he donated the entire collection to the Truman School of Government and Public Affairs.
The collection spans the presidential election of 1896, the first with campaign buttons, through the 1996 presidential election, with some buttons from more recent elections. Garron said that he felt like a century’s worth of buttons was a good goal and he has certainly accomplished it. The collection includes buttons for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees, as well as third party candidates. The buttons both promote and oppose the candidates. Looking at the collection is a colorful, dynamic and fascinating way to learn about the political history of the 20th century in the United States.
November is National American Indian Heritage Month and the University of Missouri Press joins in paying tribute to the rich ancestry and traditions of Native Americans with some of our recently published and backlist books, which are featured on one side of Ellis Library’s 2nd floor display case. These titles include historian Greg Olson’s newest book, Indigenous Missourians: Ancient Societies to the Present and Paul Hillmer and Ryan Bean’s Inappropriation: The Contested Legacy of Y-Indian Guides, in addition to several backlist titles on different indigenous groups and archaeology in Missouri. 
On the other side of the display case, we feature books by University of Missouri faculty. From the history of civil rights in Missouri, to the culture of fiddle music in the state, to a fictional journey through a 19th-century United States, these titles demonstrate the breadth and depth of current and former University of Missouri faculty interests. Some of these titles include O America: Discovery in a New Land, a historical novel by William Least Heat-Moon, volumes I and II of A Fire Bell in the Past: The Missouri Crisis at 200 coedited by history professor and Kinder Institute chair, Jeff Pasley, and the three-volume history of fiddling in Missouri by professor emeritus, Howard Marshall.
In 1972, the University of Missouri Library was named after the thirteenth president of the University of Missouri, Elmer Ellis (1901-1989). Dr. Ellis joined MU's History Department faculty in 1930. He was Dean of Arts and Science when he was tapped as Acting President in 1954; his appointment was made permanent in 1955. Under his leadership the University became a four-campus institution and the main campus in Columbia officially became known as the University of Missouri-Columbia. Ellis became president of the administrative arm of this new organization, named the University of Missouri System, from 1963 until his retirement in 1966.
