Previous Exhibitions
2023
This exhibition celebrates the evolution and power of data visualization through history, drawing lessons from the remarkable and beautiful examples in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library and the…
This exhibition will explore the ways that luxury book manufacture came to provide roles for women in the book arts, initiating a sisterhood of illustrators, illuminators, engravers, designers,…
2022
This exhibition celebrates the medieval book, and the medieval written word more generally, in all its variety in terms of both subject matter and physical form.
2021
In celebration of the centennial anniversary of the discovery of insulin at the UofT, has mounted this online exhibition featuring highlights from the Library's collection of original documents…
This exhibition acknowledges and honours the social, cultural, and literary achievements of Black authors and artists in a wide variety of fields—poets, novelists, journalists, playwrights, musicians…
2020
An exploration of how CanLit and Canadian publishing have been shaped by a diverse community of writers, publishers and editors.
2019
This exhibition features archival material, recently donated to the Fisher, of Lumiere Press, the only fine press world in the devoted to photography.
This exhibition features 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…
The Fisher Library's Victorian natural history exhibition provides a unique opportunity to trace the ways in which the medium of print stimulated and sustained the 19th century appetite for…
2018
This exhibition explores the textual and visual sources at the centre of the stories of monsters recounted in the pages of books and manuscripts.
This exhibition takes a look at 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…
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.
2017
The year 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle church. This exhibition examines the importance of the printing press to the…
We celebrate 150 years of Canada at the Fisher with a wide array of materials from our extensive collection of Canadiana, including books, personal letters, photographs, maps, and prints.
2016
Drawing on the magnificent Michael Millgate collection donated to the Fisher Library, this exhibition will include Hardy’s first editions, correspondence, manuscripts, photographs and ephemera.
The year 2016 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Highlights of this exhibition include a selection of rare propaganda posters from the…
The year 2016 marks four hundred years since the death of William Shakespeare. To honour this milestone, this exhibition will explore how Shakespeare's works shaped ideas of the world beyond…
2015
Features books and journals published from the turn of the 19th century to the late 1940s with examples ranging from the beautiful bibliophile movement to works by avant-garde artists and writers…
This exhibition explores how aviation touched the University of Toronto and the city itself in the closing years of the Great War and the 1920s.
This exhibition will feature items that were produced every century from the 10th to the 21st, including biblical manuscripts, works of Jewish law and liturgy, incunabula, rare Constantinople…
2014
This exhibition focuses on the words and images of those who served in the Great War – individuals like Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Erich Maria Remarque; but also on that of writers born…
We are commemorating the five-hundreth anniversary of the birth of one of the great figures in the history of medicine, Andreas Vesalius. His monumental De humani corporis fabrica is celebrated for…
This exhibition draws on the extensive and diverse holdings relating to the War effort in the University of Toronto Archives, the wider University library system, and elsewhere on campus.
2013
This is the first major exhibition in North America on George Barbier, one of the great French illustrators of the early 20th century.
Showcases some of the finest examples of the book-making craft in Canada from the country's leading small and fine press publishers.