ROME REBORN: THE VATICAN LIBRARY AND RENAISSANCE CULTURE presents some 200 of the Vatican Library's most precious manuscripts, books, and maps--many of which played a key role in the humanist recovery of the classical heritage of Greece and Rome. The exhibition presents the untold story of the Vatican Library as the intellectual driving force behind the emergence of Rome as a political and scholarly superpower during the Renaissance.
The SOVIET ARCHIVE EXHIBIT is the first public display of the hitherto highly secret internal record of Soviet Communist rule. The willingness of the new Russian Archival Committee under Pikhoia to cooperate in preparing this exhibit with the Library of Congress dramatizes the break that a newly democratic Russia is attempting to make with the entire Soviet past. This exhibit illustrates both the domestic and the foreign policy of Soviet rule.
1492: AN ONGOING VOYAGE examines the first sustained contacts between American people and European explorers, conquerors and settlers from 1492 to 1600. During this period, in the wake of Columbus's voyages, Africans also arrived in the hemisphere, usually as slaves. All of these encounters, some brutal and traumatic, others more gradual, irreversibly changed the way in which peoples in the Americas led their lives. The dramatic events following 1492 set the stage for numerous cultural interactions in the Americas which are still in progress - a complex and ongoing voyage.
The exhibition SCROLLS FROM THE DEAD SEA: THE ANCIENT LIBRARY OF QUMRAN AND MODERN SCHOLARSHIP brings a selection from the scrolls which have been the subject of intense public interest. Over the years questions have been raised about the scrolls' authenticity, about the people who hid them away the the period in which they lived, about the secrets the scrolls might reveal, and about the intentions of the scrolls' custodians in restricting access. The Library's exhibition describes the historical context of the scrolls and the Qumran community from whence they may have originated; it also relates the story of their discovery 2,000 years later. In addition, the exhibition encourages a better understanding of the challenges and complexities connected with scroll research.
The Museum of Paleontology, from the University of California, Berkeley has created this nice pavilion, which shows AN EXHIBITION OF FOSSIL LIFE. Paleontologist study past life by understanding both the biology and evolution of organisms and the geology of where the organisms are found. These two lines of evidence help us to recreate the diversity of past life. This work helps to clarify major issues about large and small scale geologic events, large and small scale extinction and origination of groups of animals, and in general clarify the progression of life on earth. This exhibit presents some of the diversity of life that has existed in the past.
The exhibit THE "PALACE" OF DIOCLETIAN AT SPLIT describes a unique structure from the later roman empire. The city of Spalato was founded by the emperor Diocletian; he made it his own dwelling-place, and built within it a court and a palace. The importance of Spalato resides both in its state of preservation, and in the dearth of comparable examples from the Roman world. There are no coherent palace structures left in Italy. Architecture and History are some keywords for this exhibit which shows more than 80 objects.
wishes to thank
Paul Jones, Jonathan Magid and Dykki Settle (dykki_settle@unc.edu)
who are serving the EXPO and the exhibits
from their Web server for public access. We also
thank K.D.Ellis for all the help we got
and the Library of Congress for putting the original data online.
text and images
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public. Any commercial use or publication of them is
strictly prohibited.