Exhibits give our collections a chance to shine. Specially curated over months of research and selection, they combine the treasures of the UC Berkeley Library with the sprawling expertise and passions of our staff. The result? A community experience meant to inform, entertain, and inspire. Topics have run the gamut — from the history of the LGBTQ movement to humankind’s mania over life on Mars. Explore our site, and click on your favorite library to learn about past and current exhibits on display.
The Bancroft Library
Bioscience, Natural Resources & Public Health Library
C. V. Starr East Asian Library
Doe Library
Earth Sciences & Map Library
Engineering Library
Environmental Design Library
Mathematics Statistics Library
Moffitt Library
Music Library
The Bancroft Library
The Bancroft Library is a treasure trove, home to some of the most important documents and cultural gems in Californian history and beyond — from government records on the internment of Japanese Americans to the voluminous private writings of Mark Twain. Bancroft also preserves the University Archives, an exhaustive account of the University of California’s 150-year history. The library’s collections are showcased in the Bancroft Gallery as well as in cases lining the second-floor corridors between Bancroft and Doe Library. Recent exhibits have explored everything from the historic campaign to save California’s redwoods to UC Berkeley’s collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts.
Bancroft Gallery
The Gift to Sing: Highlights of the Leon F. Litwack & Bancroft Library African American Collections, December 2016
The Gift to Sing, December 2016
Facing West: Camera Portraits from the Bancroft Collection, November 2018
Facing West, November 2018
¡Viva La Fiesta! Mexican Traditions of Celebration, October 2017
Sustaining Grandeur: The First 100 Years of Save the Redwoods League, April 2018
Sustaining Grandeur, April 2018
New Favorites: Collecting in the Bancroft Tradition, September 2017
Bancroft third floor
The Hand-Printed Book, August 2019
The Hand-Printed Book, August 2019
Gold-panning exhibit, August 2019
Hallway
Bearing Light: Berkeley at 150, April 2018
Fiat Yuks: Cal Student Humor, Then and Now, November 2017
Fiat Yuks, November 2017
Bearing Light, April 2018
Bearing Light, April 2018
Bioscience, Natural Resources & Public Health Library
Our next guest needs no introduction: Enter the lobby of the Marian Koshland Bioscience, Natural Resources & Public Health Library to come face-to-face with an authentic 65-million-year-old Triceratops skull, accompanied by a cast of a baby Triceratops skull. Beyond the dinosaur duo, the library also maintains several display cases near its entrance. A recent exhibit in that space featured prints from Banks’ Florilegium, a collection of copperplate engravings of more than 700 plant specimens discovered by naturalists Sir Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander on Capt. James Cook’s first worldwide voyage, starting in 1768. Inside the library, find a wall of vibrant covers from newly published books and scientific journals, on topics from climate change to the surprising evolution of dogs.
Banks’ Florilegium display, August 2018
Triceratops skull near library entrance, April 2018
Past faculty and student research publication covers, September 2017
C. V. Starr East Asian Library
The C. V. Starr East Asian Library holds more than a million volumes in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other East Asian languages — and four bright floors with which to show them off. The library, which opened in 2008, was the first building on the continent constructed to house an East Asian collection. Recent exhibits at the library include a tribute to UC Berkeley’s 120-year history of collecting East Asian materials — which included Korean paintings, Japanese woodblock illustrations, and early Chinese scholarship — and a tour of the library’s Buddhist collections, with stunning prints of temples, accordion-fold sutras, and more.
Paul Fonoroff collection, April 2017
Paul Fonoroff collection, April 2017
EAL collection items, May 2018
Antidotal by artist Masako Takahashi, March 2018
Distinguished alumni display, September 2018
EAL collection items, September 2018
Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien exhibit, October 2018
Doe Library
Just past Doe Library’s main entrance, visitors are greeted by the Bernice Layne Brown Gallery, a vibrant, eclectic space that unites materials from across the Library to tell stories in new ways. Exhibits at the Brown Gallery — proposed and curated by Library staff members — explore narratives important to the Bay Area and beyond, from the history of the LGBTQ movement and the campus’s Third World Liberation Front Strike to the impact of the U.S. census and Berkeley’s historic art-lending program.
Brown Gallery
Beyond Tintin and Superman: The Diversity of Global Comics, October 2016
Beyond Tintin and Superman, October 2016
Love Across the Global South: Popular Cinema Cultures of India and Senegal, October 2017
We’re Here, We’re Queer, We’re in the Public Record!, March 2018
Whose University?: The 50th Anniversary of the UC Berkeley Third World Liberation Front Strike, March 2019
Whose University?, March 2019
Doe hallway
Reframing Aging, January 2018
Reframing Aging, January 2018
Art for the Asking: 60 Years of the Graphic Arts Loan Collection, September 2018
Library Prize display case
Over Mary’s Dead Body: Frankenstein, Sexism & Socialism, November 2018
Sympathy for the Loss of a Comrade: Black Citizenship and the 1873 Fort Stockton ‘Mutiny’, May 2019
Sympathy for the Loss of a Comrade, May 2019
Sympathy for the Loss of a Comrade, May 2019
Earth Sciences & Map Library
Throughout each year, the Earth Sciences and Map Library, in McCone Hall, puts on a pop-up exhibit series called Maps and More, a unique mix of maps, graphs, photographs, and, yes, more. The library holds one of the largest map collections in California, with over 470,000 maps and aerial photos. For the one-day pop-up, curators look at current events through the lens of maps — from a storm evacuation map showing New York City’s fate under rising seas to maps of the physical border between the United States and Mexico. Other exhibits in the library’s reading room have used maps to unfurl the science behind climate change, solar eclipses, and more.
Chocolate!!! Where Does It Come From?, November 2017
Solar eclipse exhibit, August 2017
Hamilton, in Maps, a pop-up exhibit, September 2017
Mapping the University, a pop-up exhibit, February 2018
Maps of Mars!, November 2018
Earthquake exhibit, December 2017
Chocolate!!! Where Does It Come From?, November 2017
Engineering Library
The Kresge Engineering Library is a dynamic space where students from all majors meet up to collaborate and recalibrate. In 2019, the library launched its Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Collection, on display near the center of the library’s lower level. The circulating collection includes works on topics such as the underrepresentation of minority groups in engineering and the hurdles women have faced in academia, particularly in technical fields. Also on display in the library are covers from new books in the collections, which explore topics ranging from civil and nuclear engineering to computer science and operations research.
New books on display, August 2019
Environmental Design Library
A student favorite — with nap pods, whimsical art pieces, and the hum of productivity in the air — the Environmental Design Library inspires visitors with an atrium at center stage. In that space, the library has exhibited everything from eye-popping artists’ books to 3-D models of breathtaking Chinese architecture. Several times a year, the library lets the public flip through its growing collection of artists’ books — works of art somehow crafted into the form of a book. Also on permanent display throughout the library are sculptures by Joseph Slusky, a local artist and former Berkeley faculty member, who describes his works as an “exploration of the subconscious, the infinite interior.”
The Book as Place: Visions of the Built Environment, February 2019
Joseph Slusky sculpture, March 2019
Hollywood and Vine, January 2018
The Book As Place, February 2019
The Book As Place, February 2019
The Book As Place, February 2019
Joseph Slusky sculpture, February 2018
Joseph Slusky sculpture, February 2018
Mathematics Statistics Library
Tucked away in Evans Hall is the unexpected cove of the Mathematics Statistics Library, home to more than 90,000 volumes on all areas of pure and applied mathematics. Near its entrance is a large wooden display shelf where the library shows off its wonderfully wonky gems. The library recently exhibited its collection of graphic novels and illustrated works, including The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change and What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. Inspired by the historical film Hidden Figures, the library also held an exhibit highlighting the contributions of women to mathematics throughout history, from Hypatia in fifth-century Alexandria to famed Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani.
Women Who Figure: The Mathematicians of Hidden Figures, May 2017
Women Who Figure, May 2017
Science Gets Graphic: Cartoons, Comics and Graphic Novels in the Sciences, April 2018
Moffitt Library
Each year, Moffitt Library showcases the creative talent of Berkeley’s students, filling its fourth and fifth floors with paintings, sketches, digital projects, and other artworks submitted by undergraduates. The fifth floor also features two large permanent pieces of art created by the Oakland-based artist collective Five Ton Crane. On the library’s third floor, check out the exhibit space directly across from the elevators, as well as a display area in the Free Speech Movement Café. Exhibits at Moffitt have used Library materials to illuminate topics ranging from the historical antecedents for the dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale to the cultural impact of Mexican artist and satirist José Guadalupe Posada.
Free Speech Movement Café
Cuban poster art, February 2018
Documenting the Struggle: The H.K. Yuen Social Movement Archive, October 2018.
Student art
“A Field Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area” by Lindsay Hanseni, December 2017
“Oil Spill” by Isabella Shipley, August 2019
“Hope and Conversation” by Wendy Zhang, August 2019
“Strawberries in Mixed Media” by Serina Chavez, July 2019
Third-floor display case
The Handmaid’s Tale exhibit, August 2018
The Handmaid’s Tale exhibit, August 2018
Illustrating Mexico One Engraving at a Time: The Art of José Guadalupe Posada, February 2019
Illustrating Mexico One Engraving at a Time, February 2019
Music Library
Inside the Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library are melodic masterpieces, from an original manuscript of Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 6 to Jacopo Peri’s La Dafne d’Ottavio Rinuccini, recognized as the world’s first opera. Just past the library’s entrance, a large display area greets musicologists and students alike. A recent exhibit explored pieces of music inspired by the composers’ pets, with such scores as the playful Mundus Canis (A Dog’s World) and “For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry,” a solo soprano movement about a sun-worshipping feline.
Music and pets exhibit, February 2017
Music and pets exhibit, February 2017
Music and pets exhibit, July 2019
