Curated by John Henry Adams and Courtney Gillie, 2020.

Every age, every race, has its leaders and heroes. ~ Ohíye S’a (Charles A. Eastman) Libraries tend to hold those materials that mainstream society values. Nowhere is this clearer than in the field of rare books. Because of the money required to assemble a strong collection of rare books, rare book collectors tend to come from positions of privilege and their collections reflect that privilege. Collectors have historically prioritized writings by culturally valorized authors. Rare books libraries,...

Curated by Michael Holland, 2009.

150 Years of The Origin of Species: The Historical Journey from Specimens to Species to Geneswas a physical exhibit mounted in the University of Missouri's Ellis Library from March 5th to March 31st, 2009 to honor the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of hisOn the Origin of Species. The exhibition was part of the2009 MU Life Sciences & Society Symposiumsponsored by theChristopher S. Bond Life Sciences Center.

Curated by Michael Holland, 2011.

This virtual exhibit explores the intersections between ethics and the pseudo-science of eugenics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Curated by John Henry Adams, 2023, with assistance from Kelli Hansen.

On October 24, 2023, Special Collections held a spooky exhibit! From 11am until 2pm, we were in Ellis 114a with as many skeletons as we could find in our collections! The exhibit is now available online. We have two main different kinds of books in this exhibit: anatomy textbooks of both humans and animals, and dances of the dead. You’ll get a chance to look at works like Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica libri septim...