Exhibitions
Bubbles, Panics, and Crashes: A Century of Financial Crises, 1830s–1930s
Through May 3, 2010
North Lobby
Baker Library/Bloomberg Center
Harvard Business School
Allston
Baker Library Historical Collections Department, 617-495-6411 or histcollref@hbs.edu
One year after the subprime mortgage crisis, this exhibition revisits four financial crises that occurred in an earlier, particularly volatile century of economic history. In 1837, 1873, 1907, and 1929, asset price bubbles burst, shattering public confidence and devastating financial, securities, and credit markets in the United States and around the world. These four crises were so far-reaching that they affected virtually everyone involved in the US market economy. Yet each was so complex that their causes and consequences remain subjects of debate generations later. By introducing these four earlier crises, this exhibit highlights historical materials that provide avenues for historians and economists to better understand these interconnected and multi-causal phenomena. Visit the exhibit's web site to learn more about the history of financial crises, to find materials in Baker Library Historical Collections that could support further research, and to view some of the items featured in this exhibition.
Gleams of a Remoter World: Mapping the European Alps
Through November 30, 2009
Map Gallery Hall
Pusey Library
Joseph Garver, 617-495-2417
This exhibit explores how European cartographers over the centuries have responded to the challenge of mapping the Alps. It surveys the range of techniques employed to represent mountains in graphic form: from the stylized hill profiles of Renaissance maps to recent topographic maps that combine contours, hill shading, rock drawing, and landscape tints to create a naturalistic, three-dimensional impression of the terrain. The exhibit looks at a variety of cartographic genres, including maps celebrating military conquest, panoramic views for tourists, guides for hikers and skiers, national surveys, and transportation maps.
Masked Festivals of Canton Bo (Ivory Coast), West Africa
Through March 31, 2010
Gallery, Tozzer Library
Janet Steins, 617-495-2292
The festivals of Canton Bo, located in the dense forest region of eastern Liberia and western Ivory Coast, centered on the g'la, or the spirit forms of ancient ancestors who appeared in post-harvest festivals wearing carved masks and full-body coverings of straw, animal hide, textiles, and paint. Until 2002, the Bo people invited the sprits each year to protect their village against unknown threats, and to stimulate fertility for both women and crops. Through rare drawings and photographs, along with masks from the Peabody Museum collections, Masked Festivals explores the different kinds of spirit forms and their performances.
The Mercator Globes
Ongoing
Harvard Map Collection
Pusey Library
617-495-2417
Includes Gerard Mercator's terrestrial (1541) and celestial (1551) globes, which reflected new discoveries in world geography and cosmography as well as new techniques in charting, printing, and globe making. Only 22 matched pairs survive, Harvard's being the only matched pair of Mercator globes in America.
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"A Monument More Durable Than Brass": The Donald and Mary Hyde Collection of Dr. Samuel Johnson
Through November 14, 2009
Edison and Newman Room and Amy Lowell Room
Houghton Library
John Overholt, 617-495-2439
In 2003, Harvard received the bequest of the most comprehensive collection in existence on the life and work of Samuel Johnson and his circle of friends and associates in 18th-century literary London. The year 2009 marks Johnson's 300th birthday and provides an opportune moment to exhibit some of the treasures of the Hyde Collection, including a fragment of the manuscript for his Dictionary, his only surviving letter to his wife, books from his library, and his teapot.
Roosevelt Reading: The Pigskin Library, 1909–1910
Through August 31, 2010
Theodore Roosevelt Gallery
Pusey Library
Wallace Dailey, 617-384-7938
After leaving the Presidency in March 1909, Theodore Roosevelt and his son Kermit left the U.S. for a long-promised safari in British East Africa. Among the items Roosevelt took on safari was his “pigskin library” – 55 books, bound in pigskin to withstand the rigors of the hunt. Presented to Harvard in 2002 and first shown in 2003, the library will be exhibited this year to mark its centennial.
The Warren Anatomical Museum Reopening Exhibition
Ongoing
Warren Anatomical Museum Exhibition Gallery, Fifth Floor
Countway Library of Medicine
Harvard Medical School
10 Shattuck Street
Boston, MA 02115
617-432-2173
Weather Control: Pluviculture, Cloud Seeding, and Climate Engineering
Through January 29, 2010
Cabot Library
Main Floor
Reed Lowrie, 617-496-5534
Some people are unwilling to heed the adage "you can't change the weather." This exhibition recounts the history of attempts to control the weather, from native rituals through 19th-century "rainmaking," Cold War weather-modification research, and contemporary investigations into climate engineering.
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