Past Exhibitions

Pequot Library stewards a remarkable collection of rare books and manuscripts thanks to the founders, philanthropists, and bibliophiles whose donations ensured that the public would have access to a priceless collection that might have otherwise ended up in private hands. This exhibition offers a rare opportunity to see a diverse array of some of Pequot Library’s most significant objects in one space. Take in familiar favorites like a 17th century Shakespeare Folio and William Morris’s masterpiece, The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, alongside rarely exhibited items like John Eliot’s 1663 Algonquian Bible, royal documents signed by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, and Bartolomé de las Casas’ Brevísima Relación de la Destrucción de las Indias, printed in 1552.

Discover the stories of the collectors whose dedication and generosity helped shape the library’s collection, from illuminated manuscripts to the earliest known printed cookbook. Treasured Tomes features visitor favorites while celebrating the enduring power of books to inspire, educate, and connect generations.

Commemorating the 135th anniversary of the Pequot Library Association’s founding in 1889, this exhibition presents an introduction to key individuals and milestone achievements that have made this place so beloved and widely recognized. The exhibition includes a selection of early correspondence and letters written by library founders and librarians, a variety of early photographs and advertisement flyers, original architectural blueprints, and other materials drawn from the archives and institution’s records that describe the remarkable history of Pequot Library. By tracing this history, we also explore the larger issue of the role of libraries in American civic life.

This exhibition will remind visitors how much Pequot Library has meant to generations of Connecticut residents—from serving as a gathering place for wartime rallies in the 1940s to participating in grassroots community opposition efforts in 2023—and reconfirm that this well-loved community institution remains an important destination library for all.

This exhibition was made possible thanks in part to the Constance C. Baker Rare Book Fund.

Until the late 1700s, sailors and navigators had no reliable way to measure longitude at sea, costing time, money, and lives. When the British Longitude Act of 1714 offered an impressive £20,000 reward to anyone who could solve this problem, self-taught carpenter John Harrison began a decades-long pursuit of the solution. Unlike renowned scientists including Galileo and Newton, who believed the answer could be found by measuring the celestial movements of the clockwork universe, Harrison created a mechanical alternative: the marine chronometer. Charting Your Course: Cutting Edge Navigation and Seafaring explores the revolutionary inventions and advancements of Harrison and others, pairing Pequot Library’s 16th to 19th century manuals, maps, and atlases with manuscript workbooks in which students in Connecticut learned the latest principles of navigation. Together, these materials illuminate the ways that ideas, innovation, and geography shaped Connecticut’s culture and economy in ways still felt today.

This exhibition was supported by the Connecticut Humanities.

The Private Press Movement was an offshoot of the Arts and Crafts Movement and flourished around the turn of the 19th century. Led by William Morris, its adherents rejected modern, mechanized book production in favor of exquisitely crafted texts and bindings produced using traditional techniques. The Book Beautiful: Selections from the Private Press Movement explores this rich period in book design, highlighting fine examples from Pequot Library’s Special Collections.

Gardening is a universal activity that unites people around the world. Whether for pleasure or practicality, humanity’s relationship with the soil has sustained since we quite literally planted roots as a species over 6,000 years ago. The Lure of the Garden invites visitors to explore the enduring desire to shape and cultivate the land, from the propagation of the “three sisters” — corn, beans, and squash — by Native Americans, to garden clubs, war-era Victory Gardens, and community and pollinator gardens.

With materials dating back to the 1500s, the Monroes and the Wakemans, founders of the library, sought to curate a collection that would be democratic — of use to all classes of society from the financier to the farmer. Pequot Library’s Special Collections reflect the changing tastes, styles, and purposes of gardens, as well as their enduring lure. The resulting collections contain everything from practical advice on laying out gardens, raising poultry, and keeping bees to propagating vegetables and keeping the accounts of the farm. Materials from the archives, including diaries and day books from local farmers, document the varieties of plants and fruit trees planted, as well as local produce like the Southport Globe Onions and potatoes that were shipped from our humble port to New York City.

Drawing on materials from the Children’s Historical Collection and the modern circulating collection, this exhibition examines the emergence and evolution of youth fantasy literature. Oftentimes, stories from this genre use magic as a metaphor for the turbulent transition from childhood to adulthood. Spanning fairy tales to 19th century works like Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz to more modern stories like Harry Potter, Children of Blood and Bone and The Gilded Ones, this exhibition further explores how these stories have evolved to tackle this transition in a more frank manner and, significantly, to embrace all voices.

This exhibition and its related programming are supported by the Connecticut Humanities.

Explore the collected works of Migration Now!, a portfolio of 37 silkscreen and letterpress prints illustrating the power art has to engage people in informed conversation about immigration. Co-organized by Favianna Rodriguez and Roger Peet, work in the collection takes on the impacts that policy, policing, fear mongering, and false narratives have had on immigrant populations. Local history materials from Pequot Library’s Special Collections, including maps and manuscripts, will be on view to highlight the effects of borders and migration in our own local history, specifically as it pertains to the impacts of colonization of indigenous lands, the consequences of which are still prevalent today.

During the exhibition, Pequot Library hosted an artist talk with Roger Peet, who created some of the work in Migration Now!

This exhibition explored all types of books, from miniature books to enormous folios, gold-stamped publishers’ binding to stab-stitched paper wrappers, treasured bibles to ephemeral almanacs, 19th-century marbled papers to 15th-century stamped leather, and more. It examined the ‘guts’ of historic bindings to see how they were constructed, from the bookbinder’s craft to the print and manuscript waste hiding inside.

This exhibition featured 19th-century sloop logs and ledgers from Pequot Library’s Special Collections illustrating Southport’s rich maritime legacy. Filled with notable Fairfield family names, these volumes captured the daily details of harbor life and emphasized the preeminent role of the Southport Harbor on the New England coast. Works on display included the Library’s collections of historic photography, tracking Southport’s evolution from a working harbor and shipping grounds to a quaint village and sailor’s paradise.

Viewers were invited to discover how Egypt has captivated the Western imagination from the 19th century until today. From Napoleon’s conquest of Africa to the discovery of King Tut’s tomb in the 1920s, Egyptomania swept America and Europe and came to symbolize the exotic, romantic, and mysterious. This exhibition featured materials from Pequot Library’s Special Collections, including late 19th-century photographs of Egypt, archaeological surveys, and travel memoirs.

Garden Menagerie featured a variety of works by Alex Sax and a selection of nineteenth-century books and poetry from Pequot Library’s Special Collections of rare books, manuscripts, and archives. The exhibition included the artist’s “garden” of imaginative and whimsical finely detailed nature drawings, prints, egg tempera paintings, and cast paper and paper-mâché animal sculptures inspired by Pequot’s holdings of works by American poets Emily Dickinson and John Greenleaf Whittier and The wild flowers of America…with fifty- colored plates, from original drawings, by Isaac Sprague by George L. Goodale, 1886, among other literary works highlighting the grandeur of nature. Also featured were a number of the artist’s handmade books.

This exhibition highlighted holiday materials from Pequot Library’s Children’s Historical collection and encouraged visitors to experience the magical and memorable role holidays play in the lives of all readers, especially children. Items on display included classic works of holiday literature, caroling music, and vintage postcards. From Christmas and Halloween to Thanksgiving and “Primrose Day,” the books and imagery covered a variety of religious and secular subjects including etchings of “The Three Wisemen” and the antics of Eloise and Babar the Elephant.

This exhibition considered the question posed by those at home during the Great War: “What can we do?” It featured a selection of books, maps, military diagrams, pamphlets, and propaganda posters from Pequot Library’s Special Collections of rare books, manuscripts, and archives. Viewers discovered and learned more about a variety of patriotic, civilian efforts that took place on the American home front after the United States entered WWI in 1917.

Pequot Library celebrated the life and work of Jane Austen and helped viewers discover how her insights into the ordinary lives of her characters have influenced culture for the last 200 years, featuring timeless illustrations and text. The exhibition examined how authors such as Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott inspired the young Jane and explored her influence on contemporary literature through novels such as Bridget Jones’ Diary by Helen Fielding and Pemberly Shades by Dorothy Hlice Bonavia-Hunt.

Uncovering Shakespeare features material from Pequot Library’s Special Collections including extracts from the First Folio; complete Second, Third, and Fourth Folios; the Players’ Shakespeare series from 1923 with seven plays; the Norton Facsimile of the First Folio; stunning editions of As You Like It and Merry Wives of Windsor; a small popular edition called The New Temple Shakespeare, with engravings by Eric Gill, and many scholarly editions and studies about Shakespeare and the Earl of Oxford. The exhibit includes, in large part, the collection of Shakespeare materials bequeathed in 1974 by Dean S. Edmonds, a trustee of the Shakespeare Oxford Society, founded in 1957. Mr. Edmonds was dedicated to exploring the Shakespeare authorship question and researching the evidence that Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford (1550 – 1604) is the true author of the poems and plays of William Shakespeare.