Marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, this exhibition presents a selection of documents and artifacts from the University of Chicago Library's William E. Barton Collection of Lincolniana. The Barton Collection was acquired by the Library in 1932 and served for decades as a focus of Lincoln interest in Chicago and the Midwest. Selected items were exhibited at Chicago's Century of Progress Exposition, and the collection was later installed in its own museum room in Harper Memorial Library on the University of Chicago campus. Among the notable icons of Barton Collection on display in this exhibition are a handwritten page from the young Lincoln’s “Sum Book”; one of the few surviving letters written by Lincoln to his wife Mary Todd Lincoln; bronze casts of sculptor Leonard Volk’s 1860 life mask and hands of Lincoln; a letter written from a Chicago hotel by the Lincolns' young son, Willie; a large wool shawl once owned by Lincoln; a little known oil portrait of the unbearded Lincoln; and a bloodstained piece of curtain from Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. Additional information on the William E. Barton Collection of Lincolniana is available on the Special Collections web site.

Since the University welcomed its first students in the fall of 1892, women have had very different stories to tell about the experiments in co-education and faculty diversification; the experience of the classroom, the laboratory, the dorm, and the streets of Hyde Park; the issues of mentorship, intellectual community, and career advancement; and the opportunities for political action and community involvement, for friendship, romance, and sexual experimentation.

The exhibition draws from the rich University archives located in the Special Collections Research Center . Visitors can also check out an iPod from the front desk of Special Collections and listen to excerpts from a group of more than 70 oral histories with alumnae conducted by The Center for Gender Studies at the University of Chicago.