Victorian Imprints: Selections from the Library of James G. Nelson, An Exhibition in Honor of the Collector
February 18 – June 30, 2009
Kempner Gallery
Consisting of over 2,000 titles, the James G. Nelson Collection is primarily an imprint collection, dominated by the publishing output of John Lane, Elkin Mathews, their joint imprint the Bodley Head, and Leonard Smithers, and therefore rich in the works of many noteworthy and influential figures of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century British arts and letters, such as Aubrey Beardsley, Walter Crane, Ernest Dowson, Michael Field, Richard Le Gallienne, Ezra Pound, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Charles Ricketts, Charles Shannon, William Watson, Oscar Wilde, and William Butler Yeats.  In addition to his collecting, Nelson is renowned for his definitive scholarship on the avant-garde writers and artists of the British 1890s and the publishers who dared to print them.

Sergei Diaghilev and Beyond: Les Ballets Russes 
Chang Octagon Exhibition Room
March 16 through June 26, 2009
The diversity and splendor of Sergei Diaghilev's world of Russian ballet and opera seasons in Paris can be seen on display at the Chang Octagon Exhibition Room. The exhibition features selections from the Bakhmeteff Archive and Rare Book and Manuscript Library collections.

“Our Tools of Learning:” George Arthur Plimpton’s Legacy to Columbia
Alan and Margaret Kempner Exhibition Gallery
October 15, 2008 through January 30, 2009
Gathered over sixty years, George Arthur Plimpton's collection of more than 16,000 manuscripts and printed books relating to education, what he called "our tools of learning," came by gift to the Columbia University Libraries just before his death in 1936. Featured in a wide range of Rare Book and Manuscript Library exhibits ever since, this is the first exhibition to focus exclusively on Plimpton's life and collection.

Marvin Kitman, “The Making of the President 2008: A Case Study in Media Pathology”
Wednesday, March 12, 2008, 6:00 p.m.
The Kellogg Center,
1501 International Affairs Building, 420 West 118th Street
Marvin Kitman is the media critic at HuffingtonPost.com and the former media critic at Newsday.  Reception immediately following in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library

Oral History and Performance Conference
Thursday, March 13–Saturday, March 15, 2008
Sponsored by Oral History in the Mid-Atlantic Region, the Columbia University Oral History Research Office, and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.  For more information, or to register, visit http://www.ohmar.org.

Fritz Stern, “From Freshman to Emeritus: 65 Years in & out of Columbia Libraries”
Thursday, April 10, 2008, 6:00 p.m.
Butler Library, Room 523
Fritz Stern is a historian and the former provost of Columbia University.   Reception immediately following in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library

Consuelo Dutschke, “Between Print and Manuscript: Stenciling”
Wednesday, April 16, 2008, 6:00 p.m.
Butler Library, Room 523
Consuelo Dutschke is the Curator of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, Rare Book & Manuscript Library.  This lecture is part of the “Curators at Home” Lecture Series, sponsored by the Friends of the Columbia Libraries. Reception immediately following in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library

Lecture by Peter Stallybrass, University of Pennsylvania
Friday, April 25, 2008, 5:00 p.m.
Butler Library, Room 523
Reception immediately following in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library

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.

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.