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Upcoming Events at the Kislak Center

On View

Current exhibitions presented and co-sponsored by the Penn Libraries’ Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts.

Feb 08 - May 24
  • Exhibit
Open to the Public

Revolutionary Aesthetics: Afterlives of Central American Insurgency

Selections from a recently-acquired collection of posters from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama offer a window into Central America's Cold War-era conflicts from the 1960s to the 1990s.

  • February 8 - May 24, 2024
  • Goldstein Family Gallery, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, sixth floor
Poster: "La patria: no se vende, no se alquila, ni se presta. Fuera tropas gringas, fuera contras.”
Apr 24
  • Lecture
Open to the Public

The Making of "Are We Yet Somehow Alive?"

Ruth Naomi Floyd presents a pre-concert lecture and Q&A on the making of "Are We Yet Somehow Alive?," a moving world premiere that pairs jazz, blues and gospel with fine art projections to share compelling first-person accounts from enslaved Africans in America.

  • April 24, 2024
  • 7:00pm - 9:00pm
  • Kislak Center Class of 1978 Orrery Pavilion, 6th Floor, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center
Ruth Naomi Floyd
Apr 25
  • Workshop
Open to the Public

Coffee with a Codex: Arithmetic & Geometry

April 25 is "Bring Our Children To Work Day" here at Penn, and Curator Dot Porter will be bringing her son along for Coffee With A Codex! He enjoys math, so we'll look at three very different manuscripts about arithmetic and geometry, dating from the 12th, 15th, and 17th centuries.

  • April 25, 2024
  • 12:00pm - 12:30pm
  • Online
Page from an arithmatic manuscript
Apr 26
  • Lecture
Open to the Public

Principles of Manuscript Poetics

Francesco Marco Aresu, Assistant Professor of Italian Studies at Penn, reflects on the interactions between textuality and materiality, message and medium, visual-verbal discourse and its physical support through readings of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Teseida and Francesco Petrarca’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta.

  • Friday, April 26, 2024, 12:00 - 1:30 pm EDT
  • 12:00pm - 1:30pm
  • Virtual
Detail of a text page of UPenn MS Codex 257, a manuscript copy of the Teseide of Boccaccio.
May 02
  • Workshop
Open to the Public

Coffee with a Codex: Coats of Arms

On May 2, curator Dot Porter will bring out Ms. Codex 1071, The names and armes of all the nobilitie who were in England at the tyme of King William the Conqueror. This book contains coats of arms, some painted and some drawn in ink, for the monarchs and nobles of England from Edward the Confessor to Elizabeth I. Written in England, 1597.

  • May 2, 2024
  • 12:00pm - 12:30pm
  • Online
Page from Ms. Codex 1071
May 02
Open to the Public

Words Touching Bodies: Devotional Texts in Late Medieval North Africa

Join us for a presentation by Ali Noori, Ph.D. Candidate in Religious Studies, on a fifteenth-century text called Guide to Goodness (Dalaʾil al-Khayrat) held at the Kislak Center.

  • May 2, 2024
  • 1:00pm - 2:00pm
  • Lea Library, Kislak Center, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center (6th floor)
Close-up of ornamentations on a fifteenth-century Arabic manuscript
May 03
  • Lecture
Open to the Public

The Philadelphia Gilded Age: Firsthand Accounts

J.M. Duffin will discuss the diaries of Philadelphia banker Cornelius N. Weygandt and West Philadelphia homemaker Anna Rebecca Garland.

  • May 3, 2024
  • 12:00pm - 1:00pm
  • Virtual (link will be sent to registrants)
Diary spread with handwritten entries from Friday, July 3, to Wednesday, July 8, 1863
May 09
  • Workshop
Open to the Public

Coffee with a Codex: Humanist History of Rome

On May 9, curator Dot Porter will bring out LJS 381, a humanist copy of Sallust's works on the history of Rome, with contemporary and later annotations, including alternate readings, some of which were incorporated into the text as corrections. Written in Italy between 1455 and 1465.

  • May 9, 2024
  • 12:00pm - 12:30pm
  • Online
Page from LJS 381
May 16
  • Workshop
Open to the Public

Coffee with a Codex: Encryption

On May 16, curator Dot Porter will bring out LJS 51, a collection of encrypted correspondence between the compiler and various correspondents, in approximately 150 alphabets, accompanied by transcriptions of the letters in Arabic. Written in Syria in the 15th century.

  • May 16, 2024
  • 12:00pm - 12:30pm
  • Online
Page from LJS 51
Jun 20 - 22
  • Conference
Open to the Public

Archives of Revolution: A Conference About How We Make the Past

A collaboration between the John Carter Brown Library on the campus of Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania’s McNeil Center for Early American Studies and Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts. 

  • June 20 - 22, 2024
  • The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University
engraving of the Boston Tea Party protest