Exhibits – Page 14

Color Our Collections

Coloring books are everywhere these days it seems. Books stores. Craft stores. Museums and libraries. Libraries?

Yes, even libraries have been getting in on the current craze. Who are we to miss an opportunity to highlight some of the beautiful illustrations to be found in our collection?

Today’s coloring sheet comes from Jost Amman’s Kunnst- und Lehrbüchlein für die anfahenden Jungen (Book of Art and Instruction for Young People), published by Sigmund Feyerabend in German and Latin in 1578. If you’d like to see more of the illustrations from this book, it is featured in the “Society” showcase of the online exhibit After Gutenberg: Print, Books, and Knowledge in Germany through the Long Sixteenth Century. Or come visit us and ask to see the book in person — the call number is on the coloring page.

Download a PDF [1 MB]

Spotlight Exhibit: The Catholic Pamphlet Collection

June 2016

The Catholic Pamphlets Collection in RBSC includes more than 5000 pamphlets, published from the 1840s to the present. This extensive collection includes pamphlets on saints and sacraments, daily Catholic life, moral issues, and Catholic social thought and action—as highlighted by the thirteen pamphlets featured in this exhibit.

On display for just one more week (through June 24), this month’s spotlight exhibit is curated by Jean McManus, Catholic Studies Librarian, and is open to the public 9:00am to 5:00pm Monday through Friday.

“Vestigia Vaticana” Exhibit Opens

Manuscripts, incunabula, seals, maps, engravings, and printed books from the thirteenth century to the present highlight how the Holy Father has left his mark on society. These materials from RBSC, together with a great bull on loan from Saint Mary’s College, are featured in the new exhibit “Vestigia Vaticana.” The exhibit’s opening coincides with the conference The Promise of the Vatican Library, being held May 8–10, 2016, at the University of Notre Dame.

These materials are like the Vatican’s footprints. They provide a trail for us to follow to get a glimpse of the official acts of the Holy Father, of books that belonged to popes, of events the general public wasn’t privy to. Take a stroll through the exhibit to see these papal bulls, apostolic briefs, a papal conclave print, a ground plan of Rome, and various other pieces.

Upcoming Events: May and through the summer

The new summer exhibit, Vestigia Vaticana: An exhibition of papal manuscripts, books and more in conjunction with the conference “The Promise of the Vatican Library” at the University of Notre Dame, opens on May 5 and will run through the summer.

The other exhibits for May are:

Ryosuke Cohen’s Brain Cell 261: Mail Art from the Vagrich and Irene Bakhchanyan Collections

Native American Literature Before 1924 (Spring Semester Spotlight Exhibit)

Rare Books and Special Collections will be open regular 9-5 hours during the summer — our Thursday evening extended hours ended after April 28th.

RBSC will be closed for Memorial Day, May 30th, and the Fourth of July.

Upcoming Events: April and early May

Please join us for the following events being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:

Wednesday, April 6th at 6:00pm | One Book, One Michiana: “Spirits of Another Sort: Imagining Faeries in A Midsummer Night’s Dream” – Jesse Lander (Notre Dame).

Thursday, April 7th at 5:00pm |”Lev Loseff: Poet, Son and Exile” – Barry P. Scherr (Dartmouth) — Sponsored by the Program in Russian and East European Studies and Hesburgh Libraries.

Thursday, April 14th at 4:30pm | The Italian Research Seminar: “Boccaccio and Petrarch on Poetry: Genealogy of the Pagan Gods and Invectives against the Physician” by David Lummus (Stanford) — Sponsored by Italian Studies at Notre Dame.

The monthly spotlight exhibit for April is:

Ryosuke Cohen’s Brain Cell 261: Mail Art from the Vagrich and Irene Bakhchanyan Collections

Two exhibits that opened during the month of February continue through April:

Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion

Native American Literature Before 1924 (Spring Semester Spotlight Exhibit)

“Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion” Exhibit Opens

This year marks the centenary of the Easter Rising, the rebellion that led to the eventual establishment of an Irish Free State. The University of Notre Dame’s Keough-Naughton Institute is at the forefront of the impetus to re-examine the events of 1916, with Professor Bríona Nic Dhiarmada’s three-part documentary, 1916 The Irish Rebellion which will be shown on public television in Ireland, the U.S. and at screenings throughout the world.

Notre Dame will also be the center of Irish studies for five days this spring as host to ACIS (the American Conference for Irish Studies). Over a thousand visitors are expected at this conference.

In Hesburgh Libraries Rare Books and Special Collections, a special exhibit to mark this centenary is on display from February 12^th until April 28^th.

The exhibit draws from the Hesburgh Special Collections and includes books written by people involved in the events as well as contemporary accounts of the rebellion. Letters on display include one from Roger Casement. An extremely rare first edition of W. B. Yeats’s poem Easter, 1916 is part of the exhibit.

From the University Archives, a book recording the subscriptions of South Bend residents to an Irish government bond will be on display.

The exhibit is open to the public from 9 to 5, Monday through Friday.

Upcoming Events: March and early April

Please join us for the following events being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:

Thursday, March 17th at 4:30pm | The Italian Research Seminar: “Toxic Tales: Narrating Dioxin in Contemporary Italy” by Monica Seger (William and Mary) — Sponsored by Italian Studies at Notre Dame.

The monthly spotlight exhibit for March is:

Hoops and Herstory: Early Women’s Basketball History in the Joyce Sports Research Collection

Two exhibits that opened during the month of February continue:

Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion

Native American Literature Before 1924 (Spring Semester Spotlight Exhibit)

Rare Books and Special Collections will be open regular 9-5 hours during Notre Dame’s Spring Break (March 7-11).

Upcoming Events: February and early March

Please join us for the following events being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:

Thursday, February 25th at 4:30pm |The Italian Research Seminar: Graduate Student Presentations —Sponsored by Italian Studies at Notre Dame.

There will be three new exhibits opening during the month of February:

Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion | 2016 marks the centenary of the Easter Rising, the rebellion that led to the eventual establishment of an Irish Free State. At the Hesburgh Libraries Rare Books and Special Collections Department, a special exhibit to mark this centenary will be on display from February 12^th until April 28^th.

Native American Literature Before 1924 | Spring Semester Spotlight Exhibit

Coronelli’s Nouvelle France, 1688 | Febuary Spotlight Exhibit

Please note also that Rare Books and Special Collections will be closing early at 2:00pm on Friday, February 5th, for a departmental event.

“Fighting Words” digital exhibit

Notre Dame’s Rare Books and Special Collections is home to perhaps the strongest institutional collection of boxing-related books and periodicals in the United States. A selection of these wonderful materials may now be experienced virtually, via the digital exhibit Fighting Words: English and American Boxing Literature from the Joyce Sports Collection.

Modern prizefighting is of English origin, and had developed a distinctive culture with a rich and abundant literature by the turn of the nineteenth century. Fighting Words includes many scarce items from this so-called golden age of English pugilism (ca. 1790-1830). It then carries the story forward to the United States, which by the second half of the 19th century had become the fight game’s new center of gravity. Publishers like Richard Kyle Fox (The National Police Gazette) and Nathaniel “Nat” Fleischer (The Ring) were central to prizefighting’s emergence from illegality into the American sporting mainstream. The exhibit concludes with materials from the 1950s, hearkening the erosion of U.S. boxing culture in the second half of the 20th century.

Questions and comments should be directed to George Rugg, the Joyce Collection’s curator.

Spotlight Exhibit: Constructing Shakespeare

January 2016

The posthumous First Folio printing of William Shakespeare’s plays in 1623 represents a landmark development in the history of English drama, rescuing some of the bard’s works that would have been lost forever. The earlier editions that do exist, however, differ markedly from the First Folio, and there is little evidence that Shakespeare oversaw their publication. What, then, is the “real” text?

The Shakespeare we know emerges from hundreds of years of this debate. Current holdings and recent acquisitions in Rare Books and Special Collections shed light on the discussion as it developed into the nineteenth century. Selections from the Second and Third Folio accompany printings by some of Shakespeare’s earliest critical editors, including the famous poet Alexander Pope and the moral censor Thomas Bowdler.

This month’s spotlight exhibit is curated by Daniel Johnson, English Literature and Digital Humanities Librarian, and accompanies the special traveling exhibit “First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare, on tour from the Folger Shakespeare Library.” The exhibit is open to the public 9:00am to 7:00pm Monday through Friday and noon to 5:00pm on weekends, through January 29, 2016 (extended hours due to the “First Folio!” exhibit).