Exhibit Space
Current Exhibition
Travel, Tourism, and the Transmission of Knowledge In and Around Japan
Curated by students in Professor Sherry Fowler's History of Art Seminar in Japanese Art
August 1, 2025-January 9, 2026
Upcoming Exhibitions
Aging, Art, and Activism: Re-imagining Our Aging Futures Through Creative Representations and Personal Narratives
Curated by Associate Professor Sarah Jen (KU School of Social Welfare)
Part of the Bergeron-Sousa Exhibit Program
Winter-Spring 2026
Recent Exhibitions
Marvelous Medieval Marginalia: Drawings, Doodles, and Notes on the Edges of Readers’ Imagination
March-July 2025
Watson Library's First 100 Years: Impacts, Innovations, and Renovations
Part of KU Libraries' Watson Centennial
August 2024-February 2025
Object Lessons: Selections from the Conservation Services Historic Bookbinding Models Collection
March-August 2024
Past Exhibitions
To the Great Variety of Readers: Celebrating the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio
The inaugural exhibit in a new series of exhibitions co-curated by KU faculty and Spencer librarians and funded by a major gift from David Bergeron and Geraldo Sousa
September 2023-January 2024
Photographic Treasures of Historic Leavenworth, Kansas
A traveling exhibit from the Leavenworth County Historical Society with supplemental materials from Spencer Research Library
February-July 2023
Keeping the Books: The Rubinstein Collection of the Orsetti Family Business Archive
September 2022-February 2023
Mary Huntoon: Artist and Art Therapist
August-November 2021
Imagined Worlds: Writers and the Process of Speculative Fiction
January 2020-January 2021
Unseen Hands: Care and Preservation of KU Libraries’ Collections
July 2019-January 2020
Meet the Spencers: A Marriage of Arts and Sciences
January-June 2019
50 for 50: Celebrating Fifty Years of Kenneth Spencer Research Library
September 2018-January 2019
The Art of Nature: Natural History Art and Illustration by D.D. Tyler
June-August 2018
Women's Athletics at KU: From Physical Education to Recognized Athletic Program
January-May 2018
To Make the World Safe for Democracy: Kansas and the Great War
September 2017-January 2018
Histories of the English Language
June-August 2017
Education: The Mightiest Weapon
February-May 2017
In the Shadow of Cortés: From Veracruz to Mexico City
A traveling exhibit from Indiana University Bloomington with supplemental materials from Spencer Research Library
September-December 2016
Easter 1916: Rebellion and Memory in Ireland
February-July 2016
Achievement of a Dream: The Birth of the University of Kansas
September-December 2015
All Creeping Things: A History of Herpetological Illustration
An exhibit by graduate students in KU's Museum Studies program
May-August 2015
Free Speech in America: The Wilcox Collection at 50
February-April 2015
Ornithological Illustration in the Age of Darwin: The Making of John Gould's Bird Books
September-November 2014
Legacy of the White City: Revisiting the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893
An exhibit by graduate students in KU's Museum Studies program
May-August 2014
The Magic of Oz: A Collection Celebrating a Classic
Materials from the collection of KU alumna and lifelong Oz collector Jane Albright
January-April 2014
Plainly Spoken
A traveling exhibit sponsored by the Midwest Chapter of the Guild of Book Workers
November 2013-January 2014
Quantrill’s Raid on Lawrence: Stories of Loss, Destruction and Survival
August-October 2013
River City Rebels: Beat Poetry in Lawrence
An exhibit by graduate students in KU's Museum Studies program
May-July 2013
100 Years of Jayhawks: 1912-2012
December 2012-March 2013
Riddle Me This: A History of Games and Puzzles
An exhibit by graduate students in KU's Museum Studies program
May-August 2012
Discover Kenneth Spencer Research Library
November 2011-April 2012