Exhibit Space
Current Exhibition
Marvelous Medieval Marginalia: Drawings, Doodles, and Notes on the Edges of Readers’ Imagination (March 9-July 15, 2025)
Upcoming Exhibitions
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 (Summer-Fall 2025)
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) as part of the Bergeron-Sousa Exhibit Program (Winter-Spring 2026)
Recent Exhibitions
Watson Library's First 100 Years: Impacts, Innovations, and Renovations (August 2024-February 2025): Part of KU Libraries' Watson Centennial.
Object Lessons: Selections from the Conservation Services Historic Bookbinding Models Collection (March-August 2024)
To the Great Variety of Readers: Celebrating the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio (September 2023-January 2024): 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.
Past Exhibitions
Photographic Treasures of Historic Leavenworth, Kansas (February-July 2023): A traveling exhibit from the Leavenworth County Historical Society with supplemental materials from Spencer Research Library.
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 (September-December 2016): A traveling exhibit from Indiana University Bloomington with supplemental materials from Spencer Research Library
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 (May-August 2015): An exhibit by graduate students in KU's Museum Studies program
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 (May-August 2014): An exhibit by graduate students in KU's Museum Studies program
The Magic of Oz: A Collection Celebrating a Classic (January-April 2014): Materials from the collection of KU alumna and lifelong Oz collector Jane Albright
Plainly Spoken (November 2013-January 2014): A traveling exhibit sponsored by the Midwest Chapter of the Guild of Book Workers
Quantrill’s Raid on Lawrence: Stories of Loss, Destruction and Survival (August-October 2013)
River City Rebels: Beat Poetry in Lawrence (May-July 2013): An exhibit by graduate students in KU's Museum Studies program
100 Years of Jayhawks: 1912-2012 (December 2012-March 2013)
Riddle Me This: A History of Games and Puzzles (May-August 2012): An exhibit by graduate students in KU's Museum Studies program
Discover Kenneth Spencer Research Library (November 2011-April 2012)