Below is a list of exhibitions held at the Newberry from 1995 to 2011. Please contact the Public Programs office at programs@newberry.org for information about Newberry exhibitions before 1995.
Past Exhibitions
Think contemporary American political debate is vicious? Our experience is mild compared with seventeenth and eighteenth-century French political infighting, a period famous for royal claims to divine right and for regicide.
This exhibition displays French pamphlets published during the transitional period from the Ancien Régime to the French Revolution. They served as modes of dissemination and diversion, teaching tools and educational models, and the foundation for current and future scholarly projects.
When Chicago steel magnate Everett D. Graff walked into Wright Howes’ bookshop on Michigan Avenue in the 1920s he sparked one of the most important friendships in the book world. Their four-decade partnership, which included cross-country road trips in search of books, manuscripts, and maps, resulted in a world-class American history collection, which Graff donated to the Newberry in 1964.
The Chicago Calligraphy Collective was founded in 1976 to promote the study, practice, and appreciation of calligraphy in all its historical and present-day applications.
Today most Americans remember the War of 1812 for inspiring Francis Scott Key to write “The Star Spangled Banner.” Many of the conflict’s most familiar events—the battle of New Orleans, impressment of American sailors into the British Navy, and the British assault on Washington D.C.—took place far away from the Great Lakes.
This exhibition, curated by Dr. Scott Stevens, Director of the McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, features a wide variety of historically and culturally significant items from the Newberry’s world-renowned collection.
This exhibition highlights the ways in which architectural books were developed from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries to display the military and political power of European rulers and states. Drawing on a collection first assembled in the 1950s and continually enriched with new acquisitions, it also explains how books on military architecture are used by scholars today.
See also the online component of Illuminated Manuscripts and Printed Books: French Renaissance Gems of the Newberry.
See also the online component of French Canadians in the Midwest.
See also the online component of Approaching the Mexican Revolution: Books, Maps, Documents or our Spanish-language version, Un acercamiento a la Revolución Mexicana: Libros, mapas,...
See also the online component of “Everywhere West”: Daily Life Along the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad.
A Library of Congress traveling exhibition
See also the online component of Make Big Plans: Daniel Burnham’s Vision of an American Metropolis.
A McCormick Foundation exhibition
An exhibition by Pamela Paulsrud and the late Marilyn Sward
A McKinley Park Elementary School Project
A traveling exhibition
See also the online component of The Aztecs and the Making of Colonial Mexico.
See also the online component of Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country.
See also the online component of Outspoken: Chicago’s Free Speech Tradition.
A traveling exhibition from the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming.
See also the online component of Elizabeth I: Ruler and Legend.