Online Exhibits
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125 Years of Achievement: The History of Cornell's College of Architecture, Art, and Planning125 years ago Adrew Dickson White challenged the Board of Trustees to establish a new program to provide formal academic training in architecture. This exhibition honors the faculty and students who have fulfilled Andrew Dickson White's aspirations. |
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Abuzz About Bees: 400 Years of Bees & BeekeepingThis exhibit highlights Mann Library's Phillips Beekeeping Collection, the largest and most valuable library on bees and beekeeping in the world. Its books and serials range from the earliest printed book on bees in English to a recent 900-page taxonomy of bees of the world. |
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Artifex – Leonard Baskin & the Gehenna PressWidely recognized as a major figure in 20th century American art, Leonard Baskin embodied the essence of the artifex (Latin for "creator") in blending the roles of master craftsman, artisan, and artist. The exhibition features books and fine prints from Baskin’s private press. |
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Beautiful Birds: Masterpieces from the Hill Ornithology Collection ExhibitThis online exhibition depicts the history of ornithological illustration, and includes images of Metal Engravings & Etchings, Wood Engravings & Woodcuts, Hand-Colored Lithographs and Chromolithographs. |
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The Book in Southeast AsiaThrough the continued efforts of professors and curators such as Charles William Wason, John M. Echols, and Giok Po Oey, Cornell has become a national resource for Southeast Asian publications. This exhibit details the holdings of the Echols Southeast Asia collections. |
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Bridging WorldsCornell’s Kroch Asia Library celebrated the 2007 visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Cornell with an exhibition drawn from its extensive Buddhist words and works. A sampling of the material is available online and focuses on texts, Buddha biographies, monasteries, the caitya, practitioners and the mandala. |
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Cornell University Library History: Cornell’s University LibrariansA history of Cornell University Library's 10 University Librarians from 1868-present. |
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Cornell University Library's Seven-Millionth VolumeOn March 5, Cornell University Library celebrated its 7 millionth acquisition: Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War, a gift by two Cornell alumni donors. This site relays the history of the acquisition in addition to featuring text and images from the volume. |
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Death of the FatherThis project took a multimedia approach to examining the closure of political authority following the death of such patriarchal figures as Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini. An international team of anthropologists worked with the Cornell University Library to develop a web site that integrated text, digital images, audio and film clips from totalitarian regimes in the Soviet Union, Germany, Italy, Japan, Romania, and Yugoslavia. |
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Early Black Women at Cornell: Part and Apart, 1890s-1930sSince the arrival of Jane Eleanor Datcher, the first known black woman to matriculate at Cornell, black women have lived, studied, and cultivated friendships at Cornell while pursuing a premier education. Themes of the exhibit include the experiences of black women as students at Cornell, as well as the stories of racism and anti-racism and the complex road toward inclusion. |
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French Revolution Collections: Web Exhibits and GuidesCornell University's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections holds three major collections of French Revolutionary papers, most notably those of the Marquis de Lafayette, as well as the papers of Benoiste La Forte, and Naval Minister Comte de Maurepas |
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From Domesticity to Modernity: What Was Home Economics?In celebration of the New York State College of Human Ecology's Centennial, this exhibition emphasizes how home economics at Cornell University served as a critical bridge from domesticity in the 19th century to modernity in the 20th century and attempts to answer the question: What was home economics? |
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From Dublin to Ithaca: Cornell's James Joyce CollectionFrom Dublin to Ithaca: Cornell's James Joyce Collection celebrates the Library's spectacular collection of letters, manuscripts and books documenting the life and work of James Joyce. |
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From Manuscript to Print: The Evolution of the Medieval BookThis exhibition traces the history of the medieval book from the 9th to the 15th centuries. Drawn from the holdings of Cornell Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, the exhibition presents a rich variety of medieval manuscripts and printed books. |
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Get Out the Vote! Campaigning for the U. S. PresidencyThis exhibition investigates the process of campaigning and electioneering through partisan artifacts, symbols and ballots. Ten featured elections-all well represented in the Cornell Library's collections-are examined alongside recurrent campaign themes. |
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The Gettysburg AddressThis site details the history of Cornell University Library’s copy of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Cornell’s copy is one of five known copies in Lincoln's hand. It is the only copy accompanied by a letter from Lincoln transmitting the manuscript and by the original envelope addressed and franked by Lincoln. |
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Gravely Gorgeous: Gargoyles, Grotesques and the 19th-Century ImaginationOriginally mounted at the Johnson Museum of Art as a collaboration with the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, this exhibit tells the history of the gargoyle and the grotesque with accompanying photos, prints and original sculpture. |
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Harvest of Freedom: The History of Kitchen Gardens in AmericaDrawing from the special collections of Mann Library and the Ethel Zoe Bailey Horticultural Catalogue Collection of the Bailey Hortorium, this exhibit highlights the changing yet enduring history of kitchen gardening in America. |
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“I will be heard!”: Abolitionism in AmericaThis exhibition documents our country’s intellectual, moral, and political struggle to achieve freedom for all Americans. Featuring manuscripts, letters, photographs, and other materials from Cornell’s pre-eminent anti-slavery and Civil War collections, the exhibition explores the complex history of slavery, resistance, and abolition from the 1700s through 1865. |
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Invention and Enterprise: Ezra Cornell, a Nineteenth Century Life ExhibitThis exhibition is primarily based on the letters, diaries, photographs, documents, and publications in the Ezra Cornell Papers, in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections of the Cornell University Library. Additional items are from the Johnson Art Museum and the College of Engineering (Cornell University). |
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L. A. Fuertes: The Harriman Alaska Expedition ExhibitThis site highlights a journal that Louis Agassiz Fuertes kept during the Harriman Alaska Expedition. The expedition, intended initially as a family vacation, gathered an illustrious group of scientists, writers and artists, and combined scientific research with leisure activities. |
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Legacy of Leadership: Cornell's PresidentsDuring a history that spans nearly 140 years, Cornell has had only 11 presidents. Find out how they began their presidencies and how their contributions have helped to shape a Beloved and Revolutionary Cornell. All items are from the holdings of the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections. |
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Liberty Hyde Bailey: A Man for All SeasonsThis exhibition celebrates the Centennial of the New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the accomplishments of its first Dean, the incomparable Liberty Hyde Bailey, botanist, horticulturalist, plant breeder, traveler and plant explorer, outstanding teacher, astute and successful administrator, lobbyist, rural sociologist, prolific writer and superb editor, environmentalist, philosopher, photographer, poet, and visionary. |
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Mail Order GardensWith their luscious arrays of gardening dreams, seed catalogs have stoked gardner's passions for generations. Seen from a historical perspective, they reflect cultural and social values, alterations in language, demographics, and changing technologies, both in agriculture and printing. |
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Majesty Sublime: Andrew Wilson's Epic 1804 Walk from Philadelphia to Niagara FallsIn October 1804 a former political refugee from Scotland, destined to become America's first scientific ornithologist, began a heroic journey. Alexander Wilson and two companions left Philadelphia and began walking to Niagara Falls, 600 miles away. Following this adventure, Wilson wrote a book-length poem, The Foresters, which described an untouched American wilderness "stamped with the traits of majesty sublime." |
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Mozart and the Keyboard Culture of His TimeAfter achieving pan-European fame as a child prodigy, Mozart became perhaps the greatest keyboard player and composer of his time. This exhibit presents a collection of documents and objects that illuminate how his music was performed and understood in Mozart's time and in the two hundred fifty years since. |
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Not By Bread Alone: America's Culinary HeritageAmerican food culture has evolved through a rich interplay of foreign adaptation and home-grown invention. This exhibit explores the influences and inventions that have shaped American food habits over the past two hundred years. |
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Out of the Teeming Sea: Blaschka Glass Invertebrate ModelsBefore Jacques Cousteau and the aqualung, before Kodachrome and underwater photography--there were the Blaschkas, father and son glassworkers who produced some of the most extraordinary glass objects that have ever been made. Their work has been described as "an artistic marvel in the field of science and a scientific marvel in the field of art." |
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Paper, Leather, Clay and Stone: The Written Word Materialized ExhibitThe visual and tactile aspects of the written word are explored in this exhibition which reflects a common commitment to teaching interconnections in history, and its written, visual, and material culture to college and high school audiences. |
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The Passionate Collector: Willard Fiske and his LibrariesThis exhibition celebrates Willard Fiske’s generosity and intellectual achievements through the display of medieval manuscripts, rare fifteenth-century printed books, his original correspondence, and nineteenth-century photographs from the collections he established. |
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Pasttimes and Paradigms: Games We PlayThe Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections investigates the evolution of games since 1800. The exhibition includes a wide variety of antique and contemporary games, as well as rare books on rules, strategies, and recreation. |
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Peddlers, Pirates & Prostitutes : Subaltern Histories of Southeast Asia 1800-1900This exhibit grew out of Dr. Eric Tagliacozzo's history course on subaltern histories of Southeast Asia. Subaltern history studies the "voiceless," or people who are traditionally outside the structures of power in society. |
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Tianjin - 600 Years of Urban Development & PlanningThis exhibit aims to show how Tianjin developed as a colonial, urban "collage city" of very diverse style and orientation; how the various parts and pieces defined themselves architecturally and socially; and how the parts constituted a functioning whole which dominated most of the economic and cultural landscape of Northern China for almost 100 years. |
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Treasures of the Asia CollectionsDesigned to showcase some of the many items in the Cornell University Library's collection documenting the cultures of Asia. Through books, manuscripts, photographs, and other documents, the exhibition highlights the culture and literature of countries including China, Japan, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines. |
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Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire ExhibitThis multimedia online exhibit presents original documents on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of March 25, 1911 in New York City, in which 146 factory workers, mostly immigrant women, met their untimely and tragic death due to poor safety conditions within the factory. |
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The Wason Collection on East AsiaAn introduction to Cornell University Library's vast collection of books and artifacts pertaining to China, Japan, Korea and Tibet. Part of Explore Cornell. |
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Women in the Literary Marketplace: 1800-1900The books and letters in this exhibition present a cross section of writing by English women in the nineteenth century–a period when women entered the literary marketplace in unprecedented numbers. The exhibition explores how women authors achieved such remarkable success in a profession dominated by men, operating in a culture that frowned upon female literary ambition. |
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Women in Veterinary MedicineFlorence Kimball became the first woman in the United States to receive the DVM degree in 1910. But the story of Cornell's pioneering veterinary alumnae only begins with Dr. Kimball's groundbreaking accomplishment. Thirty-three more women followed her through veterinary college at Cornell in the period from 1910 and 1949. This is the best of their story. |