Current Exhibitions
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Cushing Library is closed to the public as of March 19, 2020.
Fairy Tales and Their Adaptations
This exhibition will be re-installed at a future time, after the Cushing Library re-opens to the public.
Small exhibition, March 4-August 31, 2020
Cushing Memorial Library and Archives, first floor
Hours: 8 a.m.-5:45 p.m.; closed weekends and holidays
Telling stories is a basic human instinct. This small exhibition on Fairy Tales and their Adaptations features books from several Cushing Library collections. The exhibition is free and open to the public.
Second Floor
The Eternal Passion: Nicholas A. Basbanes and the Making of A Gentle Madness
Nicholas A. Basbanes. Photo by Edd Cote.
Exhibition, March 19-August 31, 2020
Cushing Memorial Library and Archives, second floor
Hours: 9 a.m.-5:45 p.m.; closed weekends and holidays
The Texas A&M University Libraries are pleased to announce the exhibition: “The Eternal Passion: Nicholas A. Basbanes and the Making of A Gentle Madness.” The exhibition runs from March 19th through August 31st at Cushing Memorial Library and Archives (second floor). Nicholas A. Basbanes is an award-winning investigative journalist, columnist and author of 10 books, including Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Knopf, 2020) which will be released in June. Basbanes’s extensive archives and professional library were acquired by Texas A&M University in 2015. Basbanes’s first book, A Gentle Madness, is a genre-defining work about the culture of book collecting. Since 1995, it has captured readers’ imaginations with chronicles of the well-known bibliophiles and bibliomanes of history. “The characters who populate this book are almost larger-than-life,” Libraries Curator Kevin O’Sullivan said. “Their adventures in book collecting are at times astounding, heartbreaking, or just stranger than fiction.”
The exhibition will showcase manuscripts, correspondence, artifacts and books to tell the story of the authorship and publication of A Gentle Madness. “As a whole, A Gentle Madness is an enchanting book about books,” O’Sullivan said. “But the tale of how it was researched and written - the labor of love that produced this work we now know so well - is just as compelling.”
The exhibition is free and open to the public.
For more information about this exhibition or the Nicholas A. Basbanes Collection, please contact Kevin O’Sullivan at kmosullivan@library.tamu.edu. Media contact: Lauren Waugh, laurenw@library.tamu.edu, 979-458-2420