Exhibits
Every year, the Canaday Center prepares a full-scale exhibition featuring selections of materials from our collections. Each exhibit represents a theme related to Toledo or a specific collecting area. For example, our 2015-2016 exhibit, Greater Toledo: The City in the World, revolved around both the influence of Toledo on the world and the influence of the world on Toledo through interpretations of documents and artifacts in the collections of cultural organizations, world-wide business leaders, soldiers, and ambassadors. The exhibit ran from September 24, 2015 to May 6, 2016.
The Canaday Center's 2021 exhibit retrospective, "Touching the Sun", closed summer 2021. Please check back regularly for updates on future projects.
Full-length PDF versions of over 60 catalogs for exhibits ranging from 1976 to the present are available to view in the University of Toledo Digital Repository, here.
Many of our post-2000 exhibits are also available virtually. See below for links to the online exhibitions.
- Faith, Vision and Hard Work: The University of Toledo, 1872-2022, October 12, 2022 - August 1, 2023
- Touching the Sun (exhibit retrospective), Spring and summer 2021
- Protest: Activism and Social Change, 1845-2015, 2018-2019
- Preserving Yesterday for Tomorrow: The Best of the Ward M. Canaday Center for Special
Collections, November 2017 - July 2018
- House and Home: The Intersection of Domestic Architecture and Social History, 1870-1970, October 19, 2016 - May 5, 2017
- Greater Toledo: The City in the World, September 24, 2015 - May 6, 2016
- Letters of Luminaries: Notable Correspondences in the Collections of the Ward M. Canaday Center, October 21, 2013 - July 31, 2014 (new virtual exhibition coming soon). Currently available:
- Medicine on the Maumee: A History of Health Care in Northwest Ohio, March 1 - December 28, 2012
- Wholly Toledo: The Business and Industry that Shaped the City, November 17, 2010 - August 12, 2011
- Margaret Papp Perry Memorial Hungarian Book Collection, May 2011
- University of Toledo 2010 Authors and Artists Exhibit, March 29 - April 30, 2010
- Black History Month : Images from the Rare Books Collections, February 2010
- From Institutions to Independence: A History of People with Disabilities in Northwest Ohio, September 23, 2008 - February 27, 2009
- Best of the Canaday Center 2007, September 12 - December 31, 2007
- Time in a Bottle: A History of Owens-Illinois, Inc., September 20 - December 29, 2006
- Ideals, Courage, and Hope: The Experience of Soldiers in America's Wars, April 13 - August 31, 2005
- University of Toledo 2004 Authors and Artists Exhibit, November 18 - December 30, 2004
- Till Death Us Do Part: Courtship, Marriage & Family in 19th Century America, March 29 - August 27, 2004
- Faces of Steel: The People and History of the Acklin Stamping Company, April 2000
- A Hundred Years of Womanhood: Celebrating Women's History Month, March 2000
- The Noble Craftsmen We Promote: The Arts and Crafts Movement in the American Midwest, March 1999
- The Books of Wall Street: Selections From the Hess Collection, February 1999
- The Tower's Lengthening Shadow: 125 Years of The University of Toledo, an exhibit tracing UT's history, 1997
- A Walking Tour Guide to The University of Toledo Architecture, 1997
- From Quackery to Bacteriology: The Emergence of Modern Medicine in 19th Century America, 1994