General Public

Celebrating Willie Ruff as an Oral Historian

Celebrating the life of Yale’s Willie Ruff in conjunction with Yale School of Music’s Willie Ruff Memorial Concert. The exhibit features oral histories recorded by Willie speaking with other legendary Black musicians and composers. These oral histories are part of the Gilmore Music Library’s Oral History of American Music project and is presented in partnership with the Yale School of Music’s March 29th Willie Ruff Memorial Concert.

SENSATION! Reported Bodies in 19th-Century American Media

“SENSATION!” is an exhibit about your body: your eyes, ears, nostrils, skin, and tongue. It’s also about that strange, seductive sixth sense, your imagination. How does the news touch your imagination to make your body feel? 

Today, “sensational” writing is an exaggerated, titillating representation of sex or crime. In the 1800s, though, “sensational” simply meant creating a strong impact on the senses. When we recover this historical definition, many newspapers begin to seem sensational.

Curator's Talk: "SENSATION! Reported Bodies in 19th-Century American Media" 2025 Senior Fellowship Exhibit

Please join us to celebrate the opening of “SENSATION! Reported Bodies in 19th-Century American Media”, on view in the Sterling Library Exhibition Corridor from April 28 to September 28, 2025. Curator Anne Gross ‘25 will provide a tour of this exciting exhibition and will be available for questions and conversation over light refreshments afterwards. No registration is necessary.

Lecture by Fortunoff Fellow Nora Krug, Author of “Belonging”

Nora Krug is a German-American author of illustrated non-fiction books on the subjects of history, war, and memory. Her graphic memoir, “Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home,” (winner of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award, among others) confronts WWII and Krug’s own German family history under the Nazi regime; her illustrated adaptation of Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny” was published in 2021; and last year, she published “Diaries of War,” a work of graphic journalism on Russia’s renewed invasion into Ukraine.

Yale Near East & Balkan Ensemble Spring Concert

The Near Eastern & Balkan Ensemble of Yale University’s Department of Music performs musics of West Asia and Southeast Europe, featuring sacred and secular styles from countries such as Bosnia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Lebanon, and Syria. Students in the group interpret diverse repertoire through characteristic approaches to ornamentation, improvisation, and meter (including additive aksak meters like 7/8 and 11/8) on their own instruments and voice parts, as well as on traditional regional instruments (particularly on Balkan drums and tambura string instruments).

Mondays at Beinecke: Frederick Douglass and Early Pan-Africanism with Jesse Olsavsky

A conversation with historian Jesse Olsavsky, Walter O. Evans Fellow for the Study of Slavery or Race at Beinecke Library. Though Frederick Douglass is often viewed as an American nationalist with little interest in Africa, this talk will contrarily show the ways that intellectuals in West Africa, the West Indies and the United States circulated and reinterpreted Douglass’s thought in order to understand the horrendous changes in the world resulting from the overthrow of Reconstruction and the colonization of Africa.

Panel Discussion: What is “America”?

What is “America”? What does it look like? Where can it be found? What does “America” mean and for whom? Join us on the Mezzanine at the Beinecke on April 17 at 4:00 pm for a panel that celebrates the publication of MAGNUM AMERICA/USA, an ambitious new book that juxtaposes historical commentary with eight decades of vivid photographs in the archive of the renowned Magnum Photography collective, founded in the wake of World War II, to offer potential answers to those questions.

Passover Pop-up Exhibition

Yale’s Special Collections at the Beinecke house extraordinary Passover Haggadot, books of Jewish custom (minhagim), and legal treatises related to the holiday. Join us to explore these rare and beautiful books from around the world as the Passover season begins. At a pop-up exhibit, you are welcome to come at any time during the one-and-a-half-hour period to view the materials and ask questions.

A Cosmos of Similarity

Imagine a world in which similarity is the foundation of everything. That idea, inspired by the writings of cultural theorist Walther Benjamin (1892–1940) and Yale Professor Paul North, is the basis for the new exhibition in the Cushing Rotunda: A Cosmos of Similarity. Showcasing lesser-known works from the founding collection of the Medical Historical Library, this captivating new display charts a rich intellectual history in which mathematics, theology, natural philosophy, art, and medicine intertwine.

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