A touchstone of murder mysteries and historical intrigue, tactical warfare and political coups, poison looms large in our cultural imagination. An invisible agent of death, it might be hiding anywhere, stashed in a secret agent’s suitcase or mixed into a murderous martini. Less glamorously, but even more palpably, it lurks in our everyday lives as well, creeping in through garden plants and exotic pets, household cleaners and rainwater runoff, medicine cabinets and art supplies. Broadly defined as any substance which can cause serious illness or death if introduced into the body (e.g.:

“Empire and Resistance” demonstrates the long, contentious history that links the United States and the seven countries of Central America: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panamá. The exhibition focuses on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but the objects on display date from the sixteenth to twenty-first centuries, reflecting the shifting contours over time of empire and resistance to empire. The regions of the isthmus were not always known as Central America. After gaining independence from Spain in 1821, they unified as the Federal Republic of

Visit the Beinecke Library website for daily hours and other visitor information. This exhibition features books, manuscripts, and visual materials from many different time periods and locations. Some of the materials have been at Yale for decades, others have only recently been added to the collections. What brings these items together? The groupings of materials on view in this exhibition—selected by curators from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, subject specialists in the Area Studies department of Sterling Memorial Library, and Yale undergraduates—act as focused lessons in

Was Horace Walpole really a “miser,” as William Hazlitt claimed? This exhibition uses images, manuscripts, artefacts and extracts from publications and correspondence to situate Walpole within the burgeoning philanthropic culture of his age. It reveals Walpole’s secret giving to prisoners and other good causes and examines the principles that underlay his philanthropy. A main aim of the exhibition is to stimulate discussion about philanthropy today. Walpole wrote that “if it ever is justifiable to good sense to act romantically, it is by being the knights errant of the distressed.” The