Portraits of Painters: Drawings by George Vertue and Horace Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting in England
Lewis Walpole Library
Farmington, Connecticut

The exhibition includes drawings by George Vertue (1684-1756) as well as the related prints published in volumes of Horace Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting, published between 1762 and 1771.

The Lewis Walpole Library is a research library for eighteenth-century studies and the prime source for the study of Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill. Its collections include significant holdings of eighteenth-century British books, manuscripts, prints, drawings and paintings, as well as important examples of the decorative arts. Housed in an historic frame house in Farmington and given to Yale by Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis and Annie Burr Lewis, the Lewis Walpole Library is a department of Yale University Library.

Long Road to Freedom: A 90th Birthday Tribute to Nelson Mandela
Sterling Memorial Library
October-December 2008

This exhibition traces important events in Mandela's life including his early years and schooling, his increasing militancy, political activities, arrests, and imprisonment, as well as his release and election as the first post-Apartheid president of South Africa. The exhibit also features fascinating Mandela-related ephemera, such as a pillow, a placemat, an apron, tee-shirts, a handbag, and a puzzle. Materials on display are drawn from Sterling Memorial Library, the African Collection in Manuscripts and Archives, and the collection of Dorothy Woodson, African Collection curator.

The exhibit is free and open to the public Monday through Thursday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:45; Friday 8:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.; Saturday 10:00 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.; and Sunday 12 noon to 5:45 p.m. Sterling Memorial Library is located at 120 High Street, New Haven. “Long Road to Freedom” runs until December, 2008.

An exhibition celebrating the 250th birthday of lexicographer Noah Webster has opened in the Memorabilia Room in Sterling Memorial Library. Titled "Noah Webster: American Patriot and Yale Loyalist," the exhibition demonstrates that Webster, Yale class of 1778, M.A. 1781, and Honorary Doctor of Laws 1823, was far more than just a brilliant compiler of dictionaries. His astoundingly various contributions to his country and his proud identity as a Yale man are vividly displayed in this collection of manuscripts, books, and artifacts, reflecting a lifetime of accomplishment, innovation, and unflagging patriotism.

Webster played a major role in the drafting and ratification of the Constitution and played a crucial impact on the development of the American educational system. The father of copyright legislation in the United States, Webster also served in elected offices both in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and played an important role in the creation of Amherst College.

These diverse achievements and more are represented in the sections like Webster the Yale Man, Webster the Patriot, and Webster the Historian, but Noah Webster was also a lawyer, a teacher, an ecologist, a geographer, a moralist, and above all a founding "uncle," if not a founding father, of his country. His triumphant achievement as a landmark lexicographer of the English language has hitherto overshadowed his many and important accomplishments in other areas.

The exhibition will be on display through the end of November. It is free and open to the public during scheduled library hours. Sterling Memorial Library is located at 120 High Street, New Haven, Connecticut.

Until September 30
Sterling Memorial Library
120 High Street, New Haven, Connecticut

This exhibition in Sterling Memorial Library's exhibit corridor showcases original art, photographs, and decorative objects by the talented and creative staff of Yale University Library. The exhibition is sponsored by the Library Staff Association.

Tang Dynasty robe, excavated in the Caucasus.
Hermitage Museum, St. Peterburg, Russia

The Silk Road
July 1 - September 30
Sterling Memorial Library
120 High Street, New Haven, Connecticut

This exotic name for the trade routes, or rather the trade networks, connecting China with the Mediterranean and Mongolia with India was only invented in the nineteenth century. However, trade and cultural exchange has flourished along these routes for millennia, in spite of natural barriers, such as the tallest mountains in Asia, vast deserts, frequent earthquakes, not to mention different languages, religions and cultures. Archaeological excavations in China and the Middle East show us the extent to which ideas, designs and forms were exchanged already in the 2nd millennium BC.

On display are photographs and objects from the Babylonian Collection. The exhibition is free and open to the public during regular library hours.

Of Typewriters and Sleigh Bells: A Celebration of Leroy Anderson
June 27-August 29 2008
Gilmore Music Library, Sterling Memorial Library

This exhibition in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of composer Leroy Anderson features seven musical manuscripts in Anderson’s hand, including the immortal Sleigh Ride, as well as unusual artifacts such as Anderson’s baton, the typewriter that was used as a musical instrument in The Typewriter, and Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell’s official proclamation declaring June 29, 2008 Leroy Anderson Day.

The exhibition is free and open to the public during regular library hours.

"The Eponymous Dozen": Naming Yale's 12 Residential Colleges
Until August 28, 2008
Sterling Memorial Library, across from entrance to Starr Main Reference Room
120 High Street, New Haven, Connecticut

This exhibition tells the stories behind the names of Yale's existing colleges. It includes photographs and artifacts related to the eleven men (including the two Yale presidents named Timothy Dwight) and two places for which Yale's colleges have been named.

Family and Community Archives Project
May 28-July 2008
Exhibits Corridor, Sterling Memorial Library
120 High Street, New Haven

This exhibition of materials assembled by students from New Haven's Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School tells the stories of their families and neighborhoods. It was created through the Family and Community Archives Project, an initiative conceived by twenty-one Yale University Library archivists to introduce New Haven high school students to the archival profession and the work of professional archivists. Over nine weeks, 113 juniors and their teachers in “United States History II” learned how to find and care for photographs, documents, and artifacts, and learned how to do research using primary sources.

The exhibition is free and open to the public and runs until the end of July, 2008

Memorabilia Room, Sterling Memorial Library
120 High Street, New Haven

An exhibition in Sterling Memorial Library's Memorabilia Room celebrating the class of 1958 and their 50th reunion year. Materials on display include the many published works produced by members of the class over the past five decades.

The exhibition is free and open to the public during regular library hours.

Treasures from the Special Collections of the Music Library
and the American Musical Theatre Collection

May-June 2008
Gilmore Music Library, Sterling Memorial Library
120 High Street, New Haven

A sampling of music manuscripts and editions, photographs, and realia aimed to please many tastes in music.

A World of Letters: Yale University Press, 1908-2008
May-July 2008
Sterling Memorial Library
120 High Street, New Haven, Connecticut

This new exhibition celebrates the centennial of Yale University Press, founded in 1908 to advance learning through the publication of books that contribute to an understanding of human affairs in arts or sciences. Items on display include Yale University Press catalogues, memorabilia, historical documents, and examples of just some of the eight thousand books printed by the press over the last one hundred years.

The exhibition is also the first to installed in the newly reconceived exhibition space under the arches of Sterling Memorial Library.

A World of Letters: Yale University Press, 1908-2008 is free and open to the public.

For more information on Yale University Press, visit their web site.

The Passover Haggadah: Modern Art in Dialogue with an Ancient Text
Until June 27, 2008
Sterling Memorial Library
120 High Street, New Haven, Connecticut

The Passover Haggadah is a composite text made up of biblical, rabbinic and liturgical passages and ancient folk songs. Scholars believe that the earliest versions were assembled sometime in the first century of the Common Era, during the late Second Temple Period in Palestine. The Haggadah was--and still is--read on Passover eve during the Seder, a ceremony commemorating the Israelites’ delivery from Egyptian bondage.

February-May 2008
Memorabilia Room, Sterling Memorial Library
120 High Street, New Haven, Connecticut

Art lovers don't often think of the library or archive as a place to study original works of art, but this exhibition showcases pencil sketches, watercolors, cartoons, caricatures, and ephemera from the records of the University or from the collections of personal or family papers in Manuscripts and Archives.

Until May 27, 2008
Exhibitions Corridor
Sterling Memorial Library
120 High Street, New Haven, Connecticut

An exhibition of books by and about the North African scholar Ibn Khaldun (Tunis 1332- Cairo 1406) in the Yale collections. Featuring modern and contemporary editions in Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Russian, Spanish.

Ibn Khaldun is free and open to the public.