Exhibit Archives
Being Mixed Race in a Mono-racially Organized World
April 9, 2024 - December 20, 2024
The exhibit "Being Mixed Race in a Mono-racially Organized World: Interracial Identity in the U.S. and Around the World — What Research and Mixed Race People Tell Us" is an exploration into the library's collections about the diversity of mixed race heritage. Through research, narratives, demographic data, and a variety of visual and published materials, explore multifaceted aspects of mixed race heritage with insights from many perspectives.
The 2020 U.S. Census illuminated a 276 percent increase in individuals who identify as "two or more races" since 2010. In recognition of the growing numbers of mixed race-identifying people at the University of Michigan, throughout the country, and across the globe, we're excited to unveil this new exhibit — a unique exploration of changing demographics and intersectional identities.
Propositions to Progress: A Working Atlas of the Global South
March 7, 2024 - May 31, 2024
Historically, maps have served as a panoptic technology, assisting imperial powers in governance, discipline, and control. In this exhibit, internationally renowned Filipino artist Cian Dayrit acts as a counter-cartographer, reclaiming mapmaking as an emancipatory activity.
Dayrit’s artworks, embroidered on textiles or painted over collages of colonial-era maps, plot the extraction of natural resources, land grabbing, and dispossession and displacement in his native Philippines. At the same time, their resistant lines summon new imaginaries out of the overlaps between places and memories.
Dayrit’s practice is critically and practically informed by the narratives of Filipino communities. Items exhibited alongside his artwork are the result of map-drawing workshops the artist has convened with rural, urban, and indigenous communities across the Philippines. Propositions to Progress invites you to engage in the collaborative endeavor to activate alternative territories from the ground up.
Cian Dayrit is an interdisciplinary artist exploring colonialism and ethnography, archaeology, history, and mythology. Dayrit subverts the language of the state, museum, and military to visualize the contradictions on which these institutions are built. He studied at the University of the Philippines.
Manga no Ryokou: The "Manga Map" and A Journey Through the Art of Depiction in Japanese Cartography
September 19, 2023 - February 23, 2024
The exhibit examines the intersection between art, narrative, and geography within Japanese cartography. It centers on the titular “manga map”, a rare Japanese travel map of Japan (ca. 1934) that is densely packed with manga illustrations detailing local folklore, history, architecture, flora/fauna, and more. The exhibit also includes works of Japanese art and cartography in order to consider the dichotomy between artistry and geographic depiction, and how that plays with the definition of a “map.”
Alongside the exhibit, the manga map is also part of a new digital humanities preservation project at the library using the online crowd-sourcing platform Zooniverse, where the map will be transcribed/translated and made into a fully interactive digital map. More information is available at the exhibit.
Both the exhibit and the Zooniverse project were created as a summer internship capstone project by Joel Liesenberg, a dual-degree master’s student in International and Regional Studies focusing in Japanese studies and the School of Information focusing in digital curation.
Places & Spaces: Mapping Science and A Brief History of Information Graphics
August 29, 2022 - December 23, 2022
The Places & Spaces: Mapping Science exhibit introduces science mapping techniques and data visualization to the general public and to experts across diverse disciplines, and we hope inspires cross-disciplinary discussion on how to best track and communicate scholarly activity and scientific progress on a global scale. The exhibit includes a macroscope which showcases interactive visualizations that demonstrate the impact of different data cleaning, analysis, and visualization algorithms.
The Places & Spaces exhibit is curated by the Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center at Indiana University. The complementary exhibit, A Brief History of Information Graphics, was created by Clark Library staff to provide an historical context to the Places and Spaces exhibit.
Map ≠ Territory: Distortion and Power in Cartography
February 22 - August 12, 2022
More than strict representations of the world we inhabit, maps are social constructions that embody the interests of their creators. Map ≠ Territory deconstructs maps that have been used to subjugate, appropriate, and oppress, as well as the maps that counter that power through emancipation and advocacy. The exhibit critically engages with materials that span from the colonial era to modern-day Detroit.
Buying Home, Selling America: the House Catalog, 1906-1966
September 7, 2021 - January 26, 2022
Buying Home, Selling America: the House Catalog, 1906-1966 brings to light the collection of house catalogs in the Art, Architecture & Engineering Library’s Special Collections. Focusing primarily on the kit house industry of Michigan and the Midwest, the catalogs provide a portal to explore multiple themes, such as, the Michigan house catalog industry, changing architectural styles, the business of selling homes, societal and cultural implications, and domestic technologies. We hope the exhibit is not simply a nostalgic view back, but raises awareness of our domestic surroundings today and compels us to ask questions as we look to the future.
Waterways to Motorways: Traversing the Great Lakes
January 9 - March 9, 2020
The Stephen S. Clark Library’s newest exhibit, Waterways to Motorways: Traversing the Great Lakes, is a visual tribute to the famed lakes, celebrating their unique role in the history and development of the surrounding areas. The exhibit delves into the history of exploration and cartography in the Great Lakes, allowing audiences to witness the changing depictions of the lakes through historical maps. Similarly, the exhibit examines the modern role of tourism and motorized travel through pictorial and road maps, as well as artistically explores the lakes themselves.
Civitates Orbis Terrarum: Braun & Hogenberg’s Evolving World
September 18 - December 24, 2019
Civitates Orbis Terrarum (Cities of the World), the first standardized city atlas, contains over 540 maps and views between its six volumes. First published in 1572 by Georg Braun (1541-1622) and Frans Hogenberg (1535-1590), Civitates was first intended as a companion to Ortelius’s Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. New editions of the city atlas continued to be printed through 1617. Hogenberg, one of the most prolific engravers of the time, was joined by many other engravers in creating the Civitates. Braun edited the work and provided the descriptions of the cities on the verso of each plate. This exhibit contains 18 works from the Civitates, including many from the Clark Library’s holdings. Also included are reproductions of large panoramas Amsterdam, London, and St. Petersburg that reflect the evolution of city mapping through the 17th and 18th centuries.
Organic Matter
June 7- September 6, 2019
Organic Matter is a series of diverse multimedia works inspired by the natural world, both real and artificial ecosystems, unparalleled in their complexity and chaos, created and curated by the Media Design artists at the Office of Academic Innovation. The diversity of the pieces surrounding by a unified theme speaks to the team's strengths and how they each independently work and create art. The artists are Cy Abdelnour, Andre' Barbour, Jeff Butler, Eleanor Daftuar, Alex Hancook, Sean Curtis Patrick.
Disorder on the Border
March 26, 2019 - March 9, 2020
Disorder on the Border explores the wonder, beauty, and variety of maps, and what happens when, through a lack of organizing structures, we cross over the map’s orderly borders and begin the fall into the abyss of disorder.
Bibliophilia: books, booksellers, & book collectors
March 26 - May 26, 2019
Bookmarks: Speculating the Futures of the Book and Library
March 26 - May 26, 2019
A multi-venue exhibition of site-specific installations, performances, interventions, and events by University of Michigan faculty, staff, and students, Bookmarks: Speculating the Futures of the Book and Library was curated by Guna Nadarajan, dean of the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan, in partnership with the University of Michigan Library. The exhibition was located in several locations within Shapiro Undergraduate Library, Hatcher Graduate Library, and the Art, Architecture & Engineering Library.
Sinking Cities: Documenting the realities of climate change in cities around the world
November 18, 2018 - February 28, 2019
By the end of the century oceans are predicted to rise between .3 and 2.5 meters. This will result in major flooding in coastal cities around the world. The Sinking Cities Project aims to document this inundation through the stories of residents and the changing landscape of their cities. This exhibition provides a platform to begin understanding the effects of rising sea levels along the coasts of Indonesia, Bangladesh, The Netherlands, Italy and the United States. This photo and video exhibit was produced by Marcin Szczepanski, visual communications director at Michigan Engineering, and Frank Sedlar, Michigan Engineering alumnus.
Unique Perspectives: Maps from Tokugawa & Meiji Japan
August 28 - November 4, 2018
This exhibit of Japanese maps produced during the Tokugawa and Meiji eras (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries), includes maps of the world, Japan, and cities including Tokyo (Edo) and Kyoto. A major loan from the collection of Barry MacLean, Lake Forest, Illinois, forms the core of the exhibit, supplemented with works on loan from the Robert B. Hall Collection illustrating the Tokaido road, and selected maps from the Stephen S. Clark Library collection.
Mr. Vignaud's Maps: Unraveling a Cartographic Mystery from the Golden Age of Dutch Cartography
February 1 - July 27, 2018
In 1922 the University of Michigan acquired the library of Henry Vignaud, an American diplomat living in Paris, whose extensive personal library included thousands of books, atlases, maps, and other publications. Many of Vignaud's maps were extracted from broken atlases, originally published by the illustrious Hondius and Janssonius publishing houses. Staff in the Clark Library sought to organize these fascinating maps based on their physical characteristics and similarities, with the ultimate goal of reassembling the original atlases. This exhibit and the accompanying online exhibit feature the results of their remarkable findings, as well as a glimpse into the history of the Golden Age of mapmaking in 17th century Amsterdam.
Creating a Campus: A Cartographic Celebration of U-M's Bicentennial
July 21, 2017 - January 19, 2018
Learn about the campus’ history and architecture and explore the campus that might have been. In honor of the University of Michigan’s bicentennial, we highlight the U-M Ann Arbor campus, both before its creation and throughout its continuous evolution. Depicting the Ann Arbor area before the establishment of the city, the exhibit and the accompanying online exhibit celebrates the Native American community and highlights its presence throughout the decades. Featuring the work of famous architects such as Alexander Jackson Davis, Albert Kahn and Eero Saarinen, the exhibit presents maps, plans, architectural drawings, proposals, and photographs of the campus throughout its evolution.
The Student Experience: Flappers, Mappers, and the Fight for Equality on Campus Exhibit Opening
January 14 - July 14, 2017
In honor of the University of Michigan’s bicentennial, the Clark Library highlighted the student experience in the exhibit, The Student Experience: Flappers, Mappers, and the Fight for Equality on Campus. Join flappers as they stroll through 1926 Ann Arbor with a beautiful pictorial map and experience the busy student life of the 1920s, celebrate two University of Michigan alumna who have greatly influenced the field of cartography, and come explore the rise of diversity and the fight for equality on campus through protest posters from the Joseph A. Labadie Collection of the University of Michigan Library’s Special Collections.
The Florence Flood, November 1966: The Conservation of Books at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale and Beyond
August 17 - December 21, 2016
This exhibit focuses on the destruction of Florence during the flood on November 4, 1966. Among the collections severely impacted by the muddy waters were those in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. Book conservators from the United States and Western Europe were called in to help with the recovery efforts. The exhibit features a British team, headed by Peter Waters, which created a washing-drying-mending-rebinding system to deal with tens of thousands of books damaged by the disaster.
Intersections/Connections
Mar 17 - July 14, 2016
This International Studies exhibit focuses on materials from across the world, including many nations and cultures. Rather than displaying each area separately, the exhibit concentrates on the connections and intersections among disparate regions.
Recent Acquisitions and Hidden Treasures
January 21 - March 14, 2016
The Clark Library's Map Collection continually acquires maps, atlases, and works on cartography. Thanks to library support and the generosity of many donors we actively add hundreds of titles annually, including Nolli's incredibly detailed map of Rome (1748), a restored edition of Taylor & Skinner's Maps of the Roads of Ireland (1777), an 1881 astral lantern used for astronomy teaching, and many current international works. These and many other items will be on display.
Dining Out
August 20, 2015 - January 19, 2016
This wide-ranging exhibit, curated by historian Jan Longone, celebrates the history of the eating out experience. See guidebooks about historic and contemporary hotels, motels, inns, taverns, saloons, bars, diners, tea rooms, coffee houses, lunchrooms, soda fountains, roadhouses, cafes, bistros, drive-ins and more. View 300+ food and wine menus, mostly American, from all fifty states plus trains and ships. Learn about contemporary chefs as well as great chefs of the past. Recognize those who spent 50 years conserving Catalan cuisine, and view an array of menus designed by Salvador Dalí. Items that contributed to the California Food Revolution are on display, including the original letter from Alice Waters offering a young Jeremiah Tower, one of the country’s first celebrity chefs, his job at Chez Panisse in Berkeley.
Textile Trade Ascendancies: Nigeria, UK, and China
May 10 - August 15, 2015
This exhibit features cloth samples, photographs, and maps, and offers an overview of changing patterns of the textile trade in Nigeria from 16th century trading with Portugal to the present, when the Nigerian textile trade is dominated by imports from China. Curated by Elisha P. Renne, U-M professor in Anthropology and Afroamerican and African Studies.
Charting the Wolverine
January 15 - May 3, 2015
This exhibit explores the intersection of maps and art. Artist Elaine Wilson weaves the two together seamlessly in her project “Charting the Wolverine,” a series of her illustrations and paintings following the train route from Ann Arbor to Chicago. Wilson’s finished project is displayed in whole, supported by a small array of her sketchbooks, preliminary drawings and maps from U-M collections.
Thank You: Gifts to the Map Collections of the University of Michigan Library
October - December, 2014
Many of our most important maps have come to us as gifts. We will have several of these on display, including Dutch maps of the world and southeastern North America (1597), the Kremlin (1662), Kyoto (1730), and many more.
A Community For Victory: Ann Arbor in World War II
May 1 - September 21, 2014
The exhibit explored community life in Ann Arbor during World War II, using the Ann Arbor District Library's extensive local historical archives, the Stephen S. Clark Library's map collection, and special materials from the U-M Library's American Culinary History Collection. The exhibit was a partnership between the University of Michigan Library and the Ann Arbor District Library.
Place: Ann Arbor
May 1 - September 21, 2014
This exhibit montage includes Ann Arbor maps, photos, and ephemera collected through the years, highlighting the Stephen S. Clark Library's collection of local maps ranging from Arboretum planting plans to bus routes of long ago.
Land of Many Borders: A glimpse of Ukraine through U-M Library Holdings
September 9 - October 11, 2013
This exhibit happened in conjunction with former Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko's visit to the University of Michigan. It covered over 900 years of Ukrainian history, with a small section focusing on the emigration of one family from Carpetho Ruthenia to Detroit, Michigan.
Curated by Janet Crayne, Designed by Grace Rother
An India Map Exhibit
January 16 - April 22, 2014
An exhibit highlighting the Stephen S. Clark Library’s rich variety of historical and modern maps and atlases of India. Included were many of our earliest maps, including a facsimile of an Arabic manuscript from 1159 C.E. The exhibit covered the history and evolution of the mapping of India, colonialism, modern geoscapes portraying ‘Mother India,’ and maps of India today. Maps of India were presented in conjunction with the winter 2014 LSA theme semester "India in the World." The exhibit and accompanying online exhibit were curated by Jeff Martin and Tim Utter, Designed by Grace Rother and Clara McClenon
Afrokilt: The Thread that Binds
October 18 - December 23, 2013
Penny Stamps grad, Sally Volkmann, first created this exhibit as her senior project in 2012. The project was recreated as a more extensive exhibit including maps from the Clark Library's collection.
Created and curated by Sally Volkmann, Designed by Sally Volkmann and Grace Rother
Describing Space: Materials from a creative research trip in Kyoto
July 22 - October 11, 2013
A small exhibit which showcased a collection of maps and sketches from the curator's 2013 research trip to Kyoto.
Curated by Clara McClenon
Fall Art Show
July 22 - October 11, 2013
An Exhibit of Local Michigan artists, which included some U of M staff and students.
Artists: Erin Anderson-Ruddon, Andres Anleu, Aisling Arrington, Ian Bost, Mia Cinelli, Gabriel Duque, Megan Epskamp, Jay Fernelius, Caitlin Joseph, Michael Nagara, Elliot Popoff, Grace Rother, Sunny Smith, Catherine VanVoorhis
Curated by Grace Rother and Clara McClenon
Place: Detroit
April 22 - September 5, 2013
Place: Detroit was the first in an ongoing series of place-specific exhibits. It offered an opportunity to see some of the Stephen S. Clark Library's collection of books and maps on Detroit. The exhibit was designed to give a small taste of both Detroit's eventful past and exciting present.
Curated by Grace Rother, Sarah Helm, and Clara McClenon
Student and Staff Art Exhibit
April 22 - July 17, 2013
This rotating exhibit showcased art from current University of Michigan students and staff.
First Installation (April 22nd through May 17th)
With works by Parisa Ghaderi, Lyz Luidens, Paula Friedrich, Rachel Tran, Mirae Moon, Kristin Oliver, Sarah Strand, Mary Rose Adelle G. Pacificar, and Alana Hoey.
Second Installation (May 17th through June 15th)
With works by Jessica Joy London, Isabel Talsma, Lyz Luidens, Paula Friedrich, Rachel Tran, Mirae Moon, Kristin Oliver, Mary Rose Adelle G. Pacificar, and Alana Hoey.
Third Installation (June 17th through July 17th)
With works by Jessica Joy London, Alexis Lyman Peregoy, Lyz Luidens, Paula Friedrich, Rachel Tran, Mirae Moon, Kristin Oliver, Mary Rose Adelle G. Pacificar, and Alana Hoey.
The Geography of Colorants
January 17 - April 18, 2013
An exhibit and the accompanying online exhibit that was based on and inspired by the thesis The Geography of Significant Colorants: Antiquity to the Twentieth Century by Melissa Zagorski and showcased maps from the Stephen S. Clark Library Map Collection. This exhibit explored the use of color in antique maps and the geographical origins of the colorants used to make them.
Curated and designed by: Grace Rother and Sarah Helm
Travel through Maps and Narratives
August 17, 2012 - January 10, 2013
"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page." -St. Augustine of Hippo
This exhibit and the accompanying online exhibit explored the various reasons that humans have found to travel. Focusing on travel as close to home as the Great Lakes and as far away as Mecca, the exhibit gave a good overview of the many meanings of the word "travel".
Curated by Melanie Langa and Grace Rother, poster design by Melissa Nurre
An Imaginary Arctic Speculative Cartography in the Search for the Northwest Passage
May 10 - August 15, 2012
This exhibit was the culmination of then high school student Melanie Langa's research during the 2011/2012 academic year, which centered around cartographic depictions of the extreme northern reaches of the North American continent. The exhibit attempted to explain the attraction of a Northwest Passage despite Arctic dangers, the ways in which cartographers represented their speculation about such a waterway, and how navigation of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago has changed and will continue to change in the future.
Curated by Melanie Langa, poster design by Melissa Nurre