Past exhibitions & displays
Exhibitions
2025
7 February – 31 August 2025
Treasury, Weston Library
About the exhibition
Discover how radio changed home life when it was the newest of new technologies.
Drawing on a rich range of visual and aural material, this exhibition explored the hype and reality of the early years of radio.
Focussing on the first two decades of radio, the exhibition charted big changes – such as radio's impact on family dynamics – to everyday concerns about its influence on dinnertime conversation. All brought to life with newly uncovered first-hand accounts, giving a voice to the listeners who lived through this massive social and technological change.
Listen In and uncover how radio changed the home.
Curator
Beaty Rubens, former BBC radio producer, writer and Byrne Bussey Marconi Fellow 2023–24.
Acknowledgments
This exhibition was kindly supported by Dave Aylott, in memory of the actor and broadcaster Desmond Carrington
6 June 2025 – 1 February 2026
ST Lee Gallery, Weston Library
About the exhibition
What makes a treasure? Is it age, rarity, beauty – or something else?
Treasured invites you to explore the meaning of value itself through some of the world’s most remarkable books and manuscripts, several of which were acquired with the help of the Friends of the Bodleian which celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2025.
This exhibition showcases some of the renowned items from Bodleian collections – the Romance of Alexander, the Gutenberg Bible, manuscripts of Jane Austen, JRR Tolkien and the Herculaneum scroll – alongside objects from around the world. It shines a light on the human stories behind the books and manuscripts which have shaped our intellectual heritage, and the hearts and minds of those who cherish them.
Come and see for yourself and find out what you treasure most!
Curators
- Andrew Dunning, R.W. Hunt Curator of Medieval Manuscripts
- Lydia Heeley, Bern and Ronny Schwartz Curator of Photography
- Nicholas Kontovas, Nizami Ganjavi Curator for the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Türkiye
- Peter Toth, Cornelia Starks Curator of Greek Collections
- Boya Zhang, K.B. Chen China Centre Library
1 October 2025 – 6 April 2026
Treasury, Weston Library
About the exhibition
Discover the enduring legacy of one of the greatest writers of the past century.
Tradecraft drew upon the vast archive of John le Carré, otherwise known as David Cornwell. Held at the Bodleian Libraries, this material – much of which is displayed for the first time – spans Cornwell’s entire life and career, from his time as a student at Lincoln College, Oxford, to drafts penned in his final weeks.
This exhibition offered unique insights into the working methods of the writer who shaped the modern spy novel. 'Tradecraft' is a word le Carré used to describe the techniques of espionage, but it might also be applied to his own skilled craft as a writer and social commentator.
Co-curated by le Carré’s collaborator and friend Professor Federico Varese and Dr Jessica Douthwaite with the support of the le Carré family, John le Carré: Tradecraft provided a multifaceted portrait of the author's life and creative process, featuring research, drafts, and corrections for his novels, non-fiction, and adaptations, as well as personal correspondence.
Highlights include annotated manuscripts of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Constant Gardener, and The Little Drummer Girl; previously unseen family photographs; original sketches and watercolour paintings; and letters to fans and friends.
Curators
Federico Varese, Professor of Sociology at the Centre d’études Européennes et de Politique Comparée, Sciences Po, Paris, and Senior Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford.
Jessica Douthwaite, Modern British historian and museums professional.
11 October – 30 November 2025
Blackwell Hall, Weston Library
About the exhibition
Paddy Summerfield (1947–2024) was a photographer who developed a new psychological vision of photography, turning the camera on the innermost workings of the human mind and heart.
Despite an ongoing battle with bipolar disorder, leading the photographer to continue living with his parents in Oxford, Summerfield rose to prominence in the 1980s. Later, his five critically acclaimed publications depicted Summerfield’s most intense and enduring photographic obsessions: desire and alienation.
This substantial retrospective of the photographer’s work showed the stages of Summerfield’s creative evolution through comprehensive installations inspired by his five major publications as well as other significant bodies of work.
The exhibition also offered a glimpse of both the physicality and mastery of Summerfield's unique and idiosyncratic relationship with the craft of photographic print making.
This exhibition was part of Photo Oxford.
A small display – Paddy Summerfield: Order out of chaos – was open from the end of August until 30 November in Blackwall Hall. It previewed Summerfield's working process and serves as a forerunner to the full exhibition.
2024
29 February 2024 – 5 January 2025
Treasury, Weston Library
Description
'Write, Cut, Rewrite is an exhibition dedicated to the creative importance of editing in literature, often referred to as ‘killing your darlings’.
Often, in the attempt to find the perfect form, the author cuts more words than the ones that are eventually published, and one might expect these discarded fragments to end up in waste-paper baskets and disappear. But many are preserved in libraries and archives, a testament to the importance of this form of creative undoing in the writing process.
The exhibition offers a peek behind the scenes into the writers’ workshops, drawing upon the Bodleian Libraries’ unparalleled collection of modern manuscripts from the 18th century to today, to reveal little-known literary revelations. It features abandoned works, such as Jane Austen’s The Watsons, and cases of censorship, such as Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. It also touched on the revisions and rewritings of famous books, offering a unique chance to look over the shoulder of literary greats at the moment of creation.
Highlights include discarded ideas, fundamental changes, deletions, additions, notes and scribbles from great authors such as Mary and Percy Shelley, Jane Austen, James Joyce, Raymond Chandler, Ian Fleming, Samuel Beckett, and John le Carré.'
Curators
- Dirk Van Hulle, Professor of Bibliography and Modern Book History at the University of Oxford
- Mark Nixon, Professor of Modern Literature and Beckett Studies at the University of Reading
30 May – 27 October 2024
ST Lee Gallery, Weston Library
Archived link
Description
Kafka: Making of an Icon marks the 100th anniversary of the author’s death, celebrating not only his achievements and creativity but also how he continues to inspire new literary, theatrical and cinematic creations around the world.
The exhibition will feature materials from the archives of the Bodleian Libraries, which hold the majority of Franz Kafka's papers, including literary notebooks, drawings, diaries, letters, postcards, glossaries, and photographs. Notably, the notebooks in the archive include the original manuscripts of two of Kafka’s unfinished novels, Das Schloss (The Castle) and Der Verschollene (America), as well as a number of short stories.
Using this rich archive, the exhibition not only sets Kafka in the context of his life and times but also shows how his own experiences nourished his imagination. His notebooks show how his travels in Western Europe enabled him to practise descriptive writing, while his readings strengthened his fascination with remote spaces and made him aware of European colonialism.
Curators
This exhibition is curated by Professor Carolin Duttlinger, Co-Director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre; Professor Katrin M. Kohl, Co-Director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre; Professor Barry Murnane, Co-Director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre; Dr Meindert Peters, Leverhulme Research Fellow at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages; and Dr Karolina Watroba, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. It is supported by Malgorzata Czepiel, Curator of the Kafka Archive at the Bodleian Libraries.
6 December 2024 – 27 April 2025
ST Lee Gallery, Weston Library
Description
'Discover how people have sought answers to life’s big questions throughout history.
Drawing on material from across time and cultures – from oracle bones from Shang Dynasty China (ca. 1250–1050 BCE) to an autobiography of Ronald Reagan’s White House astrologer – Oracles, Omens and Answers will explore the different techniques humans have used to unveil the past, understand the present and predict the future.
From palm reading and astrology to weather and public health forecasting, see how societies have turned to divination to ask questions that resonate with us today: on health, relationships, money and politics.
Step into the world of divination and uncover the ways that humanity has tried to confront the unknown and uncertain.'
Curators
Dr Michelle Pfeffer (formerly Aroney), historian of science and religion at Magdalen College, Oxford.
Professor David Zeitlyn, Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford and an initiated Mambila gam dù spider diviner.
2023
16 June – 29 October 2023
ST Lee, Weston Library
Description
The giving and receiving of gifts is fundamental to human societies.
Drawing on material from ancient Sumerian writing tablets to contemporary fiction for children, Gifts and Books explored the importance of gift-giving through books and across time, and how this apparently simple act reveals wider interactions, relationships and belief systems.
Generosity. Power. Reverence. Love. Struggle. Obligation.
Come and explore the meaning of gifts, exchange and the stories we tell about them.
Curator
Dr Nicholas Perkins, Associate Professor and Tutor in English, St Hugh's College, University of Oxford
19 July 2023 – 21 January 2024
Treasury, Weston Library
Description
'Something magical happens when letters and the book become the raw material of art.
Alphabets Alive! brings the magic of books and alphabets to life, featuring more than 150 works inspired by the alphabet – manuscripts, prints, posters, sculptures, alphabet books and, especially, artists’ books in their many shapes, sizes, colours, materials and languages.
Encounter medieval and modern bestiaries, miniature and monumental books, alphabets made by Renaissance designers or generated by artificial intelligence, and abecedaries of human bodies and beachcombed rocks. Trace how the centuries-old ABC book for teaching children to read has influenced modern alphabet books and artists' books, and discover how the simple structure of the alphabet inspires works that are playful, provocative and profound.'
Curator
Robert Bolick, collector of artists’ books and curator of Books On Books.
8 December 2023 – 28 April 2024
ST Lee Gallery, Weston Library
Description
'Misogynist. Feminist. Conservative. Radical. Respectful. Irreverent. Monocultural. Multicultural. Imperial. Domestic. English. European. Catholic. Protestant.
Chaucer Here and Now presents Geoffrey Chaucer as you haven’t seen him before. Not as the “Father of English Literature”, but as a dynamic, global author, whose works have been reworked and reinterpreted over time and around the world. Each generation reinvents Chaucer, taking inspiration from his work, and finding new meanings.
Drawing on material ranging from the earliest known manuscript of The Canterbury Tales to contemporary adaptions in theatre and film, this exhibition explores the many creative responses to Chaucer and asks why this medieval author still fascinates so many people today.
Come and reinvent Geoffrey Chaucer for yourself.'
Curator
Professor Marion Turner, JRR Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford.
17 March – 18 June 2023
Treasury, Weston Library
Description
'Bright Sparks: Photography and the Talbot Archive celebrates the Bodleian Libraries' acquisition of the archive of the British inventor of photography, William Henry Fox Talbot, and the legacy of his life and work.
This fascinating exhibition puts items from the archive in conversation with the works of contemporary artists. It brings the archive to life in new ways, showcasing how Talbot’s work influenced and inspired other artists. Bright Sparks creates a dialogue between past and present – between Talbot’s pioneering experiments and the practices and concerns of later photographers.
The exhibition includes key works from the Bodleian Libraries’ collections alongside photography by figures such as Hiroshi Sugimoto, Cornelia Parker, Man Ray, Martin Parr, Carleton Watkins, Daniel Meadows, Helen Muspratt, Julia Margaret Cameron, Justine Varga, Camille Corot, Kilian Brier, Anne Ferran, Alison Rossiter, Gerhard Richter and Garry Fabian Miller.'
Curator
Geoffrey Batchen, Professor of the History of Art at the University of Oxford and a specialist in the history of photography.
1 February – 7 May 2023
ST Lee Gallery, Weston Library
Description
'The announcement of photography’s invention in January 1839, first in Paris and then in London, introduced a ‘new power’ into British life. This new power – derived from photography’s capacity to automatically capture the images created in a camera – was soon being used for every conceivable purpose.
A New Power: Photography in Britain 1800–1850 explores the early history of photography, starting with the invention of the medium and the earliest dissemination of photographic images in Britain and ending with the famous Great Exhibition of 1851. It examines the broad range of uses that photography would quickly come to fill, from documenting the invention of celebrity to the very first ‘travel photography’ and how this helped to shore up colonial sensibilities.
By showing how photography intersected with all aspects of a nascent modernity, A New Power reveals photography’s crucial role in making Britain the society it is today.'
Curator
This exhibition was curated by Geoffrey Batchen, Professor of the History of Art at the University of Oxford and a specialist in the history of photography.
2022
13 April 2022 – 5 February 2023
Treasury, Weston Library
Description
Discover the story of the excavation of Tutankhamun’s tomb through the eyes of the archaeologists on the ground.
2022 marks 100 years since the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb. In 1922 Howard Carter and his team discovered the tomb of the young king Tutankhamun at Luxor. It was the first known intact royal burial from ancient Egypt, and preserved a wealth of ritual items and objects from the king’s life – flowers and fruit as well as gold...
Using Carter’s archive of photographs, letters, plans, drawings and diaries – now part of the Griffith Institute, Oxford – this exhibition brings to life the complex stories of the discovery, excavation, documentation and conservation of Tutankhamun’s tomb, including often overlooked Egyptian members of the archaeological team.
Come and explore this vivid and intimate insight into one of the world’s most famous archaeological discoveries.
Watch a fly-through of the tomb of Tutankhamun, as reconstructed from the records in the archive. The film is produced by Christopher Breninek, Matthieu Götz and Benny Waszk, (c) The Griffith Institute (University of Oxford) and The Bodleian Libraries.
Curators
- Professor Richard Bruce Parkinson
- Dr Daniela Rosenow
Acknowledgements
In collaboration with The Griffith Institute.
27 May – 4 December 2022
ST Lee Gallery, Weston Library
View the archived version of the exhibition
Description
'Rub, stroke, chew, wear, sniff – Sensational Books explored our experiences of the book beyond reading.
Structured around six senses of sight, sound, taste, smell, touch and proprioception – the sense of self-movement and body-perception – this exhibition unlocked a world of sensory engagement with books.
We explored how early books and manuscripts engaged with the senses, in ways similar to more recent works by book artists in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Displays included dynamic and interactive elements from sound artists, tactile items and even a smell wall.'
Artist responses
A number of art works were commissioned for the exhibition in partnership with Fusion Arts, Oxford. The works included:
- Gill Partington, Five flips books
- Helen Frosi, When Air Becomes Breath and Breath Becomes Spirit
Performance score and ritual sounding objects. A final work was performed at the accompanying late evening event - Pale Blue Dot Collective – Louise Beer + John Hooper, Audioscripts
New and archival sound - Andrew Albin and Amy Sterly, Multiplicamini
Sheepskin parchment, lightsheet, sound
Curators
- Kathryn Rudy, Professor of Art History at the University of St Andrews
- Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford
17 November 2022 – 19 February 2023
Blackwell Hall, Weston Library
View the archived version of the exhibition
Description
These Things Matter: Empire, Exploitation and Everyday Racism explored the devastating and long-term effects of the British Empire. It was curated in partnership with the Museum of Colour (MoC) and Oxford-based charity Fusion Arts.
Available globally through the MoC's digital platform and in person at the Weston Library, These Things Matter showed how every day communications maintained the British Empire and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Discover how maps, letters and even the Bible were edited deliberately to manipulate millions of people and to justify the value of trading African bodies.
The exhibition featured selected artefacts from the Bodleian Libraries' colonial collections. These were positioned alongside seven contemporary responses from artists selected by the MoC and Fusion Arts: Bunmi Ogunsiji, Grace Lee, Amina Atiq, Dirty Freud, Nilupa Yasmin, Mahdy Abo Bahat and Johannah Latchem. Each installation examined an artefact through a 21st-century lens and is a raw and, at times, brutal illustration of the artist’s personal response.
These Things Matter ran in Blackwell Hall at the Weston Library and online through the Museum of Colour.
Artists
- Amina Atiq
- Bunmi Ogunsiji
- Dirty Freud
- Grace (SOME.GAL)
- Johannah Latchem
- Mahdy Abo Bahat
- Nilupa Yasmin
Acknowledgements
In partnership with the Museum of Colour (MoC) and Fusion Arts. Funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and supported by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and People’s Palace Projects.
7 July – 11 September 2022
Blackwell Hall, Weston Library
View the archived version of the exhibition
Description
'Designer Bookbinders, one of the world’s foremost bookbinding societies devoted to the art and craft of the handbound book, again collaborates with Mark Getty and the Bodleian Library to attract top binders from all over the world.
This exhibition showcased the 28 prize winners, and a further 48 selected entries with the theme Plants, Flora and Gardens. The two prestigious top prizes are in memory of Sir Paul Getty, collector, sponsor and advocate of the craft of bookbinding. A further 25 silver prizes were awarded for the most distinguished bindings in the competition, alongside the Oxford University Students’ Prize.
Plants play a central role to life on Earth. They have provided food, clothing, shelter & medicines for many centuries. Plants have many symbolic uses in art, mythology and literature and gardens have provided employment, leisure and enjoyment throughout history. The chosen theme of plants, gardens and anything connected with flora helped celebrate the 400th Anniversary of the founding of the Oxford Botanic Gardens, the oldest Botanic Garden in Great Britain and one of the oldest scientific gardens in the world.'
Fellows
- Stuart Brockman
- Louise Brockman
Acknowledgements
In collaboration with Designer Bookbinders.
2021
17 May – 27 June 2021
Blackwell Hall, Weston Library
View the archived version of the exhibition
Description
'The pioneering photographer, Helen Muspratt (1907–2001) produced some of the most astonishing images of the twentieth century.
This exhibition explored an extraordinary body of work in many different styles and genres from experimental photography using techniques such as solarisation, to social documentary and studio portraiture.
In the late 1930s Muspratt opened a studio in Oxford where she became established as a remarkable portrait photographer. Critical to all her work was her preoccupation with the face – its ‘shape and angle’ – and she became an eminent portrait photographer, recording some of the leading figures of the twentieth century.
This exhibition marks the recent and important gift of the Helen Muspratt photographic archive to the Bodleian Libraries, including over 2,000 original prints and numerous surviving negatives. This retrospective forms part of Photo Oxford Festival 2020, the theme for which is Women and Photography and coincides with the centenary of the first woman matriculating and graduating from the University of Oxford.'
Acknowledgements
The Bodleian Libraries are grateful to Ellen Miller for her support of the exhibition and the Ampersand Foundation for its support of the photographic archives.
Curator
Jessica Sutcliffe
18 May – 24 October 2021
S T Lee Gallery, Weston Library
View the archived version of the exhibition
Description
'Plants are essential to all aspects of our lives. They are central to the solution of global strategic issues we face such as food security, environmental change and species conservation.
Marking the anniversary of the foundation of the Oxford Botanic Garden, in 1621, this exhibition reflected on four centuries of botanical research and teaching at the University of Oxford.
The exhibition charted the story of Oxford botany as an ever-changing organism, from its early roots as physic garden in the seventeenth century to the collaborative research of today.
The last 400 years has shown that Plant Sciences at Oxford succeeds by focusing on quality research and by equipping subsequent generations with the tools necessary to frame and answer new questions about the biology of plants.'
Curator
Professor Stephen Harris, Druce Curator (Herbaria), Associate Professor in Plant Sciences
Acknowledgements
- Professor Simon Hiscock, Director, Oxford Botanic Garden & Harcourt Arboretum
- Dr Chris Thorogood, Deputy Director and Head of Science, Oxford Botanic Garden & Harcourt Arboretum
- Part of Oxford Botany 400
29 September 2021 – 20 March 2022
Treasury, Weston Library
View the archived version of the exhibition
Description
''Who is not a Foole, who is free from Melancholy?’, asked Robert Burton, 400 years ago, and answered his own question: ‘all the world is mad, is melancholy, dotes’.
Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, first published in 1621, is a huge and innovative encyclopaedia of mental and emotional disorder, as understood in the late Renaissance. A scholar and clergyman in Christ Church, Oxford, Burton was one of the early users of the Bodleian Library and left many of the books in his own substantial collection to the Bodleian. The Anatomy examines the causes and symptoms of melancholy or, as we would call it today, depression. Its remedies range from good food and exercise, to laughter, reading, friends, and music. Its closing page recommends that the reader ‘be not solitary, be not idle’, and the distraction provided by reading the Anatomy itself is one suggested cure.
Four hundred years later – as our mental health faces many challenges – this exhibition revisited the Anatomy, using objects from the Bodleian Libraries to highlight common experiences and connections over time. Curated by Oxford experts in mental health research and the humanities, the exhibition showed how Burton’s holistic and multifaceted conception of cure finds surprising echoes in contemporary psychiatry and prescriptions for mental health.'
Curators
Dr Kathryn Murphy, Professor John Geddes, Dr Richard Lawes, Simon D. Kyle, Stephen Puntis, Gulamabbas Lakha, Dr Kate Saunders, Dr Phil Burnet and Joseph Butler
Acknowledgements
Generously supported by The Guy and Elinor Meynell Charitable Trust
3 December 2021 – 18 April 2022
ST Lee Gallery, Weston Library
View the archived version of the exhibition
Description
'North Sea Crossings told the story of Anglo-Dutch exchanges through beautiful medieval manuscripts, early prints, maps, animal stories and other treasures from the Bodleian’s collections.
For centuries the North Sea has been a highway connecting Britain with its Dutch neighbours, a mere 133 kilometres away at its closest point.
Focusing on the period from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the Glorious Revolution of 1688, this exhibition explored how exchanges between England and the Netherlands have shaped literature, book production and institutions such as the Bodleian itself, on either side of the North Sea. It also told the story of a very crafty Dutch visitor, Reynard the Fox.
In the aftermath of Britain’s exit from the European Union, this exhibition on the long history of Anglo-Dutch relations has much to tell us about the benefits of international collaboration today.'
Curators
- Sjoerd Levelt, Senior Research Associate, University of Bristol
- Ad Putter, Professor of Medieval English, University of Bristol
- Anne-Louise Avery, writer and director of the children's educational outreach organisation Flash of Splendour
Acknowledgements
North Sea Crossings is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund. A collaborative project with the University of Bristol.
2020
11 January – 22 March 2020
View the archived version of the exhibition
Description
'Join Alice Liddell (Alice in Wonderland) on a journey through the history of early typhoid control and discover how typhoid influenced the design of the water and sewage systems under our feet. Solve the riddle of mysterious typhoid outbreaks in Victorian Oxford, find out how doctors and engineers controlled typhoid to stop the disease from spreading and experience Alice’s adventure into Typhoidland.
Alice in Typhoidland explored the past and present of typhoid. A killer of paupers, princes, and presidents, typhoid was an invisible threat in Victorian England and remains dangerous in many areas today. Join Alice Liddell (Alice in Wonderland) on a murky tour of Oxford’s underside. Learn how doctors and engineers controlled typhoid to stop the disease from spreading in Alice’s city, and see how sanitation, vaccination, and typhoid have evolved since.
Using the biography of one of Oxford’s best-known inhabitants, Alice Liddell we introduced visitors to the biology, history, and current context of typhoid through an exhibition in museum locations in Oxford (UK) and Atlanta (US). The exhibition also travelled to healthcare settings in countries highly affected by typhoid as digital content. Our aim was to raise awareness for the current global burden of typhoid and the need for collective action.
5 March 2020 – 30 August 2021
Weston Library and online
View the archived version of this exhibition
Description
'The Art of Advertising told the story of British advertising from the mid-18th century to the 1930s through an incredible collection of handbills, trade cards, novelties, posters and much more.
Advertisements were not made to be preserved. Their chance survival transforms them into unwitting historic documents, often revealing tiny, sometimes unexpected, details of the lives of our ancestors. Advertisements can also capture in their design the spirit of their age. And yet… we must not forget that adverts are rife with hype and idealisation. They conceal as much as they reveal. The women, men and children who smile at us from so many of these images represent an ideal, a way of living enhanced by the product being advertised.
Advertisements have other stories to tell too. Developments in printing were critical to the creation of a new form of art — commercial art — and to the generation of the wealth of striking and iconic images we now associate with the art of advertising.
Nearly all the exhibits were drawn from the Bodleian’s renowned John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, one of the largest and most important collections of printed ephemera in the world.'
Curator
Julie Anne Lambert
2019
15 February - 2 June 2019
View the archived version of the exhibition
Description
Babel: Adventures in Translation took visitors beyond the ancient myth of the Tower of Babel and society's quest for a universal language to explore the ubiquity and power of translation in the movement of ideas, stories and cultural practices around the world.
Through a stunning selection of objects ranging from a second century papyrus book and illuminated manuscripts to animal stories, religious books and a bilingual road sign, Babel exploded the notion that translation is merely about word-for-word rendering into another language, or that it is obsolete in the era of global English and Google Translate. Treasures from the Bodleian Libraries' collections, both ancient and modern, illustrated how stories have travelled across time, territory, language and medium.
Highlights on show included:
- a 4000-year-old bowl inscribed with a language that still resists deciphering
- an unpublished Tolkien notebook revealing how he experimented with Esperanto before creating his fictional Elvish languages
- an experimental 1950s computer programme designed to generate love letters
Exploring themes of multiculturalism and identity, the exhibition considered issues that are more relevant than ever as Britain approaches Brexit. It also tackled the tricky question of how to translate for the distant future.
Curators
- Katrin Kohl, Professor of German Literature at the University of Oxford
- Dennis Duncan, writer, translator and Visiting Fellow at St Peter’s College
- Stephen Harrison, writer, Professor of Latin Literature and Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Corpus Christi College
- Matthew Reynolds, writer, Professor of English and Comparative Criticism and Fellow and Tutor in English at St Anne’s College
21 March 2019 - 9 February 2020
View the archived version of the exhibition
Description
For centuries, artists and scientists have wrestled with how to convey three-dimensional objects on the page. Using some of the Bodleian Libraries’ finest books, manuscripts, prints and drawings, Thinking 3D told the story of the development of three-dimensional communication over the last 500 years.
The exhibition showed how new techniques, developed from the Renaissance onwards, revolutionised the way ideas in the fields of anatomy, architecture, astronomy and geometry were relayed. It explored how this has influenced how we perceive the world today.
The exhibition was timed to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci. It showed how Leonardo and his contemporaries made great strides in the realistic depiction of 3D forms. Thinking 3D explored technological advances up to the present day including 3D modelling, photography and stereoscopy; and also highlighted the works of modern practitioners and researchers in Oxford.
The exhibition was accompanied by a range of other exhibitions and events across Oxford in 2019 as part of the Thinking 3D research project.
Curators
- Daryl Green, Librarian at Magdalen College, Oxford
- Dr Laura Moretti, Senior Lecturer in Art History, University of St Andrews
5 July 2019 - 8 March 2020
View the archived version of the exhibition
Description
'Every map tells a story. Talking Maps is a celebration of maps and what they tell us about the places they depict and the people that make and use them.
Drawing on the Bodleian's unparalleled collection of more than 1.5 million maps, this exhibition brings together an extraordinary selection of ancient, pre-modern and contemporary maps from a range of cultures and in a variety of formats as well as showcasing fascinating imaginary, fictional and war maps.
Talking Maps explores how maps are neither transparent objects of scientific communication, nor baleful tools of ideology, but proposals about the world that help people to understand who they are by describing where they are.
Highlights on show include the Gough Map, the earliest surviving map showing Great Britain in a recognisable form, the Selden Map, a late Ming map of the South China Sea, and fictional maps by CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. Map treasures from the Libraries' collection will be shown alongside specially commissioned 3D installations and artworks, and exciting works on loan from artists and other institutions.'
Curators
- Nick Millea, Bodleian Map Librarian
- Jerry Brotton, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary University of London
4 October - 24 November 2019
View the archived version of the exhibition
Description
'Daniel Meadows: Now and Then celebrated the work of one of Britain’s foremost photographers who worked from the 1970s onward, authentically capturing British life. The show presented pairs of portraits taken in the 1970s and again in the 1990s, alongside short films explaining how the pictures came about and what happened next.
The exhibition also marked the recent and important gift of Daniel Meadows’ photographic archive to the Bodleian Libraries.'
Acknowledgements
The Bodleian Libraries are grateful to The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation for its support of the exhibition and accompanying publication.
2018
1 June - 28 October 2018
Weston Library
View the archived version of the exhibition
Description
'Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth explored Tolkien’s amazing legacy from his genius as an artist, poet, linguist, and author to his academic career and private life. The exhibition took you on a journey through Tolkien’s famous works, The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings, displaying an array of draft manuscripts, striking illustrations and maps drawn for his publications. Discover Tolkien’s early abstract paintings from The Book of Ishness, the touching tales he wrote for his children, rare objects that belonged to Tolkien, exclusive fan mail; and private letters.'
Curator
Catherine McIlwaine, Tolkien Archivist at the Bodleian Library
Acknowledgements
Made possible through the generosity of The Tolkien Trust. The Bodleian Libraries gratefully acknowledges the close collaboration of the Tolkien Estate and the Tolkien family.
6 March 2018 – 24 February 2019
Weston Library
View the archived version of the exhibition
Description
'Pirates and poets; suffragettes and explorers - this exhibition celebrated the achievements of women who dared to do the unexpected. Sappho to Suffrage showcased some of the Bodleian's most remarkable and treasured items.'
Curator
Professor Senia Paseta, co-Director of Women in the Humanities, History Tutor at St Hugh’s College, University of Oxford
2017
1 December 2017 – 22 April 2018
View the archived version of the exhibition
Description
This exhibition illustrated the graphic design of handwritten manuscripts and inscriptions for the first thousand years of English, across the Middle Ages.
Designing English: Graphics on the Medieval Page showcased the Bodleian Library's rich holdings of medieval manuscripts in English, ranging from Old English picture books or notes scratched into herbals, through to fragments of medieval songs scribbled on spare pages, masterpieces framed with illustrations and gold, or new page designs for practical tasks, such as manuals for handling swans. It covered the experiences of both the makers and the users of writing: how craftspeople planned and made books, and how readers responded to their designs.
To show the likeness to modern craft, Designing English was shown alongside Redesigning the Medieval book, a competition and display of contemporary book arts inspired by the exhibition. A podcast series and YouTube playlist was also recorded by Professor Daniel Wakelin and colleagues.
Curator
Professor Daniel Wakelin, Jeremy Griffiths Professor of Medieval English Palaeography at the University of Oxford
23 June - 29 October 2017
View the archived version of the exhibition
Description
'Which Jane Austen? presented Austen as an ambitious and risk-taking businesswoman and a wartime writer who was informed and inspired by the surprising international adventures of her family and relations.
Through a spectacular selection of Austen materials displayed together for the first time, the Bodleian Libraries delved into the myriad influences on this great writer's work.'
Curator
Professor Kathryn Sutherland, world-leading Austen expert at Oxford University
10 February - 21 May 2017
View the archived version of the exhibition
Description
The exhibition used a spectacular selection of eye witness accounts, scientific observations and artwork to chart how our understanding of volcanoes has evolved over the past two millennia.
The exhibition examined some of the world's most spectacular volcanoes including the 79 AD eruption of Vesuvius, one of the most catastrophic eruptions in European history, and the 19th century eruptions of Krakatoa and Santorini, two of the first volcanic eruptions to be intensely studied by modern scientists.
Today, satellites monitor volcanic activity and anyone with internet access can watch volcanic eruptions live in real time. In the past, volcanic eruptions were described in letters, manuscript accounts and early printed books, and illustrated through sketches, woodcuts and engravings. Many of these fascinating accounts are preserved in the Bodleian's historic collections and were on display in Volcanoes at the Weston Library.
Curator
David Pyle, Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford
31 March 2017 - 11 February 2018
View the archived version of the exhibition
Description
'An exhibition displaying a selection of the Bodleian Libraries' most magnificent items. It featured rare and renowned items including Handel's Messiah, Shakespeare's First Folio, William Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell and the venerated Shikshapatri.
The exhibition presented some of the best of the 12 million items in the Bodleian's collections and uniquely displays these treasures in 21 pairs. Familiar icons of the Libraries' extraordinary holdings were shown alongside the less familiar, opening new avenues into the wealth of the Bodleian's famous collections.
Be transported to a tropical forest in this new exhibition that pairs up some of the Libraries' most iconic items. Featuring lavishly illustrated natural history books alongside more familiar titles, such as Handel's Messiah and Shakespeare's First Folio, this fascinating exhibition brought together some of the best of the 12 million items in the Bodleian's collections.'
Curator
Francesca Galligan, Assistant Librarian, Rare Books, Bodleian Libraries.
8 September – 22 October 2017
View the archived version of the exhibition
Description
'Sixty-nine images are the culmination of three years' work by Parr, in collaboration with the Bodleian Libraries and Oxford University Press, to document some of the most iconic and interesting events, spaces and traditions at the renowned University.
Parr is one of Britain's best-known contemporary photographers and President of Magnum, the world-famous photographic agency. For more than 40 years, Parr has largely turned his lens to aspects of British culture. Whether early black and white documentary work examining typically English traditions or acute observations of the impact of consumerism on our daily lives, Parr's photographs demonstrate tremendous perception and affection for his subjects. By focusing on the mundane, Parr is renowned for his unique brand of satire, wit and colour photography.
From 2014 to 2016 Parr was given unique access to ceremonies and celebrations across the University: graduations, balls, and sporting events as well as behind the scenes student antics and rituals, ceremonies and age-old traditions that still hold significance today. Parr has also photographed academic life including tutorials, lectures and cutting-edge research activity and college life. With his characteristically witty and unflinching eye, Parr was able to capture the many different quirks of university life at Oxford that have rarely been seen or documented by those outside of the institution.'
Curator
Martin Parr
2016
22 April - 18 September 2016
About the exhibition
To mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, the Bodleian Libraries presented a major exhibition, fittingly called Shakespeare's Dead, which revealed the unique ways in which Shakespeare brings dying, death and the dead to life.
The exhibition was curated by two University of Oxford English professors, Simon Palfrey and Emma Smith, whose Image of the front page of Shakespeare's First Folio, Bodleian Libraries innovative research on this subject underpinned the exhibition's content.
The exhibition featured many gems from the Bodleian's world-famous collections, including Shakespeare's First Folio, the earliest editions of his works including Romeo & Juliet and Venus and Adonis, and many other original quarto playbooks. Shakespeare's own works was accompanied by illuminating examples of poetry, sermons, pamphlets, plays, diaries and illustrations by Shakespeare's predecessors and contemporaries across Europe.
Curators
Professor Simon Palfrey, Tutorial Fellow in English, Fellow Librarian and Archivist, University of Oxford
Professor Emma Smith, Tutorial Fellow in English and Fellow Librarian, Professor of Shakespeare Studies, University of Oxford
25 February 2016 – 26 February 2017
About the exhibition
An exhibition displaying a selection of the Bodleian Libraries' most magnificent items. It features rare and renowned items including Tolkien's illustrations from The Hobbit, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the Bay Psalm Book, the 'most expensive' printed book in the world and the venerated Shikshapatri.
The exhibition presents some of the best of the 12 million items in the Bodleian's collections and uniquely displays these treasures in 24 pairs. Familiar icons of the Libraries' extraordinary holdings are shown alongside the less familiar, opening new avenues into the wealth of the Bodleian's famous collections. Rare books are joined together with manuscripts while modern ephemera sit alongside 400-year-old rolls, drawing out themes and unique stories that bring the pairs together.
Highlights of the exhibition:
- The Bay Psalm Book, modest in appearance, but now 'the most expensive printed book ever sold at auction' thanks to its sought-after status as the first book printed in North America. This will sit beside a lavish 9th-century book of psalms written in gold ink on purple vellum, inviting visitors to reflect on the appearances of “treasures”.
- Souvenirs from the women's suffrage movement will accompany a 1217 engrossment of Magna Carta, telling the story of a quest for justice and human rights that has spanned 800 years.
- The iconic 14th-century Gough Map, believed to be the earliest surviving road map of Great Britain, will be paired with the first public issue of the Ordnance Survey map of Kent, showing the River Thames from London Bridge to the coast.
- A draft of Wilfred Owen's war poem Dulce et decorum est, written and corrected in his own hand, will be presented with stunning poppy illustrations published by 18th-century botanist William Curtis.
- The monumental Gutenberg Bible, the first major book printed using movable type, will sit beside an ephemeral souvenir that celebrates Gutenberg's invention, printed at a frost fair on the frozen Thames nearly 300 years later.
- A superbly illuminated compendium of beasts , dating from the 13th-century, will be coupled with a Victorian advert for a performance by Toby the sapient pig, who took London by storm in the early 1800s with his ability to play cards and read minds.
Curator
Dr Francesca Galligan
2015
Archived version of the exhibition
About the exhibition
In over four centuries the Bodleian Libraries have assembled, through gift and purchase, many individual items which can be called works of genius. This exhibition looks at ways in which common attitudes towards genius are manifested in the physical form of a number of remarkable books and manuscripts, and considering the relationship between genius and learning, it explores ways in which the works of genius found in a university library can be acquired, collected and read.
23 October 2015 — 28 February 2016
ST Lee Gallery, Weston Library
Archived version of the exhibition
About the exhibition
The Bodleian Libraries 2015 winter exhibition celebrates over 2,500 years of Armenia history. Armenia's Enduring Culture can refer to the great antiquity of Armenian culture, spanning more than two and a half millennia, from its first mention, carved into stone, in the reign of King Darius I (c. 550-486 BCE) to the modern Republic of Armenia and the numerous diaspora communities worldwide.
Yet endurance can also refer to the suffering and hardship which has befallen the Armenians. 2015 marks the centenary of the genocide against the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire by the Young Turk government during World War I.
In their honour, we display over one hundred items spanning more than two thousand years of cultural history: from King Tigranes II the Great's coins minted in the first century BCE, through sumptuously and more modestly decorated manuscripts from the Middle Ages, to the treasured objects of survivors of the 1915 genocide.
2014
An online exhibition in conjunction with the broadcast of ‘Writing the Century: Passages from Empire’
28 November 2014 - 20 March 2015
18 June - 2 November 2014
2013
22 November 2013 - 18 May 2014
View archived version of the exhibition
About the exhibition
2014 marks the 800th anniversary of Roger Bacon’s birth and provides an appropriate occasion to celebrate Oxford as a world centre of medical learning.
Bacon, who became known as England’s ‘Doctor Mirabilis’, led the way towards the emergence of medical science as an inductive study of nature, based on and tested by experiment. For more than 800 years, scientists, philosophers, and physicians have made the city an outstanding scientific centre, and established much of the scientific attitude and spirit which we now take for granted.
This exhibition tells of their curiosity, innovation, and tenacity which have contributed to our understanding of human biology in both health and disease.
Curator
This exhibition was curated by Conrad Keating, Writer-In-Residence, The Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine.
23 May - 27 October 2013
View archived version of the exhibition
About the exhibition
The Bodleian’s summer exhibition takes as its theme the work of some of the foremost modern exponents of the genre, members of the group of writers informally known as the ‘Oxford School’: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Susan Cooper, Alan Garner and Philip Pullman.
From its unique holdings of these authors’ papers, the Library is displaying a selection of Tolkien’s original artwork for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings; C.S. Lewis’s ‘Lefay notebook’ and his map of Narnia, and manuscripts of novels and poems by Alan Garner, Philip Pullman and Susan Cooper, many of which are exhibited here for the first time.
Also featured in the exhibition are some of the books and manuscripts that contain the myths, legends and magical practices on which these Oxford-educated authors freely drew for inspiration. This historic material is housed in the Bodleian, which as a source of sorcery and arcane learning can be re-imagined as an enchanted location in itself, where the very act of reading is imbued with magical, transformative properties.
2012
2 June – 28 October 2012
Exhibition Room, Bodleian Library
View archived version of this exhibition
This exhibition illustrates the relationship between the fictional worlds that Charles Dickens created in his novels and the historical reality in which he lived. He depicted the social realities of his time with what Henry James noted as his ‘solidity of specification,’ an extraordinary clarity and particularity. The actualities of life, especially life in London - the setting for almost all his fiction - were of singular importance to him. When we read Dickens we experience Victorian life.
View the archived version of the exhibition
Love and Devotion: From Persia and Beyond celebrates the beauty of Persian manuscripts and the stories of human and divine love told through their pages from the early 11th century on. Tales of love and adventure were copied and sometimes reinterpreted over time, and reached far beyond the borders of Iran. The universal themes of Persian narrative and mystical poetry appealed especially to audiences in Mughal India and Ottoman Turkey, and eventually to audiences in the West. Transcending time and place, these stories continue to resonate today and to be retold through contemporary literature and popular culture.
Curator
Alasdair Watson, Curator of Islamic Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library
2011
View the archived version of the exhibition
Beginning with tenth-century Anglo-Saxon biblical poems, the exhibition moves swiftly to the dramatic story of the early English Bibles, for which translators sometimes risked and even lost their lives. Rare books, manuscripts, and portraits then tell the stories of the tense conference at which James I agreed to a new Bible, and the four dozen or more top English scholars who created it over several years.
A look at the centuries-long "afterlife" of their famous text in public life, literature, entertainment, and the arts takes up the second half of the display—including, among numerous other items, the Folger first edition of the King James Bible, seventeenth-century family Bibles and lavishly bound editions, Handel's Messiah (based largely on the King James Bible), King James Bibles owned by Frederick Douglass and Elvis Presley, and the voices of the Apollo 8 astronauts as they read verses from Genesis on Christmas Eve 1968 as they orbited the Moon.
View the archived version of the exhibition
This exhibition is a collaboration between the Bodleian Libraries and the New York Public Library. It unites two great collections to chart the history and reputation of a great literary family that was blessed with genius but marred by tragedy.
Few families enjoy such a remarkable reputation for their contribution to the literature and intellectual life of Britain as the Godwins and the Shelleys. Shelley's Ghost: Reshaping the Image of a Literary Family explores how the reputation of this great literary family was shaped by the selective release of documents and manuscripts into the public domain. It also provides a fascinating insight into the real lives of a family that was blessed with genius but marred by tragedy.
2010
1 February – 27 February 2010
View the archived version of the exhibition
The Season for Love was a small exhibition shown in the Proscholium cases in February 2010. In addition to showcasing a range of choice valentines from the John Johnson Collection, it contained items relating to the making of valentines, including a tinseller’s stock book, a paint box and a copper plate with vignettes of cupids.
2008
24 May - 1 November 2008
View the archived version of the exhibition
This exhibition celebrates over 700 years of gift-giving to Oxford college libraries. The chronological arrangement (by date of donation) illustrates how patterns of giving developed. Now and in the future, colleges will continue to depend on benefactions, and their libraries will cherish their treasures and preserve them for study and the delight of readers.
2007
View the archived version of the exhibition
About the exhibition
In the spring of 1907 Kenneth Grahame sent his seven-year old son, Alastair (nicknamed 'Mouse'), the first of a series of letters telling the story of a group of animals and their various adventures along the river, in the woods and on the road. These letters, centering on the swaggering Mr Toad, formed the first whisperings of what would become one of the best-loved children's stories of all time: The Wind in the Willows.
To mark Keneth Grahame’s centenary in 2007, the Bodleian Library launched an online exhibition, which can be explored below, featuring the final manuscript itself and the 15 original letters sent by the author to Alastair, alongside two of the most famous illustrated editions and other compelling items.
Curator
Dr Chris Fletcher, Head of Western Manuscripts
2005
28 Nov 2005 - 29 Apr 2006
View the archived version of the exhibition
Children’s Games and Pastimes (2006) drew principally on the John Johnson, Harding and Opie Collections. The display, in the Bodleian’s Exhibition Room, included board games, paper dolls and protean figures, engraved writing blanks, alphabets, metamorphoses, jigsaws, writing and drawing materials, and a toy theatre.
Many of the Games in the Collection are digitised. Records and images are available through the Oxford Digital Library and through the Johnson online catalogue.
Displays
2025
21 December 2024 – 21 April 2025
Blackwell Hall, Weston Library
Description
Magna Carta 1215 1225 celebrates the 800th anniversary of the definitive issue of Magna Carta in 1225.
Although Magna Carta is now closely associated with King John and the year 1215, John’s charter was a failure, soon annulled by the pope, and disregarded by both the king and his opponents.
It was the charter’s reissue by John’s son Henry III that ensured its survival.
Copies of the 1215, 1217 and 1225 versions are on display, accompanied by objects illustrating the changing meanings of Magna Carta from the thirteenth to the twenty-first centuries.
Curator
Matthew Holford, Tolkien Curator of Medieval Manuscripts, Bodleian Libraries.
26 April – 17 August 2025
Blackwell Hall, Weston Library
About the display
Bach: A Composer’s Obsession celebrated our acquisition of an autograph manuscript of J.S. Bach, his cantata for Ascension Day 1725 Auf Christi Himmelfahrt allein (BWV 128).
The manuscript was shown alongside a small selection of items which illustrate the importance of Bach in the life and work of a later composer, Felix Mendelssohn, whose advocacy for his musical hero played a big part in the revival of interest in Bach’s music in the nineteenth century and beyond.
The cantata received a tercentenary performance in the Sheldonian Theatre on 7 May 2025.
2024
Saturday 27 January – Sunday 12 May 2024
Blackwell Hall, Weston Library
Description
'Explore a personal journey to uncover family history, challenge preconceived narratives, and restore dignity to those the archives have long muted.
Musician and artist Peter Brathwaite has traced his roots back to the British-owned Codrington plantations in Barbados. During this research, he discovered the stories of three ancestors whose lives intersected amid the grim reality of slavery in 18th-century Barbados.
Using historical archives and personal objects, this display explores the process of this research. And reads the acts recorded as "mischievous" in historic records against the grain to reveal the diverse ways in which enslaved individuals resisted slavery to assert their humanity and personhood. Through this contemporary creative act, Peter Brathwaite proposes a so-called "counter-archive”.'
Curator
Peter Brathwaite FRSA, is an acclaimed opera singer, writer, broadcaster, and visual artist who works across different art forms to excavate and platform the stories of suppressed voices. He is currently a visiting artist developing a project with the Humanities Cultural Programme, supported by the Bodleian Centre for the Study of the Book and the Humanities Cultural Programme/TORCH, and in partnership with the Bodleian Libraries project ‘We Are Our History’: Towards Racial Equity.
Saturday 18 May – Sunday 18 August 2024
Blackwell Hall, Weston Library
Description
'How do we see the past?
Plates, Prints & Pixels explores the intersection where art and science collide. It reveals how transformative new technologies have allowed us to look at 17th- and 18th-century printing plates in unprecedented detail, and led to exciting discoveries.
Showcasing a collaboration between ARCHiOx and the Department of Engineering Science, this display reveals that there is more to libraries than books and manuscripts, and demonstrates the importance of partnerships between the humanities and sciences to fully understanding cultural heritage objects.'
Curator
Chiara Betti, Collaborative Doctoral Partnership PhD student at the School of Advanced Study, University of London.
24 August – 15 December 2024
Blackwell Hall, Weston Library
Description
How has writing and reading marked us and – more intriguingly – what marks do we leave?
Recent conservation work on Mary Whitehouse’s diaries has inspired two of our conservators – Alice Evans and Andrew Honey – to look for non-textual marks in our collections. From paper clips, wine and ink stains, to burns from candles, added pilgrim’s badges, pressed plants, locks of hair and unusual objects used as bookmarks, the examples on display reveal hidden and often surprising habits of reading and writing.
For the display these examples of accidental marks in Bodleian books have been reinterpreted by the artist Alice Fox, who has taken these marks as a catalyst for new works exploring mark-making and the materiality of books.
Curators
- Andrew Honey, Book Conservator: Research and Teaching
- Alice Evans, Book Conservator
Artist
Alice Fox is a Yorkshire based artist whose work explores found objects, gathered materials and natural processes. She brings together different materials to form tactile surfaces and structures. Following a first career in nature conservation, Alice studied Contemporary Surface Design and Textiles at Bradford School of Art (2011), followed by an MA in Creative Practice at Leeds Arts University (2019).
www.alicefox.co.uk
@alicefoxartist
2023
25 February – 14 May 2023
Blackwell Hall, Weston Library
View the archived version of the display
Description
'How many languages can Shakespeare speak?
In the First Folio, the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays, Ben Jonson describes Shakespeare’s school education of ‘small Latin and less Greek’. Henry V includes a scene in French, and Shakespeare also used Italian sources. During Shakespeare’s lifetime, the English language grew exponentially by adopting words from other languages.
From this starting point, Shakespeare has now come to speak in many tongues. A book printed in London four centuries ago has had an extraordinary global afterlife, translated into more than 100 languages.
In this display, celebrating 400 years since the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio, the First Folio is displayed alongside other language versions of texts by The Bard, including Bengali, Tagalog, Swahili and even Klingon. Thou Art Translated highlights the exceptional breadth and depth of Shakespeare’s legacy.'
Curator
Emma Smith is Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Hertford College.
17 March 2023 – 4 June 2023
Transept, Weston Library
View the archived version of the display
Description
'Photography was invented by a network of chemical experimenters. Little by little, they discovered the photosensitive properties of precious metals and learned to capture images from life on a chemical emulsion of silver nitrate, or iron, or gold, or ground up vegetables.
Today’s digital photography feels a long way from the experiments of the nineteenth century, but an intrepid society of alchemists is reviving the processes of the past and creating new approaches to darkroom photography.
Natural Magic features work by Megan Ringrose, Nettie Edwards, Karel Doing, Andrés Pardo, and Garry Fabian Miller – artists who have spent a lifetime exploring the chemical potentials of photography.'
Curator
Dr Phillip Roberts, The Bern & Ronny Schwartz Curator of Photography, Bodleian Libraries
Saturday 2 September 2023 – 21 January 2024
Blackwell Hall, Weston Library
View the archived version of the display
Description
'Playford’s Dancing Master was the first published collection of English country dances and their tunes, starting in 1651 and spanning 18 editions over 80 years. It spawned numerous imitations throughout the 18th century. This year is the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Playford.
The music and dances continue to be loved by millions across the world, not least due to their inclusion in film and television, such as Bridgerton, Pride and Prejudice and Poldark.
This display celebrates not only English country dancing but also the role of the Dancing Master during the 17th and 18th centuries, who would teach steps and choreograph new dances for court and assemblies.
A programme of events will accompany the display, including concerts, workshops for musicians and dancers, and a Playford Ball.'
Curator
For a decade Matthew Coatsworth played in Boldwood, researching and producing three acclaimed Dancing Master books, as well as appearing on a number of recordings. He plays with The Warleggan Village Band, First Folio and with Steph West’s English Harp Project.
20 May – 27 August 2023
Blackwell Hall, Weston Library
View the archived version of the display
Description
'The idea of a globally connected world is not a new one.
This display showcases some of Oxford’s connections to global travel in an age of trade and colonial expansion. From geographies to student plays, these sources reveal various ways that individuals thought about the world and their place in it.
Alongside original copies of John Smith’s 1612 Map of Virginia, Richard Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (London, 1600), and other publications and manuscripts from this era, Loraine Rutt has created a series of miniature porcelain globes and small domestic vessels, drawing on the research of academics Nandini Das, Lauren Working and Emily Stevenson. Each piece is designed to set up a dialogue between the present and the past, exploring how maps influence our sense of place, belonging and identity.'
Curators
Dr Emily Stevenson, Lecturer in Early Modern and Renaissance Literature at the University of York; Dr Lauren Working, Lecturer in Early Modern Literature at the University of York; and Professor Nandini Das, Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture at Exeter College, University of Oxford.
2022
5 February – 10 April 2022
Blackwell Hall, Weston Library
View the archived version of the display
'Using the tactile qualities of letterpress printing, artist Hermeet Gill has created a response to the current Bodleian exhibition Melancholy: A New Anatomy.
In 1621, Robert Burton wrote in The Anatomy of Melancholy that ‘a physician without the knowledge of stars can neither understand the cause or cure of any disease’. Today however, astrology is held in opposition to science and evidence-based approaches.
In her work, Hermeet uses her own family’s history in the UK, Uganda and India to create three star charts which explore how earthly constellations of contexts, as much as the position and alignment of planets, may predict much about our eventual life path and mental health.'
19 February – mid-April 2022
Blackwell Hall, Weston Library
View the archived version of the display
Description
This display pays tribute to philosopher John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) by offering a new way to explore a revered text.
Six central ideas in the Essay are elucidated using (mostly) paired objects. The six vignettes show three dimensional models that ask the viewer to consider enduring philosophical problems. Pairs of objects provide a powerful language to explore theories, highlight distinctions, and provoke philosophical thinking. The objects in the display are at once things, models of things, and models of ideas.
About the artist
Cliff Landesman, the creator of Locke Unlocked, first read Locke's Essay as a student at University College, Oxford. He holds an MA from Oxford University and a PhD from Princeton University. He is currently an origami designer and teacher, living in Burlington, Vermont, USA.
Acknowledgements
This display is generously supported by the Polonsky Foundation
28 June – 4 December 2022
View the archived version of the display
These two artists’ books by British artist Edmund de Waal and by South African artist William Kentridge each explore historic texts through the medium of the artist’s book in vastly different ways. De Waal creates an homage to the late German poet Paul Celan by employing the visual language of porcelain and medieval manuscripts. Kentridge uses the early twentieth-century aviation technology of the stereoscope as a device for reading the vivid images of his Johannesburg studio, in which the artist wrestles with his ideas and inner landscapes.
This display is part of a series of events in Spain, Germany, the UK and the United States celebrating 25 years of Ivorypress, founded in 1996 by Elena Ochoa Foster.
9 – 26 September 2022
Transept, Weston Library
View the archived version of the display
Description
'Today’s artificial intelligence (AI) is the latest chapter in a centuries-long story of humanity’s efforts to create self-acting machinery. With the dream of creating these machines comes the possibility that we might create artificial minds like our own.
This display includes manuscripts of Mary Shelley, Ada Lovelace, Charles Babbage and Christopher Strachey, alongside a remarkable mechanical ‘Logic Piano’ devised by economist Stanley Jevons. It shows devices and techniques that performed the tasks of our modern computers long before the digital age, and illustrates that even the earliest computers went beyond crunching numbers to reason, play games and use language. It offers insight into the roots of our modern anxieties about thinking machines, from biting satire to apocalyptic science fiction, as well as the promise of these rapidly advancing technologies.
More of Charles Babbage’s manuscripts and devices can be seen in a parallel display at the History of Science Museum across the road.'
15 April – 3 July 2022
Blackwell Hall, Weston Library
View the archived version of the display
Description
'The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has always based its entries on real evidence of how words have been used throughout the history of English.
Regular appeals were made to the public to help collect this evidence and send it in to the dictionary. The OED’s chief editor, Sir James Murray (1837–1915), received and replied to thousands of letters. So many that the Post Office installed a pillar box outside his house on Banbury Road.
Today, using new tools and technology, the staff of the OED continue to make public appeals to gather evidence of the English language as it is used from around the world.
Discover more about the history of crowdsourcing the dictionary and how you can get involved today.'
Curators
- Professor Charlotte Brewer, Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Oxford
- Dr Stephen Turton, University of Cambridge
Acknowledgements
In partnership with the Oxford English Dictionary
17 September – 6 November 2022
Blackwell Hall, Weston Library and Proscholium, Old Bodleian Library
View the archived version of the display
Foreshadowed
'Kasimir Malevich’s (1979–1935) painting Black Square was revolutionary when it was painted in 1915. It offered absolutely nothing to the viewer and it claimed to bring the history of art to an end. No-one had seen anything like it before. Or had they? Even though the extreme minimalism of the painting had no precedents in the world of art, it did have precedents in other fields.
This display explored the use of the black square from mourning and metaphysics to comedy and politics. Although it is unlikely that Malevich will have been familiar with most of these precedents, they all resonate with different aspects of the painting, throwing light on its complex layers of meaning.
Read the related essay by curator Andrew Spira
Beyond the Pale
These contemporary printed works extended the symbolic reach of the black pages shown in the display Foreshadowed.
Most of these prints were made in 2022 in response to a call from the Bodleian Libraries Bibliographical Press. They express mourning of personal loss, grief for the environment, anger at political conflict and repression, or playful encouragements to recalibrate our vision of ‘black’. Several embody references to arts and performance – music, ceramics, drawing, reading, and printing itself. Others, with an inviting tactile surface, tempt the viewer to transgress the square.
Curators
- Andrew Spira, curator of Foreshadowed
- Alexandra Franklin, co-curator of Beyond the Pale
- Lucy Bayley, co-curator of Beyond the Pale
2021
20 November 2021 – 30 January 2022
Blackwell Hall, Weston Library and Proscholium, Old Bodleian Library
Description
'A display of contemporary embroidery inspired by a 16th century Tudor pattern book, containing: stylised pictures of trees, plants and animals in alphabetical sequences, with other designs.
The display featured a selection of items, from sewing accoutrements, books covers and domestic furnishings to garments and accessories, worked in a variety of materials and stitch techniques.'
Stories inspired by a Tudor pattern book
As part of the Needle's Art display, a series of short films were recorded by Helicon Storytelling. Each film contains a story inspired and devised in the same manner as the embroidery on display – by using the Tudor pattern book M.S Ashmole 1504. Helicon Storytelling have scoured the manuscript for their favourite settings and characters and have used these as the building blocks to create their very own, Tudor-style stories, including foolish wishes, ferocious beasts, folklore remedies and fearless heroes.
Watch the playlist on our YouTube channel.
Acknowledgements
The storytelling videos for this display were generously supported by The Helen Hamlyn Trust
17 May – 11 July 2021
View the archived version of this display
Fascinated by the progressive ethos of Berlin in 1920s and early 1930s, this display charts the political clashes between Communists and Fascists through the eyes of writer Stephen Spender. Along with W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, they created a myth of Berlin as an exhilarating but fragile haven of creative and personal freedom, which was to be swept away by Hitler’s rise to power.
This display draws on archival holdings and other rare material in the Bodleian Libraries to explore this fascinating period in Stephen Spender’s life.
Curator
Dr Stefano Evangelista, Associate Professor in the Faculty of English and Tutorial Fellow, Trinity College
17 July – 12 September 2021
Blackwell Hall, Weston Library
View the archived version of this display
In Oxford, the oldest gravestones are made from local stones, often dug from quarries just a few miles away.
With the growth of the canal network and the coming of the railways, gravestones made using rocks from Cornwall, Scotland and Northern Ireland began to adorn Oxford cemeteries. Improved transportation links and the Victorian taste for more elaborate gravestones led to a flourishing of the funeral and monumental masonry trades.
These days transporting stone is so cheap and easy that beautiful gravestones to commemorate the dead are made using rocks from around the world.
Visit a cemetery with a hand lens or magnifying glass to hand and you’ll be amazed at what you can see. You’ll never look at cemeteries in the same way again.
Curators
This display was curated by geologists Nina Morgan and Philip Powell, Honorary Associates at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
With thanks to our lenders Oxford University Museum of Natural History and St Michael’s Church, Cumnor.
18 September – 14 November 2021
Blackwell Hall, Weston Library
2020
1 February – 15 March 2020
Blackwell Hall, Weston Library
Description
Social media has become an important promotional tool for writers, but portraits and selfies would not be as effective as they are in generating interest and cultivating followers if they were not accompanied by text, blogs, stories, buzzwords, fashion statements, and a privileged insight into the life and work of the author.
From the nineteenth century explosion in popular visual media, to the recent digital and social media revolutions, authors have always used images to create and curate their public identities and to promote their literary works. Many of these now rare photographic prints are hidden away inside books. From Studio to Selfie puts on display some of the wealth of the Bodleian’s collection of portraits inside nineteenth century books. The juxtaposition of old and new images reveals how the storytelling and branding at use in early photographic author portraits is still at play in today’s selfie culture.
2019
27 July - 13 October 2019
View the archived version of this display
Ge’ez is one of the world’s ancient languages and is still used in the churches of Ethiopia and Eritrea. Members of Ethiopian and Eritrean communities living in the UK have worked together to curate a selection of vibrant and beautiful books produced by this scholarly and devout African culture.
2015
28 August – 11 October 2015
3 July – 6 September 2015
26 February – 26 April 2015
View the archived version of the display
These books are witness to the central part clothes play in people’s lives. The selection is divided into three themes: costume books, tailoring manuals, and critiques of dress. The display gives a flavour of the distinctive and vivid documentation for dress.
8 January - 22 February 2015
2013
9 November - 8 December 2013
View the archived version of the display
The novelist Barbara Pym (1913-1980) wrote 'the finest examples of high comedy to have appeared in England during the past 75 years' (Lord David Cecil, 1977). As a student at St Hilda's College in the 1930s, she studied and socialized in the Bodleian, which features in many of her early works and in later correspondence with the poet Philip Larkin. After her death her sister, Hilary Walton, donated her literary papers to the Bodleian. This display celebrates Pym's involvement with the Library and the richness of the Pym papers held by it.
