Before reaching Hillman Library’s front doors, passersby can look through the windows and see a phrase in bold blue letters running the length of the grand staircase inside. It reads: “I am made to leave I am made again to return.”
Kornelia Tancheva, director of Pitt’s University Library System (ULS), reads the line through her own experience as an immigrant from Bulgaria.
“Your past is always part of you, and you change all the time, but you don’t forget where you come from,” Tancheva said.
“I am made to leave I am made to return” is a four-part art installation in Hillman’s atrium featuring tributes to the Cathedral of Learning’s Nationality and Heritage Rooms, the people who built them and the archives documenting a century of that effort. The installation was supported by the Elsie H. Hillman Foundation.
The installation started with a conversation, Tancheva said, with Aaron Henderson, chair of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Studio Art and a longtime ULS collaborator.
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