Seth Kaller, Inc.

Our involvement with important documents often doesn’t end when we sell them. We are happy to work with museums and other institutions to share our client's documents with the public. Here is a partial list of current and past exhibitions that we helped arrange, or that contain significant documents and artifacts that we previously acquired for our clients who lent to the exhibit.

Current Exhibitions

Past Exhibitions

New-York Historical Society

Lincoln and the Jews

Marking the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination, this exhibition focuses on the significant, and hitherto unknown, relationships and interactions between Abraham Lincoln and his Jewish friends and associates. At a time when Jews comprised less than one-half of one percent of the American population, and with the country rampant with prejudice, Lincoln’s positive and meaningful personal relationships with Jewish individuals not only arguably changed him but also had an important and lasting impact on the status of American Jews. Lincoln stood up to his anti-Semitic generals even as he depended upon them to win the war, and became an advocate for Jewish equality and acceptance.

Through never-before displayed original documents, artifacts, photographs, Lincoln's own writings, and first person accounts primarily from the Shapell Manuscript Collection, the exhibition will trace events in Lincoln’s life through the lens of his Jewish contemporaries, such as Abraham Jonas, who became Lincoln’s political strategist and “most valued friend,” and Issachar Zacharie, his enigmatic confidant. Furthermore, the exhibition will explore Lincoln’s profound interest in and connection to the Old Testament, as exemplified in his wish to see Jerusalem before he died.

Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum

Lincoln Speaks: Words that Transformed a Nation

Co-curated by the Morgan Library and the Gilder Lehrman Collection, this exhibit included more than a dozen of our favorite acquisitions for GLC, such as Lincoln’s House Divided speech manuscript and Lincoln’s masterly refusal to pardon a slave trader, suggesting instead that he seek pardon in a higher authority.

University of Pennsylvania Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts

The Great Emancipator and the Great Central Fair

National Museum of African American History and Culture

Changing America: The Emancipation Proclamation, 1863 and the March on Washington, 1963

To commemorate these two pivotal achievements, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in collaboration with the National Museum of American History is presenting an exhibition that explores the historical context of these two crucial events, their accomplishments and limitations, and their impact on the generations that followed. Featuring Schuyler Colfax’s copy of the Thirteenth Amendment, which we acquired for David Rubenstein.

Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Library

The Life and Times of Abraham Lincoln

The Life and Times of Abraham Lincoln displayed sets and costumes from DreamWorks Studios’ Lincoln, along with original artifacts including Lincoln’s stovepipe hat, lent by Hildene, Mary Todd Lincoln’s portable commode, and dozens of other unique personal effects. Important documents covered every aspect of Lincoln’s career, from his earliest known writing (teaching himself compound interest) to important letters on slavery, leaves from his 1864 State of the Union Address, and the 13th Amendment ending slavery. We are proud to have helped arrange the loan of many of the highlights.

Fairfield Museum & History Center

Promise of Freedom

This was the only exhibition in New England to display Lincoln-signed copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and Thirteenth Amendment (lent by an anonymous client), as well as other fascinating documents, paintings and artifacts that narrated this decisive moment in the quest for human freedom. For context, the exhibit included a scarce early facsimile of the Declaration of Independence we loaned, and a scarce Connecticut printing of the Constitution (lent by the Scarsdale Public Library).

President Lincoln’s Cottage

The Emancipation Proclamation

This exhibit featured a rare Lincoln-signed copy of Emancipation Proclamation (which we acquired for David Rubenstein last year) on display in the place where he first drafted this historic document.

New-York Historical Society

Abolishing Slavery: The 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation

The New-York Historical Society is commemorated the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation with a display of rare documents we acquired for the Gilder Lehrman Collection, including Lincoln-signed copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and a congressional copy of the Thirteenth Amendment.

National Museum of American Jewish History

To Bigotry No Sanction: George Washington and Religious Freedom

This exhibition highlighted Washington’s famous 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, R.I. Along with two of our clients we loaned several important documents:

• Washington’s “Throne of Grace” letter to the German Lutheran congregation of Philadelphia.
• A rare first public printing of the Constitution.
• A July 1776 broadside of the Declaration of Independence.

State Archives of the Russian Federation

The Tsar and The President: Alexander II & Abraham Lincoln, Liberator and Emancipator

The American-Russian Cultural Cooperation Foundation, organized this exhibition at the State Archives of the Russian Federation in Moscow and the State Museum Tsarskoye Selo in St. Petersburg.

New-York Historical Society

Lincoln and New York

Bruce Museum

Lincoln, Life-Size

Heinz History Center, in partnership with the National Constitution Center

Lincoln, the Constitution and the Civil War

Federal Hall

Lincoln in New York: A Rail Splitter Bicentennial Exhibit