Historical & Special Collections curates a major exhibit each year in the Law Library’s Caspersen Room on the fourth floor of Langdell Hall. Smaller exhibits also rotate in and out of the Caspersen Room bookcases and at the Areeda Hall entrance to the Library.
Current Exhibit
New Exhibit Coming Later This Summer
From the Ephemeral to the Extraordinary: Recent Acquisitions 2019-2024
This exhibit will feature a selection of acquisitions in a variety of formats and languages including: a seventeenth century Italian treatise written for clergy on how to comfort individuals sentenced to death, documents from the Elizabeth Bartholet papers (the first woman to be appointed a full professor through the school’s regular tenure process), and prints from the first entirely born-digital visuals collection.
Temporary Closure: Caspersen Room
The 4th floor of Langdell Hall is temporarily closed and the Caspersen Room is not currently accessible.
CURIOSity
Explore both new and migrated online exhibit content via Harvard Library’s CURIOSity platform.
Highlighted Exhibits
Explore CURIOSity exhibits curated by Historical & Special Collections
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![Pulling the wooden law shield out of its case]()
Retiring the Harvard Law School Shield
Learn the history of the Harvard Law School’s first shield, from its complex and troubling origins to its retirement.
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![Grid of 21 headshots of HLS affiliates who became US Supreme Court Justices between 1882 and 2017.]()
Collections | Connections: Stories from the Harvard Law School Library
Celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Harvard Law School by exploring how the Harvard Law School Library preserves the school’s history.
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![Hand colored engraved circa 1830 showing Captain William Moir sitting on a horse shooting at William Malcom.]()
Visualizing Capital Punishment
Explore the power of images to change minds about the death penalty.
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![Three-quarter length portrait of Charles Hamilton Houston by C. Gregory Stapko after a painting by Betsy Reyneau.]()
Charles Hamilton Houston and the Harvard Law School
This exhibit explores and celebrates Houston’s connection with Harvard Law School.
Exhibit Addenda (2015-2024)
Exhibit Addenda was a website that featured companion content for Historical & Special Collections’ physical exhibits, as well as online exhibits. It debuted in January 2015 and was retired in April 2024.
Select content from the Exhibit Addenda site was migrated to CURIOSity.
Looking for Historical & Special Collections exhibit content not available on CURIOSity? You can view past versions of the Exhibit Addenda site via Archive-It (a web archiving service built at the Internet Archive). The archived Exhibit Addenda site was collected by the Harvard University Archives, as part of their collection of “A-Sites: Archived Harvard Websites.”
The Exhibit Addenda site is also searchable via the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
Questions
Still not finding what you are looking for? Please contact specialc@law.harvard.edu with questions.