The Southey Mural at the Weinberg Memorial Library

The Room and Mural

This room is dedicated to the heritage of Scranton and the Lackawanna Valley. The thirty six panels, each four feet square, were commissioned by the University from artist Trevor Southey especially for the Heritage Room. They present a three-part theme: Art, Religion, Science. Eighteen panels on the east clerestory, to your left as you face the fireplace and University crest, treat the theme in universal scope. Those on the west echo it with special references to the University, the City and the Lackawanna Valley.

The panels form a mural that can be viewed side-to-side, moving one's attention from art in its universal scope to the facing regional panels across the room, or sequentially. This description is arranged sequentially. Beginning with the panels to the right of the University crest, it moves down the wall through art, religion and science in northeastern Pennsylvania. The description continues with science on the opposite wall and moves to world religion, and finally to the arts in human history.

The Heritage Room theme suggests the broad range of achievement through time by diverse peoples and cultures. It is neither inclusive nor exclusive. Rather, we hope it will prompt generations of students to reflect on the greatness lodged in the human spirit and to consider the vast numbers of past contributors, named and unnamed, to our intellectual and spiritual heritage.

The Artist and the Commission

Trevor Southey (1940-2015), who was born in Zimbabwe, studied in Durban, South Africa, and at the Brighton College of Art in Sussex, England, before earning two degrees at Brigham Young University, where he was a faculty member until 1976. These panels were completed in his studio in San Francisco before shipment to Scranton for installation in the Heritage Room during the summer of 1992.

Mr. Southey was selected for the Heritage Room commission through a process in which artists working in many media submitted proposals to a special committee appointed by J.A. Panuska, S.J., president of the University. Members of the committee were: Josephine Dunn, Ph.D., assistant professor of art history, chair; Richard Rousseau, S.J., Ph.D., professor of theology and chair of the department; John Rogers, M.F.A., assistant professor of fine arts; David Wilson, A.I.A., University architect; Paul Brown, M.S., director of public relations; John Stalker, Ph.D., director of Alumni Memorial Library; Charles Kratz, M.L.S., director of the Weinberg Memorial Library; Richard Leonori, A.I.A., of Leung Hemmler Camayd, architects for the building.