Rare and Distinctive Collections Exhibits

Explore virtual exhibits that highlight our unique collections. Learn more about exhibits at all Libraries' locations

Virtual Exhibits

Curious Remedies and Uncommon Cures: Five Centuries of Traditional Medicine

Drawing from rare materials held by the Rare Books Collection and Archives, both part of Rare and Distinctive Collections CU Boulder Libraries, this exhibit highlights how peoples of the past treated ailments and diseases from the Late Middle Ages through the early modern period. 

Disease and Healing in Global History

Drawing from materials held by Rare and Distinctive Collections, this student curated exhibit highlights how peoples of the past lived with and treated disease from the High Middle Ages through the early decades of the twentieth century.

Documenting Community, 2020

Documenting Community, 2020 archives CU Boulder student, faculty, and staff responses to the ways in which COVID-19 has affected our lives. Featured by CU Boulder Libraries' Rare and Distinctive Collections, this exhibit highlights a selection of artistic, literary, and documentary reflections on the outbreak of disease and quarantine by members of our own CU community. 

The Making of Great Britain

The Making of Great Britain highlights the changing religious, political, and social landscape of late Tudor through early Georgian Britain, as reflected in early modern British works held by Rare and Distinctive Collections, the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries and by the CU Art Museum. 

Europe since 1600

Europe since 1600 explores a wide range of topics from European visual and literary culture, to the evolution of European scientific thought, and, finally, to a twentieth century Europe amid World Wars and social change. 

Mapping All Hallows: Francis Stainforth's Nineteenth-Century London

Mapping All Hallows traces changes to the small London parish church of All Hallows Staining across the nineteenth century.  Located just two blocks from the Tower of London, curate Francis John Stainforth's parish church had long served as a backdrop for key moments in history. 

Dan Fong: Music & Counterculture in Colorado

This exhibit tells the story of Colorado’s premier rock and roll photographer and the ways he documented the golden age of 1960s and 1970s rock music in our state. This exhibit presents selected photographs and ephemera from the Dan Fong collection, housed at the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries’ Archives, and tells the behind-the-scenes stories of the collection and its creator.  Dan Fong’s photographs are the cornerstone of the Archives’ new initiative to document music, counterculture, and social change in the Rocky Mountain region.

Some Women of the AMRC Digital Sheet Music Collection

This exhibit showcases a selection of American women composers' works published between 1880 and 1920. The Digital Sheet Music Collection of the American Music Research Center at CU Boulder contains approximately 180 scores of piano and vocal pieces composed by women during this eventful era in the United States.

Tracing Scientific Vision

Tracing Scientific Vision explores the art through which science was envisioned in medieval and early modern Europe.  From the woodcuts of the first printed edition of Erhard Radolt's Alfonsine Tables (1483) to the engravings of Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie, ou, Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (1777-79), art and science have worked hand in hand to convey scientific observations that were both intellectually illuminating and visually appealing. This exhibit highlights a long tradition of exchange between the two disciplines. 

On the March toward Women’s Suffrage

Explore the suffrage movement within the context of the broader fight for women's rights.  Exhibit materials trace a path from efforts to promote equal access to education in the eighteenth century to increasing calls for expanded social and legal rights beginning in the mid-nineteenth century.  The state and national suffrage movements of the era culminated in 1920 with the ratification of the 19th amendment, securing women's right to vote.     

Embodied Judaism Online Exhibits

The Embodied Judaism Series, held biannually at the University of Colorado Boulder, draws on materials housed in the Post-Holocaust American Judaism Collections to explore the role of the body in Jewish life through public symposiums, featuring academic scholars, prominent practitioners, and artistic performers, and multimedia exhibits aimed at academic and non-academic audiences. 

PHAJ Summer Fellowship Online Exhibits

The Program in Jewish Studies, in conjunction with the Department of History, the Center for Humanities and the Arts and the University Libraries, provides fellowship opportunities in the Post-Holocaust American Judaism Collection. Beginning in 2017, these fellowships required a digital component to be created in addition to conducting original research and working with archival collections. This section contains the resulting digital exhibits created by our student fellows.

Hours, Locations and Contact Information

Location:
Rare & Distinctive Collections Reading Room 
Norlin Library M350B
184 UCB
1720 Pleasant Street
Boulder, CO 80309-0184
  rad@colorado.edu

Information for researchers & visitors

Map Collection

The Map Collection is located in the Earth Sciences & Map Library.

Map Collection: hours and more information