Exhibitions
Current Exhibitions
- Currently there are no Upcoming/Current Exhibitions
Past Exhibitions
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Sep 28
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Dec 232022Building the Book from the Ancient World to the Present Day: Five Decades of Rare Book School & the Book Arts PressCurated by: Barbara Heritage & Ruth-Ellen St. Onge
The Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street, New YorkWe have all been taught how to read books. But what can we learn by looking closely at their material forms? This exhibition celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of Rare Book School and the Book Arts Press, which teaches leading curators, librarians, conservators, book historians, and collectors how to analyze books as physical objects, along with the materials and equipment used to make them.
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Jun 6
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May 12019Comics in CircuitCurated by: Ruth-Ellen St. Onge, Jennifer Camp, Elizabeth Dorton, Devon Shannahan, Katherine Smith, and Zach Tauscher
Dome Room, UVA RotundaComics and graphic novels, examples of the so-called “ninth art” that combines image with text, are everywhere, but how are they created? What forms do they take? How are they published, distributed, and sold? How do they reach readers and how are they understood by them? The collaborative exhibition Comics in Circuit considers the materiality of comics while tracing how they travel from creators to publishers to readers and beyond.
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Jun 13
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Apr 302018An Archipelago of Readers: Forming a Literary Culture in Digital MediaCurated by: Katherine McNamara, with the assistance of Will Norton
Dome Room, UVA RotundaWhat did it mean to found a literary journal on the Web at the dawn of online publishing? And what kinds of archives and physical objects tell the story of digital publishing? Even online publishing relies on paper—correspondence sent by mail and fax, as well as printed-out proofs, contracts, books, permissions, artwork, and other supporting documents. This exhibition not only reveals the new freedom afforded by online platforms, but also the constraints placed upon text and images in the early days of the Web.
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Sep 15
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May 102017Shaping Eyre: Charlotte Brontë’s Classic Novel in 200 ObjectsCurated by: Barbara Heritage
Dome Room, UVA RotundaBecoming a world famous novelist is one thing; remaining famous is another. This exhibition explores the full life that Jane Eyre has lived in print—and in the form of other objects—since its initial publication in London in 1847. Most of us know Brontë best through the afterlives of her most famous novel—afterlives over which she had absolutely no control: printed abridgements and translations, adaptations for stage and screen, spin-offs (including the recent Jane Steele and Jane Slayre), as well as trivia games, dolls, magnets, mouse pads, and, yes, even wedding invitations and wallpaper. This show includes artifacts created for all kinds of readers, ranging from soldiers fighting during World War II to dollhouse aficionados.
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Mar 13
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Feb 282014Books That Take Us Lands Away: Tourism and Print Culture in the Nineteenth CenturyCurated by: Theresa Goodman
Stettinius Gallery, Alderman LibraryThis exhibition tracks the cycle of influence between printed materials and nineteenth-century tourism, to come to a better understanding of the afterlife of the Grand Tour. The items on display from Rare Book School’s collections represent, and therefore illuminate, the stages of a typical journey—the moment of inspiration, the voyage, trips to popular monuments, souvenir shopping, and the nostalgia of the return home.
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Nov 15
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Mar 12013Turning the Page: Technology & Innovation in 19th-Century BooksCurated by: Elizabeth Ott
Stettinius Gallery, Alderman LibraryAt the beginning of the nineteenth century, books were still manufactured using many of the same craft skills and techniques used since the introduction of moveable type in the fifteenth century. By the end of the 1800s, the book had changed from a largely handmade object to a mass-produced industrial product. This exhibition showcases the technological innovations that helped to transform book manufacture.
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Feb 1
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May 302009How to Judge a Book by Its Cover: 19th- and 20th-Century Cloth BookbindingsCurated by: Theresa Goodman '12
Dome Room, UVA RotundaThis exhibition traces the evolution of book cover design and technology from 1830 to 1910, the heyday of cloth bindings in America. Book cloth was invented in the early 1820s, and rapidly superseded other materials: it was cheaper than leather, but more durable than paper. Dust jackets were introduced near the end of the nineteenth century, and by the 1920s the jackets were decorated far more heavily than boards. But between 1830 and 1910, cloth covers were the first thing a customer saw, and bookbinders worked to make the covers attractive. The nineteenth century saw a wide range of decorative designs, fueled by the evolution of technology and taste. Each decade developed a recognizable style, which means that the date and often the intended use of a nineteenth century cloth-bound book can easily be judged by its cover.
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Apr 27
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Nov 162008The Monster Among Us: Frankenstein from Mary Shelley to Mel BrooksCurated by: Shannon Gorman '08
Dome Room, UVA RotundaThis exhibition traces the evolution of the myth of the Monster from Shelley’s 1818 publication through to Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein. The story is one of the commodification of horror, the infiltration into our societal consciousness of issues associated with technology, and the ways we as a society have taken the nightmare of a young women and grown it into our first modern myth.
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May 14
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Oct 302007The Fine Line Between Genius & Inanity: Innovation in Contemporary American PublishingCurated by: Leighton F. Carter '07
Dome Room, UVA RotundaAs a physical object, the book is conservative; there have been no major changes in its format for more than a millennium. Over the centuries, readers have developed an almost unalterable idea of how a book should look and feel. In the increasingly jaded climate of 21st-century society, however, readers also hunger for the new and improved. Publishers are thus faced with a challenge: how to revitalize a book’s format while maintaining its traditional appeal.
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Nov 13
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May 12007Bound to Please: American Cloth Bookbindings, 1830–1910Curated by: Vincent Golden
Dome Room, UVA RotundaThis exhibition explores the chronological development of cloth binding styles in the United States. The 300 books on display in the Dome Room of UVA’s Rotunda have been drawn from RBS’s study collection of about 5,000 cloth bindings (now housed in Alderman Library’s McGregor Room).
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Nov 7
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May 12006Eyre Apparent: An Exhibition Celebrating Charlotte Brontë’s Classic NovelCurated by: John Buchtel & Barbara Heritage
Dome Room, UVA RotundaThis exhibition marks the 150th anniversary of the death of Charlotte Brontë (1816–55), and it celebrates the enduring popularity of her most famous novel, Jane Eyre. A favorite with Victorian readers (and of Queen Victoria herself), Jane Eyre became a staple of the school curriculum; today it remains a cornerstone of the English literary canon.
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May 16
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Oct 312005The Call of the Wild: Character Building & the Boy Scout HandbookCurated by: by William Ingram ’05
Dome Room, UVA RotundaAbout two months before my 11th birthday, I first accompanied my friend Tim to a meeting of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) Troop 24 in Norfolk, VA. I have great memories of my years as a Scout, especially the camping trips and stories told late at night around the campfires.
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Apr 25
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Nov 12004116 Years of Corks & CurlsCurated by: Whitney Spivey '05
Dome Room, UVA RotundaThe University of Virginia was 68 years old in 1887. An all-male institution, the Cavalier men functioned via an intricate network of academic and social organizations, University traditions, and community events. Students were involved with fraternities, athletic teams, literary societies, club sports, even a Temperance Union and a cribbage club. What they did not have, however, was an annual yearbook.
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Jun 9
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Nov 12003Reading with and without Dick and Jane: The Politics of Literacy in 20th-Century AmericaCurated by: Elizabeth Tandy Shermer '03
Dome Room, UVA RotundaWilliam McGuffey’s phonics-based primers, which emphasized the sounding out of words by learning letter-sound associations, dominated American primary education from the middle of the nineteenth until the early twentieth century. During the Progressive Era, some educators and social scientists began to believe that McGuffey’s moralizing texts were too complex for young readers, and they argued for a simpler approach, one that used a carefully limited vocabulary and story lines that were more relevant to the lives of contemporary children.
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Jan 17
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May 12003The Lives of the Autograph CollectorsCurated by: Nathaniel Adams '03
Dome Room, UVA RotundaNobody knows when people started collecting autographs. Historians of autograph collecting often point to sixteenth-century German students as the precursors to contemporary autograph hounds. Traveling scholars maintained books filled with letters of correspondence written by people they encountered during their Wanderjahren. Such an album served as a filing system for letters of introduction to future destinations along a student’s route. The impetus for these students to collect was therefore utilitarian; the value of the assembled signatures was in their ability to open doors, not intrinsic in the handwriting of the individual signers.
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Jul 15
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Oct 312002Printed Flower Gardens: The Bookbindings of Margaret ArmstrongCurated by: Sarah Hagelin
Dome Room, UVA RotundaMargaret Armstrong (1867–1944) is without question America’s best- known designer of cloth bookbindings. Many of her bindings are instantly recognizable today, not only because of their highly individualistic designs, but also because of the distinctive mark she used to sign her work. This exhibition presents MA’s bindings in chronological order by date of design, focusing on her development over the more than 35-year period (1890–1926) in which she was active as a book artist.
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Jul 16
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Oct 282001Intentional Miscataloging: The Pedagogical Uses of Ephemera in the Rare Book School CollectionsCurated by: Edmund Berkeley, Jr.
Dome Room, UVA RotundaThe present exhibition showcases some of Rare Book School’s paper ephemera collections and explains some of the ways in which this material is used in various RBS courses. Ephemera may be defined as materials (generally fairly slight in nature) intended for a specific use or purpose and then usually discarded. Not all of the material in this exhibition is ephemeral: some of the manuscripts, in particular, have some permanent value. On the other hand, one generation’s ephemera can be a later generation’s treasure; there aren’t many items in this show that would have been greatly valued by their creators.
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Jun 5
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Jan 312001Eureka! There’s Gold in Them Thar BooksCurated by: Calvin P. Otto
Dome Room, UVA RotundaThe exhibition begins with the story of gold and its physical characteristics. Perfectly malleable and ductile, gold can be beaten into leaf 0.00014 mm thick, historically used in gold-tooled book-bindings, and developed in the nineteenth century for gold-stamped bindings on cloth.
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May 1
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Oct 251999Two for a Nickel: Ephemera Concerning Thomas Jefferson and MonticelloCurated by: Elliot Tally '99
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Feb 11
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May 71999In His Own Words: Editing the Papers of George WashingtonCurated by: The Papers of George Washington
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Oct 17
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Feb 61999You CAN Sell a Book by Its Cover: Optimism in American PublishingCurated by: Darby Kimball '99
Dome Room, UVA RotundaWho says you can’t sell a book by its cover? Ask anyone who has browsed the shelves in a bookstore. American publishers have used many gimmicks to try to get you to buy their books, including startling shapes, outlandish typography, and peekaboo dust-jackets.
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Jul 4
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Oct 121998The Boy Who Never Grew Up: Dinosaur Books and Realia from the Collection of Edward J. ValauskasCurated by: Edward J. Valauskas
Dome Room, UVA RotundaIt’s hard to imagine a world without them, but until about 150 years ago our collective vocabularies didn’t include the word dinosaurs. The British zoologist and anatomist Richard Owen (1804–92), one of the first great paleontologists, created the word dinosaur by combining the Greek word deinos (terrible) with sauros (lizard). The occasion was the 1841 conference of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, where Owen presented a paper that described dinosaur fossils found in Europe.
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May 15
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May 311998Thirty-Five Years in the Commonwealth of Ideas: Selected Works from the University Press of VirginiaCurated by: Book Arts Press
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Jan 21
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May 201998Separate Pieces: All Printed Books are DifferentCurated by: Terry Belanger & John Buchtel
Dome Room, UVA RotundaThis exhibition focuses on the Book Arts Press collections of multiple copies of the same title, highlighting changes between their various issues, states, printings, and editions.
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Sep 19
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Jan 51998Only in Cloth: Publishers’ Bookbindings, 1830–1910, from the Collections of Calvin P. OttoCurated by: Calvin P. Otto
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Jun 20
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Sep 141997Devil’s Toyshop: The Teaching Resources of the Book Arts PressCurated by: Terry Belanger
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Feb 1
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May 271997It Is Impossible to Sell Animal Stories in America, Mr Orwell: George Orwell and His PublishersCurated by: Daniel J. Leab
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Sep 16
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Dec 161996A Doré Gallery: Wood-Engravings by Gustave DoréCurated by: Terry Belanger & Shawnee Sequiera '95
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Apr 20
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Sep 101996Books Go to War: Armed Services Editions in World War IICurated by: Daniel J. Miller '96
Dome Room, UVA RotundaImagine yourself huddled in a muddy foxhole waiting for your lieutenant’s order to leap out onto the battlefield. Or imagine how you might spend an evening aboard a troop ship knowing that you will invade the beaches of Normandy in the morning. Or simply imagine yourself in a foreign country thousands of miles from home, with few diversions and little recreational opportunity. What could you do to take your mind off the unpleasantness of war? Where would you find comfort?
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Jan 18
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Apr 151996 -
Oct 19
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Dec 211995Wastebasket Archaeology: American Ephemera 1876–1995 from the Collections of Calvin P. OttoCurated by: Calvin P. Otto
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Sep 29
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Oct 161995Woodcuts of Rural America by J. J. LankesCurated by: Peter A. Agelasto III, with Welford D. Taylor
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Jul 11
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Sep 231995Lucile‘s Adventures in America, 1860–1910: Orchids, Gold Leaf, and Padded LeatherCurated by: Sidney F. Huttner & Elizabeth Stege Huttner
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Mar 30
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Jun 301995 -
Jan 22
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Mar 241995Daniel Melcher on Melcher: From Boyhood to Bowker and BeyondCurated by: Jared Lowenstein
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Sep 25
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Oct 81992The Objects of BibliographyCurated by: Terry Belanger
McGregor Library, UVAAn exhibition of books and related materials given to the Book Arts Press and to the Special Collections Department, Alderman Library, University of Virginia, on the occasion of the relocation of the BAP to the University of Virginia.
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Sep 1
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Oct 11992Thanks for the Memories: The Rare Book Program at Columbia University, 1971–1991Curated by: Terry Belanger
Alderman Library, UVAAn exhibition originally mounted at Rare Book School 1991, Columbia University. Now reprised at the Alderman Library, University of Virginia for the conference Bibliography at Virginia: Past and Future. […]