Poisons, puppets, and more: 7 library exhibits you don’t want to miss seeing this summer

Even with classes out of session, there’s lots to see and do on campus during the summer break. Plan a trip back with family or friends. Poisons, puppets, Japanese playing cards, and Georgia O’Keefe’s soup recipes—all are on view in these in-person library exhibits.

Biblical Scholarship at YDS: A Bicentennial Retrospective at Divinity Library: This exhibit examines the 200-year-long history of biblical research at Yale Divinity School. Through June 30.

Knight Errant of the Distressed: Horace Walpole and Philanthropy in Eighteenth-Century London at Lewis Walpole Library: With the aim of stimulating philanthropy today, this collection of images, manuscripts, artefacts, extracts from letters and publications highlight the secret giving and good works of Walpole in his time. Through June 30.

Revisiting the Past—Imagining the Future at Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library: Curators have paired old with new for a display of books, manuscripts, and objects—spanning time and place—to spark the imagination. Through July 9.

Empire and Resistance: Transisthmian Views of Central America in the Hanke Gallery, Sterling Memorial Library: PhD candidate Nancy Escalante traces the economic, political, and cultural connections between U.S. empire and Central American communities, from the nineteenth century into the twenty-first. Through Aug. 13.

Killer or Cure?: Poison through the Centuries at Cushing/Whitney Medical Library: This exhibit traces the uses of poison and antidotes throughout history–from classical antiquity to 21st-century textbooks. Through Aug. 13.

The Study of Things: George Kubler in Latin America in the Exhibition Corridor of Sterling Memorial Library: Curator Chucho Pedro Martínez explores the radical contributions of art historian and former Yale professor George Kubler, based on Kubler’s travels and groundbreaking 1962 book The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things. Through Oct. 8.

Teaching with Slides: The History of the Visual Resources Collection at Yale at Haas Family Arts Library: This exhibit celebrates the collection formed in 1930s, which now holds 370,000 slides (lantern and 35mm) and 187,000 mounted photographs related to global art, architecture, and material culture. Through March 3, 2024.

Image: Gōketsu Karuta [Playing cards of great men], Japan, ca. 1930–40. From the exhibition Revisiting the Past—Imagining the Future now at Beinecke Library