Web Exhibits

Featured Exhibit

The Darwin Centennial Celebration

This Web-only exhibit explores The Darwin Centennial Celebration, which commemorated the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, and was held at the University of Chicago from November 24 through November 28, 1959. Planned in conjunction with the Darwin/Chicago 2009 conference held at the University of Chicago, October 29-31, 2009, it also complements the exhibit Chicago Celebrates Darwin held at the John Crerar Library, October 19, 2009-March 26, 2010.

	The B. Heller & Co. Collection Founded by Benjamin Heller, whose family practiced sausage-making for generations, Chicago-based B. Heller & Co. began in 1893 as a wholesale manufacturer of dry powders used in the preparation of meat products. Eager to take advantage of new developments in food science and chemistry as well as his skills as a salesman, Benjamin Heller was the quintessential American entrepreneur. Over the years, the company expanded into the manufacture of a variety of food ingredients, as well as insecticides, cleaning agents, and a broad range of kitchen and office supplies. The company continues today as Heller Seasonings & Ingredients, a wholesale supplier based in Chicago.
	Book Use, Book Theory: 1500-1700 This exhibition, co-curated by Bradin Cormack and Carla Mazzio, examines the relationship between book use and forms of knowledge production in the early modern period (up through about 1700). By attending both to the ways in which books defined the conditions of their own use and to the ways in which early readers actually used books, the show delineates some of the models of thought (and, thus, of theory) made possible by such forms of textual practice. Drawing its examples from professional disciplines such as law and medicine, from educational texts, and from practical manuals on, for example, gardening, measuring and cookery, the exhibit considers the relations among kinds of book "use" in order, then, to clarify the relation between practice and theory as mediated through the early printed page. The show considers printed and manuscript marginalia, indexes and tables as being among the physical features of books that both determine and document the interaction between books and readers.
	East European Jews in the German-Jewish Imagination from the Ludwig Rosenberger Library of Judaica The symbol of East European Jewry played an important role in German-Jewish self-definition. Were these so-called Ostjuden foreign or family? Did they represent a tradition from which German Jews would have to dissociate in order to secure their civic equality as Germans, or were they fellow members of a single Jewish nation? This exhibition traces the place of East European Jewry in the imagination and experience of German Jews from emancipation in the nineteenth century to the decline of German-Jewish life on the eve of World War II. The various images of the Ostjuden presented in the items on view reflect the complex face of German Jewry itself.
	Images of Prayer, Politics and Everyday Life from the Harry and Branks Sondheim Jewish Heritage Collection Assembled over many years by Harry Sondheim, a University of Chicago alumnus (A.B. 1954, J.D. 1957), the Sondheim collection spans the 16th to the late 20th century and includes early printed books, prints, drawings, 19th- and 20th-century newspaper and magazine illustrations, and ephemeral items such as New Year cards and postcards depicting Jewish life and customs. In 2005, Mr. Sondheim began to present his collection to the University of Chicago in a series of gifts. The exhibition is organized around representations of the events of the Jewish life-cycle—birth, circumcision, naming, bar mitzvah, marriage, and death—and those of the Jewish calendar—the Sabbath, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Simchat Torah, Sukkot, and Passover. Sondheim also collected numerous images of Jews at labor and leisure and pursued his passion for illustrators and artists Ben Shahn, Moritz Oppenheim, Ephraim Lilien, Alfred Szyk, Alphonse Livy and François-Louis Schmied.
	Integrating the Life of the Mind: African Americans at the University of Chicago, 1870-1940 From the late nineteenth century onward, African Americans have pursued studies in undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs at the University of Chicago. By 1943 the University of Chicago had awarded no less than forty-five PhDs to African Americans, more than any other university in the world. The intellectual work of these graduates shaped fields as diverse as sociology and cell biology; helped construct new fields such as African American history and literature; provided leadership at institutions including Howard University, Tuskegee Institute, and Morehouse College; and drove important policy changes on issues such as lynching. Based on the historical and archival collections, this exhibit presents original manuscripts, rarely seen portraits and photographs, African American publications, books by African American graduates of the University of Chicago, and other documents that trace the interlocking strands of academic and gradual social integration through the mid-twentieth century.
	On Equal Terms: Educating Women at the University of Chicago Since the University welcomed its first students in the fall of 1892, women have had very different stories to tell about the experiments in co-education and faculty diversification; the experience of the classroom, the laboratory, the dorm, and the streets of Hyde Park; the issues of mentorship, intellectual community, and career advancement; and the opportunities for political action and community involvement, for friendship, romance, and sexual experimentation.
	Our Lincoln: Bicentennial Icons from the Barton Collection of Lincolniana Marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, this exhibition presents a selection of documents and artifacts from the University of Chicago Library's William E. Barton Collection of Lincolniana. The Barton Collection was acquired by the Library in 1932 and served for decades as a focus of Lincoln interest in Chicago and the Midwest. Selected items were exhibited at Chicago's Century of Progress Exposition, and the collection was later installed in its own museum room in Harper Memorial Library on the University of Chicago campus. Among the notable icons of Barton Collection on display in this exhibition are a handwritten page from the young Lincoln’s “Sum Book”; one of the few surviving letters written by Lincoln to his wife Mary Todd Lincoln; bronze casts of sculptor Leonard Volk’s life mask and hands of Lincoln; a large wool shawl once owned by Lincoln; a little known oil portrait of Lincoln; and a presentation copy of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Lincoln.
	Printing for the Modern Age: Commerce,Craft, and Culture in the RR Donnelley Archive From the time of its founding in Chicago in 1864, R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company has established a strong reputation as an innovative leader in all fields of the modern commercial printing industry. Books, directories, periodicals, and other printed materials from RR Donnelley's presses have set high standards for efficient production and innovative use of new technologies. The variety of RR Donnelley products over more than 140 years is remarkable -- Sears, Ward's, and Penny's retail catalogs; Daniel Burnham's 1909 folio-sized Plan of Chicago; the elegantly designed, limited-edition "Four American Books" issued in 1930; publications of all types for the 1933-1934 Chicago world's fair, A Century of Progress; many illustrated popular magazines ranging from Time, Life, and Business Week to Sunset and National Geographic; and visually engaging color-printed advertising materials for automobile manufacturers and other corporations, among many printed materials of all kinds.