Showcases the Library’s incomparable African American collections. The largest black history exhibit held at the Library includes books, documents, maps, musical scores, plays, films, and recordings.

Offers a glimpse into the remarkable history and work of the American Colony in Jerusalem. A utopian community formed in the Holy Land by a group of American Christians in 1881, the eclectic American Colony evolved as empires and nation-states shifted around it.

Drawing on the special and general collections from throughout the Library’s holdings, this broadly interdisciplinary exhibition provides unique insight into various aspects of American history and culture. Objects displayed are organized according to the three categories that Thomas Jefferson used for his historic library: memory, reason, and imagination.

Features items from the Library of Congress collections and those of its lending partners to consider the game then and now—as it relates to players, teams, and the communities it creates. Although baseball has stayed true to many of its customs, it has also broken with tradition through the invention, competition, and financial interests that still make it the most played sport in the country.

The depth and breadth of Benjamin Franklin's public, professional, and scientific accomplishments are highlighted through documents, letters, books, broadsides, and cartoons from throughout his life and career.

Explores variety entertainment through the lens of Bob Hope’s long and rich career, in which he continued to practice the variety traditions he learned on the vaudeville stage. Includes comedic scripts from Manuscript Division collections.

Provides a unique interdisciplinary opportunity to appreciate the MacDowell Colony experience and success, from its earliest fellows to the most recent, including writers, poets, artists, playwrights, and composers.

Presents the life of Winston Churchill, his career, and his connection with the United States, a country he called “The Great Republic.” A unique interactive presentation is a featured part of the exhibit.

This exhibition, which commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, explores the events that shaped the civil rights movement, as well as the far-reaching impact the act had on a changing society. The act is considered the most significant piece of civil rights legislation since Reconstruction.

Assembles more than 200 unique items, many of which have never been seen by the public, to commemorate the sesquicentennial of this nation's greatest military and political upheaval. Drawing from hundreds of thousands of items from across many collections of the Library of Congress, the materials included in this exhibition attest to the valor, sacrifices, emotions, and accomplishments of those in both the North and South whose lives were affected by the bitter conflict of 1861–1865.

Offers insights into how the nation’s founding documents were forged and the role that cooperation, compromise, and creativity played in the unprecedented act of forming a self-governing country.

A preview of American Treasures presentations on the founding documents of the United States, including pictorial images as well as texts.

Honors the achievement of Orville and Wilbur Wright, using the Library’s rare and manuscript materials and photographs to explore their invention and career, as well as the notion that flight, whether fanciful or actual, has inspired and occupied a central place in most cultures.

Examines the upheaval of world war as Americans confronted it— both at home and abroad. The exhibition considers the debates and struggles that surrounded U.S. engagement; explores U.S. military and home front mobilization and the immensity of industrialized warfare; and touches on the war’s effects, as an international peace settlement was negotiated, national borders were redrawn, and soldiers returned to reintegrate into American society.

Examines indigenous cultures, the drama of the encounters between Native Americans and Europeans, and the changes caused by the meeting of the two worlds. It features artifacts, books, and documents from the Jay I. Kislak Collection and related maps and manuscripts.

Like our ancestors, we look up at the heavens and wonder. What is the structure of the universe? How significant are we? Are we alone? To commemorate the acquisition of The Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, the Library of Congress presents an exploration of these questions across the breadth of its collections and offers a first glimpse into Carl Sagan’s papers.

Marks the fiftieth anniversary of Secretary of State George Marshall’s speech proposing a solution to the hunger, unemployment, and housing shortages that faced Europeans in the aftermath of World War II and examines the ways his plan benefited Europe and the U.S.

Features more than two hundred treasures of American Judaica from the collections of the Library of Congress, augmented by a selection of important loans from other cooperating cultural institutions.

Shows the Library’s two copies of the famous address. President Lincoln gave a copy to each of his two private secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay. The Nicolay copy is believed to be the earliest copy that exists.

A look at politics and popular entertainment during the lifetime of the legendary humorist Bob Hope, as well as Hope's legacy within the field of American political humor.

Offers a glimpse into the history of American presidential inaugurations. Eighteen presidents are featured in the display, from George Washington to John F. Kennedy.

Presents objects from a relatively unknown archive of significant documents. The exhibit explores the moving human exchanges that took place between the Russian Orthodox Church in Alaska and Native Alaskans between 1794 and about 1915.

Repositions Jacob Riis as a multi-skilled communicator who devoted his life to writing articles and books and delivering lectures nationwide to spur social reform.

Brings together for the first time treasures from the two greatest libraries in the English-speaking world—the British Library and the Library of Congress—in order to illuminate the relationship between the two countries.

Examines documents related to two seminal events in which James Madison played a major role: the drafting and ratification of the U.S. Constitution and the introduction of the amendments that became the Bill of Rights.

Documents Mead’s life, her career as an anthropologist, and the critical reception of her work by drawing upon the 500,000–item Mead Collection, one of the Library’s largest collections for a single individual.

The NAACP: A Century in the Fight for Freedom exhibition presents a retrospective of the major personalities, events, and achievements that shaped the NAACP’s history during its first 100 years

Features the preeminent psychoanalyst Carl G. Jung’s famous Red Book, which records the creation of the seminal theories that Jung developed after his 1913 split with Sigmund Freud, and explores its place in Jung’s work through related items from the Library’s collections.

Documents the role that religion played in the shaping of early American life and in the formation of the American republic.

Traces the different occupations and preparations that led Whitman to become the author of Leaves of Grass, as well as his subsequent evolution as a poet.

Features the Library’s rich collections of exploration material documenting the mid-eighteenth to mid–nineteenth century quest to connect the East and the West by means of a waterway passage.

Examines Stevens’s career through the great number of stage productions that he presented or fostered indirectly, his involvment with the National Endowent for the Arts, and his role as in creating the John F. Kennedy Center.

Showcases rarely seen materials that offer an intimate view of Rosa Parks and documents her life and activism—creating a rich opportunity for viewers to discover new dimensions to their understanding of this seminal figure. The materials are drawn extensively from the Rosa Parks Collection, a gift to the Library of Congress from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.

Tells the story of the seventy-two-year campaign for women’s suffrage. Considered the largest reform movement in American history, its participants believed that securing the vote was essential to achieving women’s economic, social, and political equality. For years, determined women organized, lobbied, paraded, petitioned, lectured, picketed, and faced imprisonment. Their collective story is one of courage, perseverance, savvy, creativity, and hope that continues to inspire activists today.

Examines Freud’s life, his key ideas, and their impact on the twentieth century. The exhibit includes photographs, prints, manuscripts, first editions, home movies, and materials from newspapers, magazines and comic books.

Presents the story of building the nation’s Capitol and the symbolic, aesthetic, and pragmatic issues that surrounded the creation of America’s most important public building.

Draws on the Library’s Thomas Jefferson materials to examine the influence Jefferson’s thoughts and interests had on his own life, the American republic, and the world.

Commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the landmark judicial case, which declared that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” This decision was pivotal to the struggle for racial desegregation in the United States.

Commemorates the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of the nation’s revered sixteenth president. More than a chronological account of the life of Abraham Lincoln, the exhibition reveals Lincoln the man, whose thoughts, words, and actions were deeply affected by personal experiences and pivotal historic events.

Features women journalists who were chosen because of the strength and variety of their collections in the Library. Like their male counterparts, the women followed various paths to their wartime assignments.

Explores how this famous couple shaped America’s culture in the twentieth century. Charles and Ray Eames’s work represented defining moments in American history, such as the economy’s shift from making goods to producing information.

Looks at how various cultures explained the beginning of the world, depicted the first human beings, and defined the heavens and the earth by drawing upon unique items from the Library’s international collections in more than 450 languages.