Recent Exhibits
Stormy Weather
November 12, 2007 - February 8, 2008From Shakespeare's "pelting of this pitiless storm" to Snoopy's "It was a dark and stormy night," storms have driven plots, guided metaphors, afflicted travelers, and attracted scientific popular attention. The exhibit Stormy Weather explored storms and weather, drawing upon a wide range of rare books and manuscripts in literature, humor, history, and science. Highlights included "Raining Cats, Dogs & Pitchforks" by George Cruikshank, English almanacs, Ben Franklin's kite experiment, winters in Lapland and Iceland, violent storms at sea, and, of course, the tornado in The Wizard of Oz. News of the exhibit also landed on the front page of the Wisconsin State Journal for January 26. More »
Guest exhibit curator: Sarah Boxhorn
Under the Medicean Stars: Medici Patronage of Science and Natural History, 1537-1737
July 9 - November 2, 2007
In 1610 Galileo Galilei published an account of his discovery of moons orbiting Jupiter. In the hope of gaining financial support, he named these the Medicean Stars after Cosimo II de’ Medici, grand duke of Tuscany. While this may be the best-known instance of Medici patronage of scientific inquiry, it was neither the first nor the last. From the time that Cosimo I became duke of Florence in 1537, members of the Medici family supported the study of nature and inquiry into the workings of the universe.
Using books of science and natural history, often lavishly illustrated, this exhibit traced the financial and intellectual support provided by the grand dukes of Tuscany to members of their courts and to scholars working throughout Italy. Viewed in tandem with the exhibition Natura Morta: Still-Life Paintings and the Medici Collections on display at the Chazen Museum of Art August 25 to October 21, 2007, Under the Medicean Stars highlighted the interests of the Medici in both artistic and scientific endeavors. An online illustrated checklist is available.
Guest exhibit curator: Meghan Doherty
Making Maps, Mapping History
March 19 - June 29, 2007An exhibit of original maps of Wisconsin and the Great Lakes region from 17th-century drawings concocted from travelers' accounts to 21st-century images captured by satellites. The exhibit featured an illustrated, hand-colored map of North America made in 1670, one of the first maps to show all five Great Lakes.
For more information, see Exhibit traces 300 years of Wisconsin and Great Lakes maps and the Great Lakes Maps Web site.
Celebrating the Cairns Collection: Works by American Women Writers Before 1935
December 11, 2006 - March 9, 2007Highlighted the breadth of topics represented in the Cairns Collection, including fiction, poetry, drama, essays, biographical and autobiographical works, sheet music, travel accounts, devotional works, and advice books. The exhibit also featured titles by women writers on education, natural science, temperance, slavery, and women's rights, as well as manuscripts, handwritten diaries and letters.
Secrets Reveal'd: Pseudo-science, the Occult and the Paranormal
from the Holdings of the Department of Special Collections
Through October 13, 2006
This exhibit ranged from early printed books of astrology and numerology to recent studies of UFOs, psychic phenomena and alternative cosmologies. It drew heavily on the Robert Schadewald Collection, which features rare printed books, periodicals, printed ephemera and research files assembled in the course of Schadewald's decades-long investigation into aspects of 19th- and 20th-century pseudo-science. The exhibit also took advantage of the strengths of the Duveen Collection of Alchemy and Chemistry.
Lothar Meggendorfer and Movable Books
Feb. 1, 2006 - April 14, 2006This exhibit highlights color lithographic proof sheets of movable children's books from the Lothar Meggendorfer Collection. Meggendorfer (1847-1925) created more than 100 children's books over the course of his career, many in multiple editions and translations. To set Meggendorfer's "paper engineering" in context, the exhibit also contains books with movable parts from the Renaissance through the 21st century, including treatises on cosmography, geometry, landscape design, and the automobile as well as contemporary artists' books from the Kohler Art Library. Curated by Robin Rider, Curator of Special Collections, and Tracy Honn, Director of the Silver Buckle Press.
To the right is a volvelle from Peter Apian's Cosmographia (1574), one of the early printed books included in the exhibit.
Exhibited Elsewhere
Several works of natural philosophy from Special Collections, including
- George Adams, An essay on vision: Briefly explaining the fabric of the eye, and the nature of vision (1789)
- Claude Dariot, Dariotus redivivus, or, A brief introduction conducing to the judgment of the stars (1653)
- Jacques-Bénigne Winslow, Exposition anatomique de la structure du corps humain (1749)
were on display in Kohler Art Library from mid-January through mid-February 2008 as part of The Scientist's Eye: Dialogues between Art & Science, an exhibition of artist and rare books from the Kohler Art Library and Special Collections. Amy Noell and Beth Zinsli (Ph.D. Students, Art History) co-curated this exhibit in conjunction with "Visualizing Science," February 7-8, 2008, one in the series New Directions in Visual Culture.
In conjunction with the conference "Legacies of Al Andalus:
Islam, Judaism & the West," an exhibit in the first floor lobby of
Memorial Library through early December 2007 featured works from Special Collections and Memorial Library. Shown here is a detail from the title page of a 16th-century edition of the Primera Crónica General (First General Chronicle), a text commissioned by Alfonso X, king of Castile and Leon (1221-1284).
The Wisconsin Papyri collection has been digitized as part of the international project APIS, the Advanced Papyrological Information System. From the APIS search screen, Limit by Collection to Wisconsin, then click search
The Special Collections copy of Albrecht Dürer, Underweysung der Messung (1538) was on display through November 5, 2007, as part of the exhibition Window | Interface at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, St. Louis.
On Wings of Art, the inaugural exhibition in the Art Court at the newly renovated Dane County Regional Airport, featured works from the Department of Special Collections, one of seven individual shows that highlighted many aspects of aviation, mapping and flight through historical photographs, maps, globes, sculptures, films, posters, rare books and contemporary prints. In "Birds in Books," Special Collections curator Robin Rider and then intern Ann Myers presented historically important ornithology titles by Alexander Wilson, John James Audubon and more. Through October 30, 2006.