By Georgia Kerrigan ’27
It’s no surprise that the library houses everything from books and documents to manuscripts and diaries. But a real leopard skin purse?
A new digital exhibit, An American’s Africa, facilitates an interactive examination of a traveler’s two-month visit to Africa in 1953, featuring a wide array of mementos — yes, that outrageous purse — and her reflections on what she saw.
This photo from Pederson’s scrapbook shows her at the Cairo pyramids, 1953.
The Lydia Luhman Pederson Collection tells the story of a wealthy white woman from Illinois who traveled across Africa for two months, filming, scrapbooking, and collecting souvenirs. The result is a particular snapshot of a culture as viewed from the perch of an entirely different culture. The collection came to the Herskovits Library of African Studies and curator Esmeralda Kale in 2018 as a gift from a family member. Kale worked with Craig Stevens of Northwestern’s Media & Technology Innovation to capture many of the objects as 3D images used in this exhibit.
Some modern critics might classify Pederson’s tour as part of a long cycle of problematic Western tourism, ringing with echoes of colonialism. Nonetheless, Pederson’s record of her travels provides a useful springboard into contemporary conversation about such travel, said digital humanities librarian Basia Kapolka.
“We know it is mediated through her perception, but the collection makes for a good entry point for telling a story contained in time and space,” Kapolka said. “The materials we have at the library often tell extraordinary stories or are about famous figures. This archive tells a story about a woman who was wealthy, but also just incidentally gathered these incredible items on an independent trip. It tells us about what was important to her.”
Pederson bought three appliqué panels like this one in Cairo, 1953.
Arianna Ray ’25 is a PhD candidate in Art History and was the lead researcher and writer for the project, alongside web developer and PhD graduate Yian Wang ’24. She said the very issue of Pederson as the collection owner is part of what drew her to work with it.
“It immediately struck me as an interesting problem: What do we do when we’re talking about Africa but we only have the perspective of a white person?” Ray said.
Their solution? Accompanying the digitized archive with more context: essays about the artifacts, links to supplementary scholarly readings, an interactive map, and a page dedicated to the works of modern African artists.
Because the specific origins of Pederson’s purchases are unknown, Kapolka said they wanted to honor modern, attributable art.
“We wanted to show the continuous process of people who have been creating and interacting with this art for centuries,” Kalpolka said.
Map detail from the digital exhibit “An American’s Africa” re-creating Pederson’s 1953 journey.
As for the website’s audience, Kapolka said it was conceived for people who are curious about the history of travel and souvenir collection, but they ultimately just wanted to pique people’s interest in what’s in the Northwestern library collections.
“A lot of people don’t know that we have physical objects and these personal items. It’s not just all mass-produced books, you know?”
Ray echoed this sentiment, acknowledging how hard it can be to observe a collection with little context or guidance.
“I’m hopeful that the site will help people get situated within the collection and lead them to explore the rest of the archive,” Ray said.
The project was funded by donors Michael Spinella ’96 & Matthew Welch and directed by Kapolka as part of an ongoing effort to give students digital humanities experiences with library collections. Kapolka said she hopes that the digital exhibit serves as a template for how future collections could be showcased to reach a wider audience, making these candid time capsules more dynamic and accessible.
Georgia Kerrigan is a Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications sophomore