Browse the Exhibitions

Shakespeare's First Folio

Completed
May 9, 2016 – May 31, 2016
This exhibition will present Shakespeare’s First Folio, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the great literary artist’s death, and will serve as the foundation for an expansive initiative involving the New Orleans Public Library, New Orleans Shakespeare Festival at Tulane, the university’s English Department, several other local universities, The Historic New Orleans Collection, and the Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane. Tulane University was chosen by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. as one of the sites to display the First Folio for four weeks in 2016. A jazz funeral is planned for the day of the exhibition opening to honor The Bard. “A jazz funeral is probably the most appropriate way that New Orleans musicians can honor a person of value,” explains Bruce Raeburn, curator of the Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane. “This is an opportunity to show respect to a great literary artist by some great musical artists in New Orleans.”

The First Folio is “one of the most important books ever published,” says Michael Kuczynski, associate professor of English at Tulane and chair of the department. “It represents a monumental statement on the importance of Shakespeare and his plays to English literary and cultural history. The publication of the First Folio conferred on Shakespeare a kind of status as a writer which set him apart from everybody else writing in English.” When it arrives at Tulane, the First Folio will be opened to the “to be or not to be” soliloquy from Hamlet.

“The School of Liberal Arts is honored to serve as the Louisiana home for this incredible exhibition. In Shakespeare’s works we see the enduring power of the humanities both to elucidate and to inspire,” observes the dean of the School ofLiberal Arts at Tulane University, Carole Haber.

For more information, please visit: Shakespeare's First Folio