Previous exhibition

The medieval bishop and bibliophile Richard de Bury describes books as an "infinite treasure," for they, more than any other human contrivance, are able to preserve the knowledge and the wisdom, as well as the follies and the failures, of previous generations – "in books I find the dead as if they were alive." This exhibition aims to bring the medieval world to life by drawing on the many treasures from the period to be found in the Fisher Library. It celebrates the medieval book, and the medieval written word more generally, in all its variety in terms of both subject matter and physical form. Included are books on topics from religion to science and history to the law and in formats from the codex to the charter to the tally stick. Though the main focus of the exhibition is on medieval manuscripts – that is, books written by hand – it also explores the transition from handwritten to printed books that began at the very end of the medieval period. Medieval books, and especially their aesthetic qualities, have been a recurrent source of inspiration for the makers of books in subsequent periods, and the exhibition also examines this medievalist tradition in book production, especially in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

This exhibition was curated by the Fisher Library’s PJ Carefoote, Timothy Perry, and Nadav Sharon. It ran from September 6 through to December 20.

Atwood, Ondaatje, Gallant, Davies. These names are familiar to anyone with even a passing interest in Canadian literature. But the writers are only one aspect of the CanLit story. As Graeme Gibson once remarked, the notion that writers function best in isolation is nonsense – rather, there is "strength in numbers." The writers, of course, are paramount, but the community includes so many others: editors, publishers, illustrators, marketers and booksellers are just a sampling of the individuals that make up the broad network of Canadian publishing. Drawing on the library’s rich archival material, this exhibition will explore how CanLit and Canadian publishing have been shaped by our diverse community.

This exhibition is curated by the Fisher Library’s Natalya Rattan and John Shoesmith.

There is a self-guided audio tour of the exhibition that can be downloaded from Soundcloud (click on link) and on iTunes.

Canadian photographer Michael Torosian purchased his first printing press in 1981. Through a conscious plan of learning, along with some helpful advice from Toronto’s private press community, Torosian taught himself the mechanics of book making and launched his publishing imprint Lumiere Press out of a studio in west Toronto. Owing to his background, his books focused exclusively on photography – today, it is the only fine press in the world devoted exclusively to photography and photographers, and has featured some of the most important photo artists of the last century, including Edward Weston, Lewis Hine, Dave Heath and Saul Leiter. In the spirit of the fine press tradition, the books are entirely handmade: they are cast in lead, hand printed and hand bound, in limited editions of between 150 and 300, making each book a unique object of artisanal skill.

This exhibition features material gathered from the Lumiere Press Papers, which was donated to the Fisher Library in 2017. It is curated by Lumiere's Michael Torosian and John Shoesmith of the Fisher Library. It was designed and installed by Linda Joy.

To learn more about Lumiere Press, please visit the Fisher's SoundCloud site where you can download an audio guide that accompanies the exhibition.

Every book tells its story in its making. The material used for the text, the method of writing or printing, and its use and preservation as folded sheets or bound together in the codex format inform the book as object. Books reflect their makers, their readers, and their users. This exhibition will feature the covers or the bindings of books as a reflection of their production and consumption – or, in other words, the material book as witness to its manufacture, use, and survival. Highlights will include not only examples from the Fisher collections of the art of bookbinding, but also examples that reflect the presence of books in our lives for purposes of religious observance, reference, recording, and leisure. The books will broadly illustrate the processes of their construction and their afterlives in the hands of readers, collectors, and libraries

This exhibition was compiled and edited from Greta Golick's research and teaching notes by Marie Korey and David Fernández.

In the video below, friend and book making colleague James Spyker talks about Greta and her role in the book binding community.

Fern-fever, orchidelirium, the seaweed craze: for Victorians, natural history was a pleasurable pursuit sometimes bordering on a psychological disorder. At more than a thousand volumes, the Fisher Library's Victorian natural history collection provides a unique opportunity to trace the ways in which the medium of print stimulated and sustained the nineteenth-century appetite for natural history. This exhibition showcases both the collecting and manuscript practices of naturalists and how books, in some instances, encased the specimens themselves. A special focus here is women practitioners of natural history -- as authors of and contributors to published works, and as artists and collectors. On display will be copies of some of the most popular natural history works of the day: J.G. Wood's Common Objects of the Country - and some of the most beautiful and rare: James Bateman's Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala. Weighing more than 38 lbs, Bateman's work is considered the largest book published with lithographic plates.

This exhibition is curated by Maria Zytaruk, Associate Professor of English, University of Calgary.

There's a free hour-long audio guide that accompanies this exhibition, narrated by the curator. She guides visitors through the themes of the exhibition and point to specific highlights in each of the cases. You can download it on your mobile device via SoundCloud (click on link for the playlist of the audio guide) or by visiting the Fisher Library's iTunes site.

To information on purchasing the catalogue for this exhibition, please visit our Ordering Publications page.

Aristotle, Pliny the Elder, Christopher Columbus, Ulisse Aldrovandi, and Mary Shelley are united by their writings on the subjects of monsters. Each of these authors crafted distinct visions of monstrosity in their own fields, inspiring the imagination of readers over the course of centuries. Together, the corpus of their texts also holds the answers to which other writers have turned in their quests to the lands of monsters.

This exhibition explores the textual and visual sources at the centre of the stories of monsters recounted in the pages of medieval encyclopedias, wonder books, cosmographies, compilations of travels, natural history volumes, medical texts, and other popular books unfettered by the wonders of the human imagination. Beyond showcasing the Fisher Library’s remarkable collections in the areas of history, medicine, science, and literature, one of the chief concerns of this exhibition is to follow the main themes in the history of monsters in the West. Among the highlights of these themes will be the monstrous peoples of the medieval tradition, the messages of prodigies of the Renaissance period, the invention of monsters in the Age of Exploration, the nature of monsters in light of Humanism, the complexity of human monstrosity in the scientific thought, and the conception of monsters as creative bodies.

This exhibition is curated by Fisher Librarian David Fernandez.

There is a free audio guide for the exhibition, available on SoundCloud.

Mixed Messages: Making and Shaping Culinary Culture in Canada will display a tasty arrangement of rare cookbooks, periodicals (magazines), manuscripts and culinary objects from the 1820s to the 1960s. This exhibition will examine how the culinary culture of Toronto and surrounding areas was made and shaped by those who participated in or were excluded from the making and using of culinary materials. On display will be many scarce items which are part of our collections due to the generous donations of Mary Williamson. Objects on display include a copy of the Frugal Housewife's Manual, the first cookbook written and published in Canada, posters advertising the beloved Canadian Cook Book, and an English curry bottle from the early 1900s (with curry still inside!).

Curators:

Nathalie Cooke, Professor and Associate Dean (Library Rare and Special Collections), McGill University.

Irina D. Mihalache, Assistant Professor, Museum Studies, Faculty of Information

Elizabeth Ridolfo, Special Collections Projects Librarian, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library

Curatorial Assistants, MacLean Hunter Gallery: Cassandra Curtis & Sadie MacDonald, Master of Museum Studies Candidates

A self-guided audio tour of the exhibition narrated by the curators is available on both SoundCloud and on iTunes.

In July, Liz Ridolfo and Irina Mihalache were featured on CBC Toronto's flagship morning program, Metro Morning. They provided listeners a quick tour through the exhibition, along with pointing out some highlights. The segment is available online by clicking on this link. 

Image used with permission of Rogers Media Inc., All Rights Reserved

Allen Ginsberg, poet, needs little introduction. His seminal works, including “Howl” and “Kaddish,” helped to define and legitimize the literary movement that came to be known as Beat. While his early works were considered controversial – “Howl” was famously tried, and acquitted, in court under obscenity laws – his writing eventually found public and critical recognition. His book Fall of America, published in 1972, won the National Book Award for Poetry, and in 1973 he was elected a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In fact, Ginsberg can be considered one of the last of the household-name poets in North America.

Less well known, however, is Allen Ginsberg, photographer. Yet since the late 1940s, when Ginsberg was discovering his literary voice and befriending many of the writers who helped to lay the literary foundation of the Beat movement, including William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, Ginsberg’s camera was candidly capturing the general spirit and ethos of the Beats. We only know many of those early images of Burroughs and Kerouac, along with Neal Cassady (the figure popularized as Dean Moriarty in Kerouac’s On the Road), because of the photographs taken by Ginsberg.

Later, with the encouragement of noted photographer Robert Frank, Ginsberg began to take the art form more seriously. As his fame continued to rise – not just for his poetry, but for his advocacy and crusading social justice – his camera continued to document his rich circle of friends and associates.

This exhibition features photographs – some well known, others more obscure – from the Fisher’s Ginsberg Photography Collection, the largest collection of Ginsberg prints in the world. It traces Ginsberg’s friendships with the Beats, through to the period when he wrote his seminal work, “Howl,” along with exploring his photography from the mid-1980s up to his death in 1997. Complementing the photographs are a number of rare print materials from members of the Beats, including Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. Complementing the photographs will be a number of rare print materials from members of the Beats, including Kerouac, Burroughs and Gregory Corso, along with Ginsberg books and broadsides and materials that inspired him over his lifetime. 

This exhibition is curated by John Shoesmith of the Fisher Library.

An audio tour of the exhibition, narrated by the curator, is available on Soundcloud via this link and on the Fisher's iTunes channel.

During one of his ‘Table Talks’ Martin Luther said that ‘printing is God’s ultimate and greatest gift. Indeed through printing God wants the whole world, to the ends of the earth, to know the roots of true religion and wants to transmit it in every language. Printing is the last flicker of the flame that glows before the end of this world.’ So close were he and the other Reformers to the appearance of this new ‘black art’, as printing by moveable type came to be known, that the Reformation is often referred to as ‘Gutenberg’s child’. That may be something of an overstatement. While the printing press cannot be solely credited with the revolution that occurred in Europe in the sixteenth century, however, it certainly facilitated it. The reality is that the thought of men like Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, as well as Fisher, Loyola, and Bellarmine, was transmitted in a way unimaginable only a century earlier during the manuscript era.

The printing press proved to be a double-edged sword. For the Roman Catholic Church it represented the tool par excellence by which its message could be effectively disseminated; most Protestants, like Luther and John Foxe, celebrated what the press could do for the cause of reform. Both groups were in agreement on one point, however: the press had to be controlled. In the end, the overwhelming influence of this revolution in print would be no better resisted in the sixteenth century than the Internet could be in the twenty-first. In example after example, the first texts issued by the newly-established printing houses in the Germanic territories would be treatises either for or against the Reformation.

Although the vast majority of the population could not yet read, the presses of Europe churned out thousands of copies of sermons and pamphlets, Bibles, and commentaries that were finding their way into the hands of those who actually could. Whether the printed word was proclaimed from pulpits or shared in the taprooms of inns, the ideas of both the reformers and representatives of the old religion were now being more widely heard, if not yet universally read, while topical woodcut caricatures began to appear that were open to the interpretation of literate and illiterate alike. Luther’s comment during his table talk, therefore, that printing was the last flickering of the flame before the end of this world was not apocalyptic; rather it was the prescient observation of a man who understood that the printed text would become one of the most important instruments lighting the way into the modern era.

Among the highlights of this exhibition will be late Medieval vernacular texts, popular among the Humanists; early pamphlets by Luther and his associates; classics of the Continental Reformation, such as Calvin’s definitive 1559 edition of the Institutes; a 1549 copy of the Book of Common Prayer; early Catholic responses to the upheaval, like St John Fisher’s Sacri sacerdotii defensio contra Lutherum of 1525; and numerous works of illustrated propaganda, such as the first edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and the exquisitely gruesome Ecclesiæ anglicanæ trophaea published by the Roman College in 1584. The exhibition continues by looking at the ripples of the Reformation in North America, as well as the way in which the movement left its lasting effects on the world of art.

This exhibition was curated by the Fisher Library's Pearce Carefoote.

The audioguide for this exhibition can be accessed at this url http://go.utlib.ca/refaudio

The British North America Act of 1867, the document that provided the constitutional structure for the new Dominion of Canada, is not as evocative a document as Magna Carta, nor does it contain the lofty prose of the American Declaration of Independence. It is a prosaic piece of legal writing, crafted by relatively conservative French Catholics and stolid English Protestants who saw in their union the advantages of ‘peace, order, and good government’. Like those it would govern, it might best be described as unassuming. Concealed in its cautious language, however, are almost three hundred years of struggle to become a people.

The documents in this exhibition – manuscripts, printed books, engravings, and photographs – tell but one story behind the making of a nation. On these pages may be found the record of our ancestors’ efforts to understand the majesty and wealth of this land and its waterways; the interaction between colonists and the First Nations, the legacy of which remains problematic to the present; and the tension between French and English which has so often threatened to tear apart the national fabric. Some voices struggle to be heard. Those belonging to the Indigenous Peoples, women, and minorities are largely overwhelmed by a culture that was dominated by white, northern European males. But in these works may also be found something of the hope that is a constituent part of our national character – a character born as a result of these various struggles. These documents also reflect our ongoing endeavour to define ourselves for ourselves.

In the 150 years since Confederation, much has indeed changed, but much remains very much the same. Canada’s Native Peoples still struggle for justice, and immigrants still struggle to belong. These documents also confirm, however, that Canada is a place where compromise and accommodation have been the keys to our prosperity and stability, making us the envy of so many other less fortunate places on the planet. To understand ourselves, we need only to look at the bequest left by those who went before us, whose witness still speaks eloquently – on paper and in ink. The documents in this exhibition are drawn almost exclusively from the holdings of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto and represent more than 120 years of collecting. They are testimony to the hard work and discerning eye of generations of the University’s librarians. It will be up to the librarians and archivists of the next fifty years to make up for the lacunae that exist in our current holdings. In these earlier stories are reflected, however dimly, our own.

An audio guide for the exhibition narrated by curator PJ Carefoote is available on our soundcloud at this link http://go.utlib.ca/canada