Public Programs
Current Exhibit:
September 14, 2009 - December 8, 2009
WRITINGS OUT OF TIME: The University of Arizona's Cuneiform Collection
With its focus on "The Roots of Literacy in the Ancient Near East", the exhibit and a fall lecture series will illuminate some of the world's first methods of writing. The displays of cuneiform tablets - primarily records of business transactions - are from half a dozen sites in Southern Iraq. The tablets date from 2100 - 1800 BCE and are unquestionably the oldest archive of literary materials in the State of Arizona. Lecturers will include faculty from The University of Arizona and scholars from around the country.
Current Events and Lectures:
See the Events and Lectures page for further information.
Past Events and Lectures:
June 30, 2009 - August 28, 2009
ARTIC SPIRIT Inuit Art from the Albrecht Collection at the Heard Musuem
The Inuit Art from the Albrecht Collection displays the Canadian Inuit culture’s rich artistic history. The Inuits, or Eskimos, are a society of natives who live mainly in Siberia, Alaska, Greenland and the Canadian Arctic. Though many consider these various groups to be homogenous, Arctic Spirit showcases the artistic styles that are distinctly of the Canadian Inuit.
The Albrecht Collection contains over 4,000 works of and 2,000 books on Native art.Date: Friday, August 21, 2009
Time: 2:00pm
Location: Special Collections
Guest Lecturer: Dr. Daniel Albrecht
As part of the exhibit, Special Collections will host a reception where Dr. Daniel Albrecht will speak of the collection and perspective of Inuit art and culture.
February 27, 2009 - May 29, 2009
Fifty Years of Publishing Excellence: The University of Arizona Press, 1959-2009
As part of the exhibit, Special Collections will host a reception and booksigning celebrating the publication of Heidi Osselaer's Winning Their Place: Arizona Women in Politics, 1883-1950.
Date: Thursday, April 2, 2009
Time: 7:00pm
Location: Special Collections
Guest Lecturer: Heidi Osselaer
Special Collections will host a reception and booksigning celebrating the publication of Heide Osselaer's Winning their Place: Arizona Women in Politics, 1883-1950
Dr. Osselaer will talk about the history and the impact of Arizona women political pionners. Learn how women like Isabella Greenway, Nellie Trent Bush, Lorna Lockwood, and Frances Willard Munds set the stage for future women to crash through political glass ceilings!
Date: February 24, 2009
Time: 6:30 - 7:45 pmLocation: Main Library, Special Collections
Guest lecture: Professor Thomas WillardA Story of Two Worlds: An English Doctor and His German Publisher
Some of the most famous illustrations of the scientific imagination in early modern Europe can be found in the copperplate engraving for Dr. Robert Fludd's encyclopedic guide to the macrocosm and the microcosm: the "great world" of nature and the "little world" of man. Fludd's Metaphysical, physical, and technical history of both worlds, that is, great and little (Utriusque cosmi maioris scillicet et minoris metaphysica, physica atque technica historia) was published in three folio volumes in 1617, 1618, and 1619. The great astronomer Johannes Kepler challenged Fludd's view and their debate raised issues that engaged a Nobel-Prize-winning physicist in the twentieth century.
Date: February 17, 2009
Time: 6:30 - 7:45 pmLocation: Main Library, Special Collections
Guest lecture: Professor Therese MartinRoyal Patronage and illuminated Manuscripts in Medieval Spain: Fernando and Sancha's Beatus Commentary on the Apocalypse and Alfonso X's Cantigas de Santa Maria
Dr. Martin addresses the role of royal patronage in the production of unusual and densely illuminated manuscripts made in the medieval kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula. She presents case studies of two very different books: the Beatus Commentary on the Apocalypse written by the scribe Facundo for King Fernando I and Queen Sancha of León in 1047, and the Cantigas de Santa María, produced by the workshop at the court scriptorium in Toledo ca. 1260-1270 for King Alfonso X of Castilla, who is also sometimes considered its author.
Date: February 10, 2009
Time: 2:30 - 3:45 pm (early program)Location: Main Library, Special Collections
Guest lecture: Professor Albrecht ClassenEveryday life in the Margins of the Medieval Book: The Luttrell Psalter
Dr. Classen introduces one of the most spectacular late-medieval English manuscripts, the Luttrell Psalter, which stands out so much because of its fabulous illustration program. Its illuminations depict a wide range of ordinary aspects pertinent to life on an estate, including labor, animals, people, fruit, etc. But there are also countless grotesque features and other fascinating but enigmatic images.
Date: February 3, 2009
Time: 6:30 - 7:45 pmLocation: Main Library, Special Collections
Guest lecture: Professor Paul MillimanThe Old Testament Gets Medieval: Saint Louis & the Morgan Crusader Bible
Dr. Milliman analyzes thirteenth-century views on holy war and kingship through an examination of the life of King Louis IX of France and the Old Testament miniatures in the Morgan Crusader Bible.
September 15, 2008 - January 9, 2009
A version of the exhibit is also available online at:
Páginas de la historia de México: Excerpts from the Morales de Escárcega Collection
This exhibit will feature pieces from the Morales de Escárcega Collection. This collection was acquired from the Escárcega family in early fall of 2007. This major assemblage of documents uniquely chronicles the history of Mexico.
Date: November 20, 2008
Time: 6:30 - 8 pmLocation: Main Library, Special Collections
Guest lecture: Professor Michael Brescia“An Understanding of Mexican History through the Morales de Escárcega Collection," by Professor Michael Brescia.
Brescia examines how the Morales de Escárcega Collection illuminates the major periods of Mexico's past, from the colonial era to modern times. In his lecture, he will suggest potential research avenues that students can pursue based on the collection.
Date: November 6, 2008
Time: 2:30 - 4pmLocation: Main Library, Special Collections
Guest lecture: Professor Stacie Widdefield“Take Another Look! Resources for the Study of Mexican Visual Culture in the Morales de Escárcega Collection” will be presented by Professor Stacie Widdefield.
The Morales de Escárcega Collection is rich in textual resources of obvious importance to scholars in the social sciences and humanities in particular. These range from official documents produced by Colonial period scribes to mass-produced pamphlets and books from the twentieth century. And within this collection of materials on Mexican history there is also much to offer scholars focusing on visual culture. This includes, for example, the technical manual Secretos Raros de Artes y Oficios: obra útil a toda clase de personas of 1833. Also among the treasures in the collection are several important texts illustrated with lithographs, such as the periodical La Guirnalda. Semanario de historia, geografia, literatura y variedades of 1844 in which are published a series of portraits of Archbishops of Mexico as well as a depiction of a recently erected statue of Antonio López de Santa Anna. This presentation will highlight the collection’s resources for the study of Mexican visual culture.
Date: October 9, 2008
Time: 6:30 - 8 pmLocation: Main Library, Special Collections
Guest lecture: Professor Martha Few“Limpieza de Sangre: Race, Religion and Purity of Blood in Colonial Mexico,” will be offered by Professor Martha Few.
Dr. Martha Few will provide an overview of key issues and contrasts of purity of blood laws in Iberian Spain and colonial Mexico. She will use a 1767 manuscript from the Morales de Escárcega Collection to illustrate and provide further discussion on how this practice worked for the requestors mentioned in this particular document.
Grand Opening Lecture
Date: October 2, 2008
Time: 6:30 - 8 pmLocation: Main Library, Room A313/314
Guest lecture: Professor William “Bill” Beezley“The Morales de Escárcega Family Library, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” will be presented by Professor William “Bill” Beezley.
The Morales de Escárcega Family and library odyssey from Tlaxcala, to Puebla, to Mexico City, and the books to Tucson provides a chronicle of national history and intellectual evolution. This talk briefly discusses the family adventure, and evaluates the books, pamphlets, and photographs, and how if they are taken together they offer a mosaic of Mexican culture and experience.
July 10, 2008 - September 5, 2008
Remembering an Empire: The Empire Ranch of Southern Arizona
Date: September 2, 2008 see podcast of lecture
Time: 2:30 pmLocation: Special Collections, Reading Room
Guest lecture: Alison Bunting, “Arizona’s Empire Ranch: A Prominent Past and Promising Future”
Alison Bunting, President of the Empire Ranch Foundation, will lecture in Special Collections. Since moving to Sonoita, Arizona she has become an active member of the Empire Ranch Foundation (a Bureau of Land Management partner organization) which is headquartered in Sonoita.
Online Exhibits:
Facsimiles of Illuminated Manuscripts in Special Collections
Fred Harvey Collection: Traveling the Rails in Grand Style
Miss Estelle Lutrell: an exhibit about UA Library History
Morris K. Udall: A Lifetime of Service to Arizona and the United States
Southwestern Wonderland: Tourism Pamphlets from the 1920s and 1930s
Stewart Lee Udall: Advocate for the Planet Earth
Arizona Quarterbacks Through the Years
Other Online Resources:
The following web exhibits were created from Special Collections’ holdings, but are not maintained or updated by the University of Arizona Libraries. Accessing these sites will take you outside the Library’s web site.
The Leona G. and David A. Bloom Southwest Jewish Archives