What is the difference between a fake and a forgery? How do either of those differ from a copy? And why does authenticity matter in museum collections? On this tour, we’ll explore these questions by using a wide range of objects in the Rosenbach’s renowned collection.

The Spanish Empire and, later, Mexico relied on ink, paper, and the flow of information to rule over thousands of miles of territory and a complex web of people of various races and ethnicities. On this tour, you will meet Indigenous peoples, mestizos (people of mixed Indigenous and European ancestry), Europeans, and African peoples both free and enslaved. 

The Rosenbach Museum & Library holds one of the world’s most significant collections of Burns letters, literary manuscripts, rare books, and artifacts. In this special, hands-on Behind the Bookcase tour, timed to coincide with the 229^th anniversary of Burns’s death on July 21, we will consider enshrinements of Burns and in Burns’s literary works. Even as the poet celebrates life, his work is shot through with meditations on death.  

For over a century, readers have been thrilled by Arthur Conan Doyle’s adventures of the world’s first consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes, and his assistant, Dr. John Watson, as they battled the criminal forces of London. We’ll use our magnifying glasses to inspect not only first editions of these stories and Doyle’s handwritten manuscript of the Holmes story, “The Adventure of the Empty House,” but also investigate some of the earlier influences of the mystery/detective genre, like Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Dickens.

The Rosenbach Museum & Library holds one of the world’s most significant collections of Burns letters, literary manuscripts, rare books, and artifacts. In this special, hands-on Behind the Bookcase tour, timed to coincide with the 229^th anniversary of Burns’s death on July 21, we will consider enshrinements of Burns and in Burns’s literary works. Even as the poet celebrates life, his work is shot through with meditations on death.  

Herman Melville possessed a warm heart for human nature, a cold eye for the human condition, and the ability to write prose that would awe a Biblical prophet. Join an odyssey through the Rosenbach’s mighty Melville collection in this Behind the Bookcase tour.

Look at rare books and manuscripts in the Rosenbach’s  collection and read aloud some of the most gothic of the Southern Gothic in Dr. Rosenbach’s historic library.

Join the Rosenbach Museum & Library in considering the development of the office of the presidency over the last 249 years. View rare books and manuscripts documenting presidential history from George Washington to Franklin Delano Roosevelt; discuss how the powers of the executive office fit into the separation of powers as outlined in the U.S. Constitution; and reflect on the evolving role of the presidency in the wider work of the federal government and American national life. The tour will include time for reflection and dialogue among participants about the executive office and civic participation. 

The game is afoot! Investigate the realm of detective and spy literature in this Behind the Bookcase tour. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to discover connections between famous fictional mysteries and the lives—and legacies—of real-world spies. Explore early mystery stories including Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, examine an original cypher belonging to a female socialite and Civil War spy, and exercise your sleuthing skills to detect a forgery in the Rosenbach’s collection. 

For over a century, readers have been thrilled by Arthur Conan Doyle’s adventures of the world’s first consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes, and his assistant, Dr. John Watson, as they battled the criminal forces of London. We’ll use our magnifying glasses to inspect not only first editions of these stories and Doyle’s handwritten manuscript of the Holmes story, “The Adventure of the Empty House,” but also investigate some of the earlier influences of the mystery/detective genre, like Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Dickens.

In this tour, we’ll connect historical treasures of the Rosenbach collections to the contemporary creative field of Book Arts.