The ardent abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe had a specific intent for readers of her blockbuster novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin: she wanted her readers to “Read, weep, and reflect” as they read about the plights of Uncle Tom and his fellow slaves. Tie-in products for children demonstrate how Stowe, her publishers, and others seeking to get in on the lucrative Uncle Tom phenomenon envisioned extending the power of the novel to every part of children’s lives. Shown here are rare examples of toys, games, and other products from the years just following the novel’s publication in 1852.

"Quantum Levitation" is an exhibit of photographs that gives the viewer a rare glimpse into the unusual world of superconductivity, where some materials brought to very low temperatures create a quantum wave that expels magnetic fields, allowing for the amazing property of levitation. The exhibit is part of a greater endeavor to foster a new kind of dialogue between physicists, designers, and graphic artists.

A collaboration between Brown Library and the Department of Environmental Sciences, the exhibit is an outgrowth of a recent movement to link Art, the Humanities and place-based science in an effort to increase public awareness of the natural world, the environmental issues that impact our surroundings, and the complex interactions between human societies and the ecosystems in which we live.

In celebration of the 150th anniversary of the first publication of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,  undergraduate Wolfe Docent Susan Swicegood curated the mini-exhibition “Happy 150th Birthday, Alice!” The exhibit focuses on how illustrators have envisioned the figure of Alice over the course of the book’s publishing history.

The WSLS-TV News Film Collection, 1951-1971, comprises thousands of 16mm news film clips and related anchorperson scripts created by Roanoke, Va., television station WSLS during the mid-20th century. A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities funded the preservation and digitization of this collection. Content of the news stories varies greatly from Massive Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement to soapbox derbies and beauty pageants. The WSLS-TV news film collection is now available to the public in digitized form through the Library's online catalog, Virgo.

This exhibition takes its name from a hymn composed a century ago by two African-American brothers, James Weldon and J. Rosamond Johnson. Written in the days of the Jim Crow South, "Lift Every Voice and Sing" inspired African Americans to persist in their struggle for equal rights.

"American Broadsides to 1860" features a selection of broadsides—single-sheet publications typically printed on a single side—culled from the holdings of the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. These rare and ephemeral primary sources cover matters political, religious, social, commercial, militaristic, and literary. A fascinating portrait of the culture, the people, and the history of early America emerges from the contents of the 72 broadsides on view.

The Civil War’s impact on the culture, politics, and geography of Virginia cannot be overemphasized: battles ravaged the landscape, blockades and other political maneuvers transformed the economy, and profound regional tensions resulted in the creation of West Virginia. This exhibition seeks to reveal how Virginia was changed by the war, focusing on the voices of those who experienced it.

This exhibition features the work of the mid-century printmaker, painter, and commercial artist Charles Smith (1893–1987). Smith’s  innovative printing techniques were an essential part of his teaching at the University of Virginia, where he was the first chairman of the Department of Art. The exhibition celebrates the Library’s recent grant award to digitize and preserve a film about Smith’s “block painting” technique; the film will be shown on a continuous loop in the exhibition gallery, accompanied by examples of Smith’s work from our collections.

This exhibition in the First Floor Gallery celebrates the now-forgotten poet Vachel Lindsay, the influential American poet and artist of the early twentieth century. Known for his tramping excursions of hundreds of miles across many states, when he traded poetry pamphlets and performances for food and lodging, Lindsay created an unusual visionary poetics of mystical beauty. Drawing on Christian theology, mythology, and visual symbol systems, he mapped an American spiritual landscape in poems, books, artworks, and performances.