Exhibitions from the Gotlieb Center
Special Collections showcase archival collections in curated exhibitions open to the BU community, visiting researchers, and the public. These exhibitions spark curiosity, encourage discovery, and deeply connect library users to their fields of study. The library actively engages BU’s schools and colleges in developing exhibitions and selecting archival materials that enhance teaching and learning.
We welcome inquiries from BU faculty, staff, students, and community members about collaborations that advance engagement with the archives entrusted to the University. Please Contact Us with questions or suggestions for future exhibitions.
Current Exhibitions
BU Wheelock:
Two Institutions, One Enduring Legacy
In 2018, Wheelock College and the Boston University School of Education merged, creating the Boston University Wheelock College of Education and Human Development. This merger united BU’s century of research excellence and doctoral leadership with Wheelock’s legacy of community-centered education and social justice. This strategic combination leveraged major university resources while preserving deep community partnerships, creating an institution that advances educational equity through both rigorous scholarship and responsive practice.
This small exhibition showcases material from these two historic schools of education and highlights their joining into one, BU Wheelock, which embodies the traditions, visions and strengths of both former institutions. This joining is paralleled by the historic Wheelock College Archives becoming part of the University Archives, held by the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at the Boston University Libraries. The exhibition shows reproductions of archival documents and memorabilia from both Wheelock College and the Boston University School of Education.
Featured materials are related to the unique and close-knit culture of Wheelock College, including Wheelock “flair,” teaching tools, and photographs. Also featured are examples of Wheelock history and material directly relating to Wheelock’s educational ideals and mission. Items selected from the history of BU-SED include conference programs, school histories, yearbook pages, and brochures for events and outreach. The exhibition is on display in the lobby of Boston University Wheelock College of Education and Human Development (2 Silber Way) through Spring 2026.
The Charm of the Chapel: Celebrating 75 Years of Marsh Chapel at the Center of Boston University
“It has been said that “the function of art is (1) to teach us to see; (2) to teach us what to see; and (3) to teach us to see more than we see.” This Chapel is art at its highest, – art expressed in architecture, in painting, in sculpture, in stained glass, in line and form, in curve and color.”
These words, taken from a prayer recited by Daniel L. Marsh at the dedication of Boston University’s Marsh Chapel in 1950, highlight the charm of the Chapel and its importance as the centerpiece of the University. Designed to act as “the heart of Boston University,” Marsh Chapel has been the defining landmark on BU’s Charles River Campus, and the Chapel, along with its plaza, has been at the center of many era-defining events in the University’s history.
As Marsh Chapel celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2025, this small exhibition examines the Chapel’s illustrious history, and focuses on the building’s architecture, the symbolism of its details and designs, and the outstanding work done by the Chapel’s staff over the years. The exhibition features reproductions of architectural plans, promotional brochures, event flyers, photographs and archival documents highlighting Marsh Chapel’s 75 years of excellence and outreach across both the BU Campus and the city of Boston. The exhibition is on display in Marsh Chapel (735 Commonwealth Ave.) through the Spring 2026.
Learn more about additional events celebrating Marsh Chapel’s 75th anniversary
Howard and Sue Bailey Thurman:
Cultivating Experiences of Unity
This exhibition showcases Howard and Sue Bailey Thurman’s commitment to building the beloved community and implementing their enduring ethic of love in the real world. The Thurmans envisioned a shared life that transcends boundaries of race, culture, and creed, urging communities to cultivate experiences of unity that honor differences without erasing them.
This exhibition features reproductions of material directly pulled from their archives held in the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University Libraries. The materials showcase these themes in both theory and in action through book and sermon drafts, articles, correspondence, and photographs. The exhibition highlights their educational careers, their theological work, their social activism, their community outreach, as well as their influence and mentorship of the next generation of social, political, and theological leaders. The exhibition also focuses on Dr. Thurman’s views on mysticism and his ideals of emphasizing a conscious, direct experience of God within the “divine common ground” of all life.
The Howard and Sue Bailey Thurman: Cultivating Experiences of Unity exhibition is in support of the BU Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground’s Howard and Sue Bailey Thurman Speaker Series. The exhibition is on display at the Howard Thurman Center (808 Commonwealth Ave.) through the Spring 2026 semester.
The Best of Times, the Worst of Times: The Victorian Age from Charles Dickens to Penny Dreadfuls
The Victorian Era (1827-1901) was an age of paradoxes: revolutionary technology alongside prudish conservatism, progressive social reforms and brutal colonialism, a mingling of highbrow and lowbrow — in short, the creation of modern culture. This exhibition draws from the holdings of the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at the BU Libraries to illustrate a range of literature from the Victorian Era, showcasing original manuscripts and letters from authors, poets, and playwrights, including Charles Dickens, Eliabeth Barrett Browning, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas de Quincey, and others, as well as some 19th century serialized penny dreadfuls. Also represented is correspondence from Florence Nightingale, social reformer and founder of modern nursing; colonial administrator Lucas White King; and Queen Victoria herself.
This exhibition has been created as part of the 30th Annual Charles Dickens Society Symposium hosted by the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning, the College of General Studies, and Boston University.
This limited-run exhibition is on display on the first floor of Mugar Memorial Library.
Textiles Tell Stories: Exploring the African Studies Library Collection
Textiles are some of the building blocks of everyday life. But textiles are so much more than just material—textiles tell stories and offer ways of understanding how people saw the world at an exact moment in time. Textiles play an important role for those living in Africa and its diasporas by commemorating major historical events, reflecting social status, and offering a glimpse into the diversity of African life. This exhibition, showcasing the textiles held in the African Studies Library, provides an overview of how symbolic, political, and ceremonial textiles have been used in Africa and how they continue to have significance today. On display on the first floor of Mugar Memorial Library.
Textiles Tell OUR Stories: Celebrating the BU Community
Textiles Tell OUR Stories: Celebrating the BU Community displays garments and cloths contributed by BU students, faculty, and staff and describes in their own words the significance that these garments hold for them. This community exhibition complements the BU Libraries Special Collections exhibition Textiles Tell Stories: Exploring the African Studies Library Collection.
On display in the Richard-Frost Room on the first floor of Mugar Memorial Library.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Reading Room
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Reading Room offers all visitors access to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s papers on view in a permanent exhibition. The exhibition provides an intimate view of Dr. King’s time at the University, and his leadership of the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement for racial equality in the United States through photographs, handwritten letters and other materials in his papers.
Visitors can find the reading room on the 3rd floor of Mugar Memorial Library during the library’s open hours.
Past Exhibitions
The Work of Trailblazers and Pioneers Through Their Archives
Black media professionals have broken barriers in the fields of journalism, public relations, marketing, advertising, and more. This exhibition showcases a selection of the work of Black media trailblazers and pioneers who not only covered important political and social issues and led creative campaigns, but also advanced civil rights and influenced art and culture. Highlighted in the exhibition is cartoonist and jazz critic E. Simms Campbell; publisher and activist William Monroe Trotter; journalist, author, and editor Alex Poinsett; and reporter, columnist, editor, author, and educator Dorothy Butler Gilliam. Curated in support of the College of Communication’s Black Media: Pioneers Then and Now symposium at the Howard Thurman Center. On display at the Howard Thurman Center.
The Myles Standish Hotel, at the corner of Beacon Street and Bay State Road in Kenmore Square, served as a hotel and then luxury apartment building before being bought by Boston University in 1949 to be a dormitory. Myles Standish Hall would serve as the name of the building for the next 60-plus years until advocacy efforts by students, faculty, and local tribal members, led the Boston University’s Board of Trustees to approve its name change. Drawing on the university archives and rare books collection, this exhibition looked at what we know about the building and its place at BU.
This exhibition was an invitation to “Learn More” and was prepared in collaboration with the BU Diversity & Inclusion’s Learn More Series 2024–25 annual theme: Indigenous Identities and Experiences.
With materials from some of the most prominent names in journalism; civil rights; film & television; literature and genre fiction; and poetry, this exhibition explores the events and upheavals of the year 1963. The exhibition places a spotlight on the Birmingham campaign, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, while weaving through cultural, artistic, and historical connections.
Drawn from the Boston University Archives at Boston University Libraries’ Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, the CAS150 exhibition features images and historical material chronicling the founding, history, and student and academic life of the College of Arts & Sciences, BU’s largest college.