Exhibitions from the Gotlieb Center
The Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center showcases its distinctive collections in curated exhibitions open to the BU community and visiting researchers. These permanent and special exhibitions seek to spark curiosity, encourage discovery, and more deeply connect library users to their fields of study. The Gotlieb Center’s staff also supports BU’s schools and colleges in developing exhibitions and selecting archival materials that enhance teaching and learning.
The Gotlieb Center welcomes inquiries from BU faculty and staff about collaborations that advance their academic and research goals and engage the BU community. Please Contact Us.
Current Exhibitions
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.
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,
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 looks at what we know about the building and its place at BU.
This exhibition is 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.
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
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. On display in the Gotlieb Memorial Gallery on the first floor of Mugar Memorial Library, 771 Commonwealth Avenue, during regular library hours
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. On display in the Gotlieb Memorial Gallery on the first floor of Mugar Memorial Library, 771 Commonwealth Avenue, during regular library hours