Exhibitions

King's building foyer exhibition

King's College London Archive has permanent exhibition cases in the lobby of the King's building on the Strand. We have several exhibitions a year and are currently planning our next one, but you can see examples of past exhibitions below.

The David Clarke Collection

David Clarke (1931- 2014) was a pageant master. Not only did he produce pageants, but he also researched and documented pageant history from 1905 onwards. 

His collection includes books of words (essentially scripts), pamphlets, ground plans, photographs, sheet music, posters and more. From historic pageants to his own productions, the materials provide a valuable and unique insight into all aspects of pageant productions.

It can be suggested that pageants were an outward expression of local historical identity in relation to wider national identity. The solidifying of local identity gave the people of a particular town or village an understanding of the role that they, and their ancestors, may have played in the history of Britain.

Festival of Empire, 1911 
Pageants were also seen as a way of making history more entertaining to a mass audience.

Before television became readily available, these historical pageant productions offered a way of increasing interaction with any historical subject or period.

This exhibition will display various objects of interest, whilst providing useful background knowledge on the history of pageants, pageant masters and why these events took place.

This exhibition was researched and compiled by Fraser Simpson, MA student (History Department, King’s College London), and featured the David Clarke Collection, which at the time was recently acquired by King’s College Archives.

Link to the online catalogue

Please see Archives and Special Collections online exhibitions to view the full selection of online exhibitions.

Online exhibition pages authored by Archives and Special Collections staff give a good idea of the breadth of subject matter our collections cover and the quality of images we can make available. Increasingly, the exhibitions we create are supplemented by online exhibitions to make content accessible to those unable to visit in person.

They cover a wide variety of themes: some interrogate and foreground history's hidden voices, some showcase the history of print, while others deal with themes of pageantry and espionage.

They feature research on former King's professor and Christian Socialist Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-72), and the Library's holdings of incunabula (early printed books).

Some of these online exhibitions were curated from research undertaken by Library and Archives interns. See the Projects tab for information related to the interns' work.

Selected online exhibitions from recent years

Sleeping Beauty and Mother Bunch: female figures in 18th century chapbooks

This online exhibition showcases the research conducted by the Foyle Special Collections Library's 2023 internship student, Irina Ticleanu, from the Department of History at King's. The focus of Irina’s research was the fine collection of 18th century chapbooks, or ‘penny histories’ held in Special Collections.

Hidden voices of Empire

Analysis of the themes of development within British post-war imperial policy, by our 2022 MA History intern, Tom Mitchell.

Voyage to Madagascar: Thomas Locke Lewis and the Anglo-Merina Treaty of 1817

A transcription of a manuscript journal from 1817.

The David Clarke Collection

The collection and work of a pageant master.

Representing the unfamiliar: Photography in the British Empire 1866-1938

Parkinson of the disease

Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy, espionage during the Cold War

Sir William Young's Essay on Tobago, 1810

The nearest run thing you ever saw: the Battle of Waterloo

In this online exhibition, originally held to mark the bicentenary of this momentous day in European history, we look at the course of the battle itself, the military tactics and techniques involved and the treatment afforded to those wounded on the battlefield. We look too at the careers of the two key protagonists – Napoleon and Wellington – both before and after the battle.

Coming to London looks at the way King’s students have experienced London from challenges of the nineteenth century, through to the wars of the twentieth century - including overseas students welcomed as refugees fleeing oppression. 

The great leveller: humanity's struggle against infectious disease

Ever since the Neolithic Revolution established the basis for settled agriculture and brought humankind into close and insanitary contact with animals, infectious disease has been the inseparable companion of human development. It has insinuated itself into patterns of settlement, trade, conquest and war, and shows no sign of abating.

Our choice of exhibition theme reflects the leading role which the constituent parts of King’s College London have long played in medical research and, more recently, in the history of medicine and science.

In the Beginning...  an online exhibition produced by the Archives team, explains the early history of King's College London.  Topics discussed and illustrated include the reason for its foundation, its location on the Strand in London next to Somerset House, its construction and early college life.