Hesburgh Libraries

Past Exhibits

A Depiction of the Papal Conclave of 1700

This exhibit displays a print from 1700 depicting the various processes and activities of electing a new pope, including various illustrations of the Conclave.Tuesday, May 6, 2025 – Friday, May 30, 2025

Building a Campus Boycott to Support Midwestern Farmworkers

In 1980 a small cohort of Notre Dame students convinced the university to boycott Campbell Soup products in support of farmworkers. Tuesday, January 21, 2025 – Friday, May 2, 2025

Wollstonecraft: Revolution & Textual Evidence

Mary Wollstonecraft writes and revises herself on revolutions in France and in women’s lives.Friday, September 20, 2024 – Thursday, December 19, 2024

Spotlight Exhibit — A Fourteenth-Century Chanson de Geste Fragment

Two newly discovered fragments of Adenet le Roi’s Berte as grans piès (Bertha of the Big Foot) attest to the poem’s circulation. Thursday, September 5, 2024 – Thursday, October 31, 2024

Notre Dame Football Kills Prejudice: Citizenship and Faith in 1924

1924 national champion Fighting Irish tackle bigotry and promote a more inclusive America.Monday, August 26, 2024 – Friday, January 31, 2025

Spotlight Exhibit — Making Books Count: Tracing the History of Mathematics through Books

Making Books Count: Tracing the History of Mathematics through Books showcases materials from Notre Dame’s Rare Books and Special Collections.Monday, June 3, 2024 – Friday, August 30, 2024

The Book Beautiful: A selection from the Arts & Crafts movement

This exhibit displays a selection of materials that reveal the influence of William Morris on the Arts & Crafts movement.Tuesday, April 9, 2024 – Friday, May 24, 2024

A Choir Book for Medieval Nuns

This exhibit displays a Processional that once belonged to a convent of Dominican nuns in Poissy, France.Friday, March 1, 2024 – Sunday, March 31, 2024

Scripts and Geographies of Byzantine Book Culture

This exhibit documents a selection of the geographical breadth of Byzantine manuscript production.Tuesday, February 13, 2024 – Friday, May 24, 2024

Mapping the Middle Ages: Marking Time, Space, and Knowledge

This exhibit showcases maps of the Middle Ages by journeying through the space created by the objects and the individuals who used them.Thursday, February 1, 2024 – Thursday, August 8, 2024

A Warning Against Rum in Early America

This 1835 poster commends a Salem, Massachusetts minister’s attack on a neighbor for distilling and selling rum.Sunday, December 10, 2023 – Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Path to Sainthood: Brother Columba O’Neill

This year marks the centenary of the death of Brother Columba O’Neill, known for the many people cured following his prayers.Tuesday, October 3, 2023 – Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Making and Unmaking Emancipation in Cuba and the United States

This exhibition explores the fraught, circuitous and unfinished course of emancipation over the 19th century in Cuba and the United States.Monday, August 21, 2023 – Saturday, December 16, 2023

Centering African American Writing in American Literature

Writing and editing produced by African Americans was central to twentieth-century American publishing; literary production was interracial.Wednesday, August 2, 2023 – Friday, September 29, 2023

Football and Community at Historically Black Colleges and Universities

This exhibit documents the history, the spectacle, and the community-building of HBCU football.Wednesday, August 2, 2023 – Friday, December 15, 2023

A Medieval Franciscan Manuscript from the Netherlands

This exhibit highlights the collaborative production of a medieval book in 1475 between two Franciscan friars in Sluis and Gouda.Friday, June 9, 2023 – Monday, July 31, 2023

New York City Surrealism and Texas Progressivism in the 1940s

This exhibit highlights New York’s View and The Texas Spectator, two American periodicals that each capture the 1940s zeitgeist.Friday, May 5, 2023 – Friday, August 4, 2023

Hagadah shel Pesaḥ le-zekher ha-Shoʼah - Pessach Haggadah in memory of the Holocaust

In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, this exhibit presents a limited edition of Pessach Hagaddah, a ritual text used during Passover family meal.Saturday, April 1, 2023 – Wednesday, May 31, 2023

Language and Materiality in Late Medieval England

This exhibit follows the movement and transformation of Middle English texts from the manuscript culture of the fifteenth century through the advent of early printing.Tuesday, February 28, 2023 – Monday, May 1, 2023

Printing the Nation: A Century of Irish Book Arts

This exhibit demonstrates the art and craft of the Irish book since 1900.Monday, February 6, 2023 – Monday, July 31, 2023

African American Women Activists and Athletes in 1970s Feminist Magazines

This exhibit highlights 1970s feminist magazines that featured African American women in sports, politics, and contemporary culture.Monday, February 6, 2023 – Friday, March 31, 2023

Daughters of Our Lady: Finding a Place at Notre Dame

Explore the history of women at Notre Dame as students, educators, and administrators from the 1910s to 2022.Monday, October 3, 2022 – Thursday, December 15, 2022

The Word throughout Time: The Bible in the Middle Ages and Beyond

This spring exhibit on the Bible in the Middle Ages marks the 75th anniversary of the University of Notre Dame's Medieval Institute.Monday, January 24, 2022 – Friday, June 24, 2022

Irish Art and Literature from Graphic Studio Dublin

This exhibit showcases the work of the Graphic Studio DublinFriday, December 13, 2019 – Friday, January 31, 2020

Touchdowns & Technology: The Evolution of the Media and Notre Dame Football

A display of materials and artifacts from the University Archives which explores the cross sections among communication technology, popular culture, and Notre Dame football.Sunday, September 1, 2019 – Saturday, December 14, 2019

Hellenistic Currents: Reading Greece, Byzantium, and the Renaissance

This exhibit shows the diffusion of Greek writing and culture from the 4th century BC to the 19th century AD through various media such as scrolls, manuscripts, books, and coins.Monday, August 26, 2019 – Thursday, December 19, 2019

Spotlight Exhibit — Libros de Lectura: Literacy and Education after the Mexican Revolution

This exhibit showcases literacy-related materials sponsored, approved, or produced by Mexico's Ministry of Public Education, from 1930 through mid-1960.Friday, June 28, 2019 – Wednesday, July 31, 2019

The Forbes Simulachres: The "Dance of Death" Reimagined

The new spotlight exhibit features dancing skeletons and a Forbes billionaire — the handiwork of French artist Didier Mutel. Monday, July 2, 2018 – Friday, August 31, 2018

Reading the Emancipation Proclamation

Very few pictorial depictions of the proclamation were made before Lincoln's assassination in 1865 and this exhibit features the only contemporary image that offers an interpretation of how it might have been received by the people it was intended to free.Monday, January 22, 2018 – Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Money Worries

This exhibition aims to disrupt patrons’ preconceived attitudes toward money, wealth, and poverty. Sunday, January 21, 2018 – Sunday, March 25, 2018

Building A Colonial Mexican Tavern: Archive of the Pulquería El Tepozán

This exhibit highlights a manuscript archive for building a Mexican tavern.Wednesday, November 1, 2017 – Friday, December 1, 2017

Images of David and Goliath in the Sixteenth-Century

On display is an action-filled depiction of David defeating Goliath by Swiss artist, Tobias Stimmer (1539-1584).Sunday, October 1, 2017 – Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Commitment, Continuity, and Community: Architecture at Notre Dame, 1898 – Present

Visit the South Bend History Museum to see this exhibit by Notre Dame Architecture.Saturday, September 2, 2017 – Sunday, August 5, 2018

Elements of Humanity: Primo Levi and the Evolution of Italian Postwar Culture

Visit the fall 2017 exhibit featuring the Primo Levi Collection of the Hesburgh Libraries’ Department of Rare Books & Special Collections.Monday, August 21, 2017 – Friday, December 15, 2017