Exhibits
Food Fads: American Advertising Cookbooks
1st Floor
February 13, 2026 – June 11, 2026
Food Fads: American Advertising Cookbooks invites you to examine the history of American cooking through the cookbooks that helped guide it. From the earliest culinary advertisements to wartime cooking, we invite you to imagine the meals these cookbooks helped make, the traditions they built, and the people for whom they became invaluable kitchen additions.
Encounters and Exchanges
1st Floor
October 01, 2025 – February 12, 2026
Featuring rare books, travel anthologies, maps, and atlases from the Stephen O. Murray and Keelung Hong Special Collections, this exhibit reveals a world of fascination, exchange, and rivalry. Discover how these encounters shaped the European imagination and helped create a "Global Renaissance."
Africa Past, Present, and Future: Celebrating 65 Years of the MSU African Studies Center
1st Floor
August 18, 2025 – December 29, 2025
In 2025, the MSU African Studies Center (ASC) celebrates its 65th anniversary, a remarkable achievement with many impactful years of service. Drawn from the extensive Africana collections of the MSU Museum, MSU Broad Art Museum, and MSU Libraries, these exhibitions explore the University’s deep relationship with the African continent through art, artifacts, and archival materials.
A Campus and a War: Michigan State University and Vietnam
1st Floor
July 06, 2025 – October 03, 2025
Exhibit exploring MSU's complex role in the Vietnam War; from its Cold War-era technical assistance programs to campus activism, through archival materials, photographs, and historic media. It traces how MSU’s global ambitions collided with a divisive conflict, leaving lasting marks on the university and the Lansing community, including refugees, soldiers, and protesters.
Entangled Solidarities
1st Floor
February 07, 2025 – May 30, 2025
How are solidarities formed across sociopolitical struggles, and then visualized and disseminated through visual culture? Entangled Solidarities explores this question in relation to Arab American histories through the rich archival material and artists’ books found in MSU Libraries’ Stephen O. Murray and Keelung Hong Special Collections.
Universal Access: Accessibility in the Library World
1st Floor
September 16, 2024 – January 31, 2025
This exhibit, curated by the Michigan State University Libraries’ Accessibility and User Experience units, showcases the MSU Libraries’ commitment to accessibility, demonstrated through its collections and archives, assistive technologies and equipment, and spaces. This exhibit also provides interactive sensory experiences via the sound dome and tactile table.
Palm Oil in Indonesia
2 West
May 23, 2024 – September 01, 2024
This exhibit details the history of oil palm cultivation throughout the world, with a specific focus on Indonesia and how this crop impacts the livelihoods of farmers and others in Sumatra and throughout the archipelago.
Advancing Accessibility: A Timeline
2 West
December 08, 2023 – April 30, 2024
Approximately 1.3 billion, or one in six, people experience disability worldwide (World Health Organization). Despite this high prevalence, people with disabilities have been oppressed and treated unequally and unfairly by ableist societies and systems since the beginning of history. There have, however, been many accessibility advancements and improvements, especially in technology and physical spaces, throughout time; some of which are highlighted in our exhibit.
Botanical Art & Illustration Through the Ages
May 02, 2023
This exhibit showcases the 150-year history and legacies of W.J. Beal’s garden’s influences with artifacts from Special Collections, Univ. Archives, and the W.J. Beal Dept. Utilized by the MSU community and visitors, the original intent of Beal’s pioneering garden has remained consistent – it’s a place to learn, a place to experiment, a place to sow, and a place to grow.
For Better For Worse
May 02, 2023
A collection of early modern, English, conduct books offering helpful advice of the period on conduct, behavior, morals, values, spirituality, education, letter writing, personal relationships, and practical topics. This exhibit is about marriage advice in some of these books.