Exhibits

March 19 – April 18, 2014 Dark Horse Comics has proclaimed March 22, 2014 as Hellboy Day, in recognition of the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Hellboy: Seed of Destruction #1. We celebrated Hellboy’s anniversary, and the Dark Horse Comics Collection at Portland State Library, with a display featuring Hellboy and other Dark Horse figures, as well … Continue reading the article: Hellboy: the First 20 Years →

October 28, 2013 – March 21, 2014 Drawing on our collection of historic records from the Portland JACL, this exhibit highlights the pivotal roles that women have played in the organization since its inception in the 1930s. Japanese American Citizens League, Portland Chapter Records, 1930-2008, the Library’s new collection, comprises the records of the Portland … Continue reading the article: Beyond Convention: Women of the Portland Japanese American Citizens League →

June 12 – September 30, 2013 The Portland State Library had already been relocated twice when it was divided in 1968. It had outgrown its original Smith Memorial Center location, but the new Millar Library split services into two buildings: public access in Library West on the Park Blocks and technical services in Library East … Continue reading the article: Transitions of PSU Library →

January 13 – March 23, 2012 Highlighting PSU Library Special Collections’ Middle East Studies collection, this exhibit drew on a range of 17th- and 18th-century Western studies of the Middle East from fundamental academic works to popular memoirs and featured rare examples of cartography, scientific and landscape illustration, and early printing in Arabic. Materials in this … Continue reading the article: Historic Travels to the Middle East →

September 26, 2012 – January 31, 2013 PSU Library’s Special Collections presented an exhibit featuring original materials from the Verdell A. Burdine and Otto G. Rutherford Family Collection. Verdell A. Burdine Rutherford (1913-2001) and Otto G. Rutherford (1911-2000) were leading members of the African American community in Portland for much of the twentieth century. The … Continue reading the article: “Say We Are Here”: Culture, Community and Activism Across Four Generations of Black Oregonians →

June 25 – September 7, 2012 The PSU Library presented a collection of avian art, including the iconic work of John James Audubon, colorful tableaus of rarely-sighted tropical birds, and the first publication of high-speed photographs of hummingbirds in flight. The artists are naturalists, explorers, soldiers, scholars, and hobbyists, all sharing an enthusiasm for birds … Continue reading the article: The Art of Ornithology: A Century of Bird Illustration →

April 2 to June 20, 2012 This exhibit celebrated the legacy of Gordon Hunter. His love of books and his passion for history inspired him to make a gift to the Library’s Special Collections through the Oregon Commuity Foundation that each year helps the Library acquire new rare and significant books and manuscripts to support … Continue reading the article: The Gift of the Word: An Exhibition of Recent Acquisitions to PSU Library Special Collections →

January 13 – March 23, 2012 In early modern Europe, Time was seen as a destructive figure, relentlessly gnawing away at the works of man. The remnants of the ancient past that manage to survive were often described as having escaped his “envious tooth.” This exhibition highlighted original printed works from the Portland State University … Continue reading the article: “The Envious Tooth of Time”: Early Printed Works from the PSU Library Special Collections →

September 16 – December 22, 2011 The exhibit “Of Place and Memory: The Yizkor Book as a Window into a World Destroyed” at the Portland State University Library told the stories of Eastern European Jews and their communities destroyed in the Holocaust. It was the result of a first-time collaboration between the University Library and … Continue reading the article: Of Place and Memory: The Yizkor Book as a Window into a World Destroyed →

June 27 through September 2, 2011 Take a journey along the Columbia from The Dalles to Puget Island. It is late spring 1948 and it has been unusually wet this year, even for Oregon, but now it’s warming up and today looks like it’s going to be especially nice. Certainly several other communities along the river have … Continue reading the article: “Dikes Are Safe at Present”: The Destruction of Vanport and the 1948 Columbia River Flood →