Posts tagged with exhibits in Blog Beyond the Reading Room

Special Collections is pleased to announce the opening of The Life and Times of Lizzy Bennet, a new exhibit in the Audubon Room. This exhibit commemorates the bicentennial of Jane Austen’s death by exploring the historical context in which her characters lived. Join us for the opening celebration next week on Thursday, November 30th, 4:00-6:00pm in the Hatcher Gallery. Light refreshments will be served at 4:00pm and curators Juli McLoone and Sigrid Cordell will begin their lecture at 4:30pm.

Highlighting manuscripts and early printed books from the Special Collections Library, our new exhibit Reforming the Word: Martin Luther in Context commemorates the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. Join us for an opening lecture by guest curator Professor Helmut Puff on Friday, September 15 at 4:30 P.M. in the Library Gallery.

The Charles Ellet, Jr. Papers, part of our Transportation History Collection, document the career of a man who surveyed rivers, built innovative bridges, and served as Colonel of the U.S. Ram Fleet during the Civil War. Guest writer Lauren Lincoln-Chavez, who processed the collection, tells the story of an exceptional 19th century engineer.

The manuscript currently preserved in our library under the shelfmark Isl. Ms. 350 has a fascinating history that can be traced in internal owners’ marks and external documentary sources. Produced in Delhi, the manuscript was acquired by the library in 1924 along with several hundred other manuscripts from Istanbul that came to be known as the "Abdul Hamid Collection." How did these manuscripts reach Ann Arbor? Read the intriguing story in this second of two posts!

The manuscript currently preserved in our library under the shelfmark Isl. Ms. 350 has a fascinating history that can be traced in internal owners’ marks and external documentary sources. Produced in Delhi, the manuscript was acquired by the library in 1924 along with several hundred other manuscripts from Istanbul that came to be known as the "Abdul Hamid Collection." How did the manuscript end up in Istanbul? Read the intriguing story in this first of two posts!

The Exhibit "The Art and Science of Healing: From Antiquity to the Renaissance" is now gone from the Kelsey Museum and the Audubon Room of the Hatcher Library, but we can still see it through the eyes of undergraduate Noah Waldman, who last semester wrote an exhibit critique for professor Aileen Das' class, "Ancient Medicine in Greece and Rome". Selected by Dr. Das, I am very pleased to post Noah's review in our Special Collections blog.

One of the most frequently asked questions about items in our collections is “How did we get this?” Our new exhibit, Storied Acquisitions: Highlights from the University of Michigan Library Collections, explores this question while celebrating the strength and breadth of the Library’s collections. From student work to spoils of war, the materials on display tell the stories of some of the students, alumni, faculty, and donors who have helped build our distinctive collections.

A pop-up exhibit (or rare book meet and greet, as we later came to call them) is an informal, short-term display of Special Collections materials. We take our items outside of the Reading Room because we want as many people as possible to engage with our collections and ask our staff questions. This year, we held six of these exhibits in three locations within the Hatcher & Shapiro Libraries and we're excited to tell you what we've learned from a year of ephemeral events.

I am pleased to showcase a student critique of the current exhibit, The Art and Science of Healing: From Antiquity to the Renaissance. Students of professor Aileen Das' class, Ancient Medicine in Greece & Rome, visited this exhibit at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology last February. They were assigned with the fascinating task of examining this display from various angles, not only from the perspective of the visitor but, more interestingly, also from the view of the exhibit curator. As I guided their visits, I tried to reconstruct for them the different stages involved in the making of this exhibit, from the original idea that I probably wrote on a piece of napkin, to the aesthetics of the display room and the painful selection of the witnesses of the story I wanted to tell: the artifacts themselves! But let us now hear Shannon's critical reaction:

We are pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibit from the Special Collections Library. It includes an extraordinary selection of magical, religious, and medical artifacts held at Special Collections, the Papyrology Collection, and the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. These objects are an extraordinary evidence of how people coped with physical and mental ailments from antiquity through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.