Browse Exhibits (24 total)

Dallas is becoming an increasingly important high-tech center for the American economy. However, the city’s history in pioneering electronics actually dates back to the 1930s, when a small company that produced seismographic equipment for oil drilling came to the city. From these beginnings in service of the oil industry, the company that would eventually become Texas Instruments and established Dallas’s reputation for innovation.

The enduring appeal of fiction's greatest detective is explored through selections from DeGolyer Library's Donald J. Hobbs Collection, which contains more than 8,000 volumes and translations of the Sherlock Holmes canon in 108 languages.

This mini-exhibit is part of DeGoyler's larger Lives of the Poets: Literary Biography from Geoffrey Chaucer to Amy Clampitt exhibit.

This mini-exhibit was inspired by the work of Dr. Willard Spiegelman and his 2023 biography over American poet Amy Clampitt, titled: Nothing Stays Put- the Life and Poetry of Amy Clampitt. Several of the items in this exhibit were donated from his collection.

The items in this exhibit include correspondence from Clampitt; some of her early writings and also some of her poetry; photos of Clampitt throughout her life. The exhibit includes works about Clampitt written after her death.

The items in the exhibit are organized chronologically from the 1940s to the 2020s, which allows for the viewer to trace Clampitt's development and experiences.

“Send Me a Postcard! Women on the Road across 19th-20th Century America” highlights women’s voices and their stories across America’s roadways. Though travel has generally been associated with men, and the male prerogative of exploration, investment, and research, women have always been on the move. Women traveled for a variety of reasons including education and knowledge, general ambition, a sense of adventure and a new freedom and mobility to move outside of their traditional sphere. This exhibition examines the experiences of women travelers. From a group of college students on a summer road trip, to an anthropologist documenting the American Southwest, from trips to National Parks to visits to zoos, diners to dives, encounters with hitchhikers, bikers and natives, these manuscripts and narratives are full of memories and adventures and represent a variety of perspectives.

Included in the exhibit are trailblazers such as: Blanche Stuart Scott, the first person to inaugurate a transcontinental motor trip for the purpose of interesting women in the value of motor car driving; Alice Huyler Ramsey, the first woman to drive an automobile across the United States from coast to coast in 1909; Harriet White Fisher Andrew, the first woman to circle the globe in a Locomobile. Also highlighted are everyday ladies on family vacations and girl’s trips. Elizabeth Dalrymple who motored with her friends from Pennsylvania to Colorado in 1940 said of travel: “never worry about getting lost out here in the great open spaces, as every road eventually leads to somewhere, no matter how lonely or how long.” Documents such as these provide invaluable insight women’s experiences traveling and what life was like for women on the road. While no two experiences are alike, together these narratives weave together women’s shared experiences with life on the road, demonstrating in fact “women can handle an automobile just as well as men.”

“Send Me a Postcard” features materials from the DeGolyer Library’s holdings of rare books, pamphlets, ephemera and manuscripts holdings, including the Archives of Women of the Southwest.

For our first exhibition since January 2020, we chose to celebrate reading and the written word by showcasing photographs of people holding books and other reading material. The images highlight the importance of books as studio props in the nineteenth century and later in casual snapshots taken in the home and outside.