Each year the University Libraries creates new exhibitions showcasing items from our rare and archival collections. Explore the exhibitions below and use the categories to refine the results. Visit our galleries in the Hornbake and Michelle Smith Performing Arts Libraries for current physical exhibitions. Read more about our exhibition galleries.
Persistent Vision highlights the digitized materials from the D.C. punk collections at the Special Collections in Performing Arts. Home to more than fifty linear feet and thousands of archival items related to the influential Washington, D.C. punk subculture, these collections tell the story of D.C. punk through the voices of its participants and the objects they created—fliers, fanzines, photographs, recordings, and more.
The Queen was on a tour of Canada and the United States in the fall of 1957, and wanted to see a “typical American sport.” For the University of Maryland administration, faculty, staff, students, and fans, the royal visit was a day of great pageantry, pride, honor, and celebration, remembered vividly by game participants and attendees.
Over the years, voting rights have expanded and contracted for many marginalized communities. At the heart of the fight for voting rights are these advocates and grassroot organizations who have demanded expanding the right to vote. Explore items that illustrate the history of voting rights in America.
Celebrate MPT's 50th anniversary with an exhibit that illustrates the station’s origins, showcases the best of its programs through artifacts and digitized videos, and gives visitors behind-the-scenes glimpses into the impressive array of ideas, people, and technology that have helped make MPT a national leader in public television and a treasured resource for the state.
In Cathy O’Neil’s book Weapons of Math Destruction, the author presents arguments for how algorithms increasingly control critical functions in our lives and the danger of increasing our dependence on these flawed algorithms. By better understanding lessons of our past, we can resist succumbing to the same missteps as our predecessors.
Using materials from the Gordon W. Prange Collection and supplemental resources, this exhibition reveals the “American dream” that these communities represented and shows how the Japanese people envisioned their own dreams as they rebuilt their lives and nation in war-torn Tokyo.
Explore the American labor movement’s contributions to social progress using documents, images, videos, and artifacts from the Labor History Collections within the Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Maryland Libraries.
Explore material digitized as part of the Katherine Anne Porter Correspondence Project, including approximately 3,800 letters spanning the years of 1912-1977.
When aspiring filmmakers descended upon the Capital Centre parking lot on May 31, 1986, they had little more in mind than to document a fan scene at full peak. The result was Heavy Metal Parking Lot, a 16-minute film featuring local heavy metal fans.
Celebrate Carroll’s creative legacy and exploresthe worldwide and timeless appeal of Carroll’s work by showcasing illustrations, translations, book design, and ephemera from the past 150 years.
Bladensburg’s story has its dark sides, but by reconnecting with its forgotten past, we preserve something more than history – we preserve an understanding of the complex processes and contradictions that forged the nation we know today.
Generations of students have lent their talents to WMUC. Many have gone on to broadcast-related careers in music, sports, journalism, reporting, production and engineering, while others have simply enjoyed the creative opportunities the station offered as an extracurricular activity. Whatever the future held for each of them, every voice at WMUC has helped to shape the identity of the university.
Examine the life and vision of inspirational firebrand William Morris through his written works, political activism and artistic endeavors. Morris was a man of incredible depth and breadth of talent. His creativity and industry are aspirational for today's citizens.
Explore the lives and experiences of ordinary, little-known women living in Maryland during the Civil War, using their letters, diaries, other manuscripts, photographs, sheet music, maps, rare books, and other publications, as sources.
This exhibition provides a glimpse into the lives and careers of sixteen American women who worked in broadcasting during its most crucial years of development and expansion, in the mid-20th century.
If a picture tells a thousand words, then the millions of postcards sent over the past century suggest that postcards are a significant source for understanding how Americans spent their leisure time.
This exhibition highlights the girls’ series books in the Rose and Joseph Pagnani Collection, which contains over 300 books from 33 different series published from 1917 to 1980.
This exhibit celebrates the publication of At the Barriers, the first book-length collection of essays about British-born poet Thom Gunn.
An encyclopedia of University of Maryland history and traditions, MAC to Millennium brings together traditions, answers to frequently asked questions, and many other fun and unusual tales about our campus from its founding in 1856 as the Maryland Agricultural College (MAC) to the twenty-first century.
On November 29, 1912, smoke and flames interrupted a Thanksgiving dance in the Barracks of Maryland Agricultural College. Most students and faculty members had gone home to celebrate Thanksgiving, but the fifty or so who remained on campus faced a scene that would change the course of the institution's history.
ABA Oral Histories: 1965 is centered around ten interviews conducted by Don Gillis at the 1965 ABA Convention, which are housed in the ABA Research Center.
As part of the ABA's mission to build the concert band repertoire, the organization has held an annual contest since 1956 for best new composition for band. From this exhibit you can learn about the composers, view samples of the scores, hear recordings, and view other related material.
Drawn from sixty years of her work and life, the Bartenieff papers contain a wealth of materials from, by, and about this dancer, scholar, therapist, Labanotator, student, teacher, and author.
This exhibit features archival materials from the Music Library Association (MLA) records, presenting one of many musicological research possibilities in the collection. Materials featured are from the records for Notes, the MLA's quarterly journal since 1934.
This digital collection exhibits materials pertaining to Jim Henson's life and work, making available to UMD’s community of students, scholars, and visitors more than 70 digital videos spanning 35 years of Henson’s groundbreaking work in television and film.
This project aims to provide a broad perspective of the history of the universal pianism and their interpreters and teachers, showing us thousands of piano connections throughout time.
Built on the research of brothers Hugo and Wouter Keesing, this exhibit explores how popular song has been used to respond to, shape, and make sense of war throughout American history.
An exhibition of historic recordings and documents from the records of the Madrigal Singers that illustrate the history of this ensemble and the visionary leadership of Professor Rose Marie Grentzer.
This exhibit traces Dunn's life and career through a timeline of events and a set of videos that show his choreography, his teaching approach, and his own autobiographical dialogue during an informal interview.
Drawn from the Wouter Keesing collection on Fats Domino and New Orleans R&B, this exhibit illustrates the man and the New Orleans music community through recordings, photographs, sheet music, and more.