Rare Book Exhibits
Fatal Flora: Poisonous Revenge Narratives
This rare book exhibit, inspired by work from Artist in Residence, Susan Montgomery, explores the distinction between healing and harming as early modern women possess the plant knowledge that separated damage from remedy. The exhibit showcases 17th century herbals from the Kinney Center collection alongside plant specimens from the UMass Herbarium.
Water-Worlds: Ripple Effects or Sea Change?
Co-Curated by Evan MacCarthy & Marjorie Rubright
Spring 2024
Water-Worlds — Arts & Scholarly Programming
John Gerard, Herbal, 1633
Foraged: Kitchen Garden Herbaria
What were early modern attitudes toward mushrooms? Did people forage? Presented in tandem with Madge Evers’ mushroom spore and cyanotype prints this exhibit explores the wild life of mushrooms.
John Worlidge, Systema agriculturae, 1681
Mapping Terroir: Memory & Myth
This rare book exhibit, in conversation with Andrea Caluori’s linocuts, invites visitors to consider how working relationships between animals, tools, and the natural world are preserved in early modern books.
From Coral to Constellations
In Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Medusa’s blood was said to create coral. This exhibit explored the ways in which myths generate ideas about the natural world.
Georg Andreas Agricola, The experimental husbandman and gardener, 1726
Orchards & Grafting
Drawing from the Center’s books on pomology and orchard management, this exhibit examined grafting as a way to limit hybridity in order to produce desirable traits in tree fruit for eating, baking, and cider production.
Click here for a complete list of Renaissance of the Earth Rare Book Exhibits