Current Exhibitions and Programs Virtual Exhibits Past Exhibitions and Programs Publications

John Jay and the Constitution website, prepared for U.S. Constitution Day 2005 (September 17) in conjunction with a public exhibition on the same theme, provides an in-depth look at the influence U.S. statesman John Jay had on the model of government that was ultimately embodied in the Constitution. It includes analysis and commentary by historian and Jay scholar Richard B. Morris (1904­89), reproductions of Federalist papers and other texts authored by Jay, links to reproductions of relevant Jay correspondence in Columbia's John Jay papers website, and other background material.

Jewels in Her Crown: Treasures from the Special Collections of Columbia’s Libraries exhibit brings together for the first time selected objects from the eleven Special Collections that exist within the Columbia University Libraries and their affiliates. Organized in honor of Columbia's 250th anniversary, the exhibition celebrates both the rich collection of books, drawings, manuscripts and other research materials that have been gathered since King's College had its start near Trinity Church in lower Manhattan in 1754, and the generosity of the donors whose gifts have made possible the work of students and scholars for many generations.  

The Russian Imperial Corps of Pages Online Exhibition Catalog is an online exhibition containing over one hundred images and texts from the Imperial Corps of Pages presentation, which was on display from December 2002 until February 2003 in the Kempner Gallery. It is a joint project of the Libraries' Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European History and Culture and the Libraries Digital Program Division.

Celebrating the Liturgy's Books  collaborative website, featuring digital images and related music clips, is based on the 2002 exhibit, "Celebrating the Liturgy's Books: Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in New York City,"  a city-wide venture on the occasion of the meeting of the Medieval Academy of America.

Shakespeare and the Book exhibition was inspired by the publication of David Scott Kastan's Shakespeare & The Book (Cambridge University Press, September, 2001 The exhibit draws heavily on the spectacular collection of English and American literature formed by Jack Harris Samuels, and bequeathed to the library by the collector's mother, Mollie Harris Samuels, in 1970.

Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Collections and Treasures-- A catalogue of the 1984 exhibition held on the opening of the new library. Contains information about the history of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library and high spots from the collections. Illustrated with circa 100 images in black and white.

David Johnson, “Forensic Philology and the Interventions of the Tremulous Hand of Worcester”
Tuesday, March 4, 2008, 6:00 p.m.
Butler Library, Room 523
Lecture by David Johnson, Florida State University, Tallahassee, sponsored by the Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium, the Interdepartmental Committee on Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and the Friends of the Columbia Libraries.

The Book History Colloquium at Columbia presents:
Will Slauter, “Recycling the News in the Eighteenth-Century Blogosphere.”
Wednesday, February 27, 2008; 5:30-7:00 pm;
Butler Library, Room 523
Will Slauter, Society of Fellows in the Humanities and Department of History, Columbia University, discussed international news before the telegraph; a story of newspapers trading paragraphs with each other, copying, translating and rewriting the news.

Czeslaw Jan Grycz, “The Iconic Copy: The Art of Creating Rare Book Reproductions”
Thursday, February 21, 2008, 6:00 p.m.
Butler Library, Room 523
Chet Grycz is narrator and host of Great Libraries of the World.

On the Road turns 50: The Fourth Annual HOWL
Friday, February 8, 2008
3:30–5:00 p.m. Panel Discussion: “On the Road: Then and Now”, 301 Philosophy Hall, 1150 Amsterdam Avenue
5:00–7:00 p.m. Reception and exhibition viewing: The Author as Artist: Jack Kerouac & Friends, RBML
7:30–9:30 p.m. HOWL: Reading of original student and alumni poetry, East Gallery, Buell Hall, 515 West 116th Street (College Walk between Broadway and Amsterdam)
8:00–10:00 p.m. HOWL: Readings and Jazz in Honor of Columbia’s Beats, 301 Philosophy Hall
Sponsored by the Columbia Alumni Association, the American Studies Program at Columbia University, and the Friends of the Columbia Libraries. 

The Author as Artist: Jack Kerouac and Friends
Chang Octagon, RBML, Butler 6th Floor East
November 12, 2007 through February 29, 2008
Selected from the collections of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, this small exhibition featured drawings and paintings (mainly portraits of one another) by Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Robert LaVigne, Peter Orlovsky, Larry Rivers, and Philip Whalen. It was presented in conjunction with the major New York Public Library exhibition Beatific Soul: Jack Kerouac on the Road,on view from November 9, 2007 to February 24, 2008 and March 1 to 16, 2008, Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.

A Conversation with Erica Jong
International Affairs Building, Room 1501, The Kellogg Center
November 28, 2007, 6:00 p.m.
The Friends of the Columbia Libraries hosted an evening with Erica Jong in conversation with Jay Parini.  The RBML has recently acquired a large collection of archival material from Erica Jong, a celebrated novelist, poet, essayist, and best-selling author.  Jay Parini teaches English and creative writing at Middlebury College. 

Researching Russia and Islam in the Archives of Eurasia
December 1, 2007
Butler Library, room 523
The archival workshop was organized by Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian & East European Culture in conjunction with the Harriman Institute’s Russia and Islam project.  More.

Arthur Rackham: Drawings from the Berol Collection
Chang Octagon, RBML, Butler 6th Floor East
August 20 through October 26, 2007
This small exhibition celebrated the 140th anniversary of the birth of Arthur Rackham (September 19, 1867). It also celebrated the rehousing of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library’s entire Rackham Collection by the Columbia University Libraries’ Conservation Department, allowing for safe storage as well as easy display. The collection, including more than 400 original drawings, 5 oil paintings, and 30 sketchbooks, was formed and donated to the Library by Dr. and Mrs. Alfred C. Berol in 1967 in honor of the centennial of Rackham’s birth. The gift complemented their earlier donation of a virtually complete collection of Rackham’s published books. Dating from childhood drawings to watercolors made for his posthumously published edition of The Wind in the Willows (1940), the Berols’ gifts document Rackham’s entire artistic life.

Yurii Lawrynenko:  Path and Legacy
Butler Library, Room 203, ground floor
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Yurii Lawrynenko was a well-known Ukrainian literary critic, historian, and writer.  His personal papers, now open to researchers at the Bakhmeteff Archive, have attracted scholars from all over the world.  A symposium was sponsored by the Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European History and Culture and the Ukrainian Studies Program at Columbia University.  A small exhibition related to the opening of the papers will be displayed in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, located on the sixth floor of Butler Library.

John Jay and the Summer of 1787: An Exhibition in Celebration of Constitution Day, September 17, The date on which the Delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 Signed the Constitution and Adjourned.
Kempner Exhibition Gallery Cube Cases, RBML, Butler 6^th Floor East
September 4 through 28, 2007
This small exhibition, drawn from the RBML John Jay Papers, presented a selection of the letters that Jay wrote just prior, during, and just after the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia. Jay, then serving as Secretary of Foreign Affairs for the Confederation, kept American diplomats serving abroad, such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, informed of the news, while frustrated that the Convention was meeting in “great secrecy.” He also tried to influence the proceedings from afar, and, as shown in his letter of 25 July to George Washington, sometimes he succeeded.  For images of these and other relevant documents see the online edition of the Papers of John Jay, sponsored by the Columbia University Libraries: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/archives/jay

Caterers General to the Literary World: The House of Harper
Chang Octagon, RBML, Butler 6th Floor East
March 28 through June 30, 2007
In conjunction with the Bibliographical Society of America’s conference, Birth of the Bestseller: The 19th Century Book in Britain, France, and Beyond, this exhibition highlighted the Harper & Brothers Archive at Columbia. The archive contains a wealth of material relating to all aspects of the history of the firm, including correspondence with authors such as the Brontë sisters, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, William Dean Howells, Henry James, and Queen Victoria.

"Making Sense of Making Millions": Andrew Carnegie and Philanthropy
Professor David Nasaw
Wednesday, April 25th, 2007, 6pm
Columbia Universtiy Journalism Building (2950 Broadway at 116th Street)
The World Room, 3rd Floor
David Nasaw, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Professor of American History, the Graduate Center, City University of New York is an author of Andrew Carnegie (Penguin,  2006).  In  this critically acclaimed biography Nasaw made use of the archival documents unavailable to previous biographers, including materials from the RBML Carnegie Collections. 

Performing and Presenting the Word: Medieval Bibles in Context
Friday, 27 April 2007
Museum of Biblical Art(61st and Broadway), morning session 9:30 – 12:30
Columbia University, 523 Butler, afternoon session 2:30-5:30
Rare Book and Manuscript Library, exhibition and reception, 5:30-7:30
This one-day conference, organized in celebration of Columbia University’s recent acquisition of an unusual and early thirteenth century English bible, focused on biblical manuscripts and their production and use in the Middle Ages.  It explored the ways in which religious communities used the bible in practice, and how that practical use (in reading and in the liturgy) shaped the communities’ spiritual lives.  The afternoon session focused particularly on the character, appearance, and composition of medieval bible codices, with particular emphasis on the pivotal shift that took place during the thirteenth century and that produced today's bible.  The exhibition in RBML included a selection of bibles and bible-centered manuscripts and incunabula from the collections of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library and from the Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary.  Co-sponsored by Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Museum of Biblical Art, and Columbia’s Interdepartmental Committee on Medieval and Renaissance Studies.  More.

The Melting Pot: Russian Jewish New York
Chang Octagon Exhibition Room, 
April 6 to June 30, 2006
More than 150 photographs, personal documents, posters, original artworks, and books represented materials on New York Russian Jewish immigrant community held at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library and Bakhmeteff Archive. The exhibit explored many of the issues and personalities discussed in the April 4-6, 2006, international conference on Russian Jewish New York.  The conference was sponsored by the Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European History and Culture, the Harriman Institute, the International Center for Russian and east European Jewish Studies in Moscow, The New York Public Library, and the UJA-Federation of New York.

Smallest Witnesses: The Crisis in Darfur Through Children's Eyes
International Affairs Building , 4th Floor Atrium
February 6 to March 10, 2006
The exhibition featured children’s drawings collected during a fact-finding mission that Human Rights Watch conducted in refugee camps along Darfur’s border with Chad a year ago. Their researchers gave children pens and crayons to draw, while their families were being interviewed. Without prompting or guidance, the children produced vivid and disturbing scenes of the violence and atrocities they had witnessed: attacks by Sudanese soldiers and government-backed Janjaweed militias, aerial bombings, sexual violence, the destruction of their villages and their flight to Chad. More.

Human Rights Archives: A panel discussion on the challenges of preserving archival material documenting human rights abuses
Kellogg Conference Room (1501), International Affairs Building, 15th Floor.
February 13, 2006, 5:30-6:30 pm social, 6:30-8:00 pm program
The Columbia University Libraries, WITNESS, and the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, Inc.  will host a panel this month on current issues in human rights documentation and archiving. The program will begin at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, February 13 in the Kellogg Center.  The panel will consist of two human rights archivists, Grace Lile of WITNESS and Csaba Szilagyi of Columbia University’s Center for Human Rights Documentation and Research, as well as New York University political scientist and human rights activist, Louis Bickford of the International Center for Transitional Justice.  More.

The Brander Matthews Dramatic Museum at Columbia University
Alan and Margaret Kempner Exhibition Gallery, 
September 30, 2005 to February 17, 2006
The Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University presented an exhibition of theater posters, prints, photographs, puppets, masks, set models, manuscripts, books, and ephemera. Named for James Brander Matthews (1852-1929), the nation’s first professor of drama, the exhibition celebrates the history of one of the oldest theater collections in the United States.

Tennessee Williams: Portraits, Plays and Fragments of a Life
West Gallery, 
September 30, 2005 to January 27, 2006
This exhibit featured selections from the Library’s Tennessee Williams Papers, including a painting by Williams entitled “Homage to Eugene O'Neill,” manuscripts of some of Williams’s poems and plays, set designs by Boris Aronson and Jo Mielziner for productions of Williams plays, and the playwright’s Tony Award for The Rose Tattoo.

Srebrenica Commemoration
Chang Gallery, 
July 11 to July 29, 2005
To commemorate the fall of the UN “safe area” of Srebrenica on July 11, 1995 the staff of the Human Rights Watch Archives in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library  arranged a program of documentaries and other film footage, running continuously on two individual monitors in the Chang Gallery.  More.

View the press releases for our Past Programs

The Rare Book and Manuscript Library offers selected publications and miscellaneous items for sale. These items can be purchased via the RBML reference center.