Library Briefings

Spring exhibits

African independence, and the Library’s “Admirable Nucleus”

Northwestern University Library’s current exhibit, “Fifty Years of African Independence” (now through April 26), celebrates the remarkable half-century since 1957, when the British colony then known as the Gold Coast became Ghana, the first modern African nation to achieve its independence from colonial European powers. Between that date and the day in 1994 when Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as the first president of majority-ruled South Africa, no fewer than 47 African nations emerged from various forms of colonial rule. Featuring unique documents, photographs, postcards, commemorative cloths, and biographical comic books, the exhibit also recalls the role that Melville J. Herskovits, founder of the University’s ground-breaking African Studies program and world-renowned Melville J. Herksovits Library of African Studies, played in the process.

From May 1 through June 28, the exhibit “An Admirable Nucleus” tells the story of how the extraordinary book collection of Prussian educator Johannes Schulze—friend to Goethe, Schopenhauer, and Hegel—was acquired by a shrewd Northwestern professor in 1870 and brought to Evanston, where it became the nucleus around which the Library grew. Editions in the 20,000-volume collection, now known as “The Greenleaf Library” after the University trustee who funded the acquisition, include 13 books printed before 1501 and dozens of richly produced volumes created by the famous printing dynasties of 16th and 17th century Europe, Aldus Manutius and the Elzevirs. Featured items include the first editions of Herodotus and Aristophanes printed in any language. The exhibit also explores the ways in which academic scholarship has evolved between the period in which the collection was assembled—in the heyday of German scholarship—and the current electronic age.

"Fifty Years of African Independence" poster by John Kannenberg.