Curated by Katie Carr, 2008. Updated in 2021.

In September 2008, MU Libraries celebrated the 75th anniversary of the syndication of the comic strip Alley Oop with an exhibition drawing from the libraries'V.T. HamlinandComic Art Collections.

Curated by Jacqueline Culas, Haley Disterhoft, Isabelle "Jennie" Murray, Alison Restelli, Chayanne Sandoval-Williams, and Gretchen Tharp, 2025.

This exhibit focuses on a select number of Bridal magazines during that peak from 1992 to 2011. They were donated by Dr. Samir Husni, a leading expert on print and magazine journalism, known as Mr. Magazine. These magazines, mostly first volume editions, focus on the bridal industry from across the world. The exhibit was curated in summer 2025 as the final project of IS_LT 9428: History of Books and Media.

Curated by Kelli Hansen and Mariana Guzman, 2024.

The documents on display in this exhibition were created for one purpose: to prove their owners’ nobility or hidalguía. In Spain, when a person’s hidalgo status was in dispute, the legal remedy was to file a lawsuit in one of the Royal Chancery Courts, either in Valladolid or in Granada.

Curated by John Fifield-Perez, Catherine Armbrust and Nicole Johnston, 2020.

October 2 – November 19, 2020 ​ George Caleb Bingham Gallery, Fine Arts Building, School of Visual Studies, University of Missouri ​ ​ Movements and stories appear and disappear throughout the human timeline, often transformed by subsequent generations. Many of these stories are shared through the lens and voices of underrepresented populations or their allies, in a multitude of forms preserved by archives and collections such as those at the University of Missouri. Collective Voices includes art, archival, and...

Lauren Bondor, Victoria Bridges, Eliana Collantes, Jewell Pfister, Kali Schwartz, Taofeeqat Soluoku, and Kaitlyn Wolfmeyer

Between the 1980s and 2000s, countless magazines were published to help home cooks, ranging from novices to experienced cooks. These could be picked up at any grocery store checkout lane. While most of the magazines in this exhibit focus on health, especially calorie counting, a few serve gourmet cooks. These publications offer us much more than just recipes. They serve as asnapshot of American domestic life and cultural values during a transformative period in food history....

Curated by John Henry Adams and Haley Lykins, 2024

In this exhibit, we are showcasing fourteen pet-centric magazines from the Samir Husni Magazine Collection. Many of these magazines are about pets, but some simply use pets as “props” to sell the magazines. In the interests of space, we have limited ourselves to four kinds of pets: birds, cats, dogs, and ferrets. We present them in alphabetical order, so please don’t think that the order of the pets in any way indicates our preference! We...

curated by Tim Perry, updated by Clare Starkey 2024

A fine press is a printing establishment that adheres to particularly high standards in terms of the skill of the workers, the choice of materials, and the overall design of the books ultimately produced. As a consequence of these high standards, print runs– i.e. the number of copies of a book that are printed – tend to be very low. There is often, in addition, an emphasis on traditional printing technologies and techniques. The modern...

Curated by Brittany Rancour and Nicole Songstad, 2018-2021.

Fragmenta Manuscripta is a collection of manuscript fragments that date from the eighth through the seventeenth centuries.

Curated and digitally reconstructed by Andrew Schulte, 2024.

When the Fragmenta Manuscripta Collection arrived at the University of Missouri in 1968, the manuscript fragments were mounted in this album. Digital restoration of selected fragments was done as a proof of concept by Andrew Schulte in 2024.

Chester Bacon, Bethany Bade, Blake Blechle, Kay Boswell, Emily Evans, Erika Friedlander, Alex Gaulden, and Grace LoFaro

For centuries, humans have developed games as a form of entertainment. It is a cultural aspect that brings together a community through competition, narrative, strategy, and consumerism. From tabletop games to video games to competitive card games, games have brought people together through shared hobbies and careers. Throughout the 1990s, comics and magazines became a way for people to remain connected and updated on their hobbies. These publications introduced new strategies, products, communities, information, and...

Curated by Yueheng Lyu, 2019.

The Hiller Collection documents cities, industries, farming, and everyday life in China during the second phase of the Chinese Civil War, 1945-1948. The part of The Hiller Collection, Drawer Nine, in this exhibit focuses on two cities in Jiangsu Province. It is mainly about two cities in Jiangsu Province of China, Nanking (Nanjing) and Soochow (Suzhou).

Curated by Madelyn Geiler, 2025.

Curated by John Henry Adams, 2020.

Printing with moveable type began in Europe in the 1450s in the German city of Mainz with the Gutenberg Bible in 1455. The technology spread swiftly across the continent: in ten years, there were printing presses in operation in Italy. By 1475, printing had spread to France, Switzerland, Holland, Hungary, Belgium, Poland, and Spain, and by 1485, England, Austria, Denmark, and Sweden were also printing. Other regions would follow suit until by 1500, there was...

Curated by Allison Cathey, 2021.

Works from American cartoonist John T. McCutcheon in the 1930s.

Curated by Al Dabiri and David Crespy, 2018.

This interactive display provides some insights into the materials available in the Lanford Wilson Collection, in MU Libraries Special Collections and Rare Books. In particular, this display includes material from the collection which focus on Wilson’s play, The Rimers of Eldritch, and offers samples of posters, programs, photographs, posters, and manuscripts from various productions of the play, as well as materials from the original 1966 production of The Rimers of Eldritch, directed by the author...

Curated by Courtney Gillie and John Henry Adams, 2021.

This exhibit was born out of a desire to showcase materials within Special Collections at the University of Missouri that were produced by historically excluded people. We want all of our students to be able to see themselves proudly reflected in our collections.

Curated by John Henry Adams, 2024

Over the course of the 20th century, the number of magazines published in the United States went from approximately 5,500 to well over 18,000, an increase that outstripped population growth by a considerable margin. Magazines appeared on almost every conceivable topic and for almost every conceivable demographic. Black Americans were no exception, with numerous magazines developing in the second half of the century to cater specifically to their interests. This exhibit showcases a tiny number of...

Sarah Herndon and Samuel Stebbins

Introduction Music journalism found significance in the 1960s, following the Beatles’ mainstream success. One of the first popular music magazines was Melody Maker, a British magazine that began being published in 1926 and ran until 2000, finding success when it started focusing on Rock music in the 1960s. With the emergence of publications like New Musical Express (NME) and Rolling Stone, Pop music and cultural criticism became a serious pursuit of many journalists, helping to legitimize...

Hannah Brown, Macy Love, Gracie Doolin, Linsey Prahl, Maggie Zdrowdowski, and Francesca Griffero

The Music Magazines presented in this exhibit highlight the influence these magazines had on establishing the social and cultural identities of today. In the late 20th century music magazines began to see a transformation from simply reporting on musical events to influencing the music industry as a whole. These magazines began interviewing artists, reviewing music, ranking artists, making social and political critiques, as well as determining what unique look fit within each genre. We begin to...

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...

Curated by John Henry Adams, 2021.

Maps tell us where we are. The most obvious way they do this is geographical, but there is also a wealth of cultural and social information that accompanies a map. What has been labeled? What has been left blank? What kinds of decorations are included in the map? A map that takes the time to mark the estates of major landlords is indicating something about the importance that proximity to the wealthy means socially and...

Curated by John Henry Adams, 2020; revised 2021.

Rare books libraries and reference materials for working with rare books are full of specialist terms (or terms that mean something different in the context of special collections). To make it easier for you to use our materials, we have prepared a glossary of terms you may encounter.

Curated by Elisabeth Baker, Colin Hodges, Matthew Lane, Tamaka Mann, Sheri McCaskill, and Kelsey Meline, 2025.

The decades leading up to the new millennium and the decades beyond saw the arrival of modern religious magazines. These magazines delved into subjects both sacred and secular, from daily living for practicing adherents, to news from around the world and how it affected those faithful laypeople. Obviously, these religious magazines featured articles upon the faith and how those practitioners might best live their beliefs credibly. Many of these religious magazines were created specifically to be...

Curated by Tess Childress, Anna Comfort, Faith Edwards, Hannah Kittle, and Caitlin Souers, 2025.

This exhibit presents sports magazines drawn from the Samir Husni Magazine Collection. The exhibit was curated in summer 2025 as the final project of IS_LT 9428: History of Books and Media.