Agnes Smedley Collection and Exhibition Archive

The Agnes Smedley Collection contains news clippings, photographs, speeches, lecture notes, printed matter, correspondence, and artifacts dating from 1911 to 1981. The bulk of the collection consists of news clippings, photographs, and reprints documenting Smedley's career as a journalist in China and events in China during the Japanese conflict and World War II (1938-1948).

In 2017 the Library began working on an exhibition on Agnes Smedley's life, As a former student of the Tempe Normal School (later to become Arizona State University), the Library decided to highlight our collection of Smedley's materials. After much work over two and a half years, the Library opened an exhibition in Shanghai at the Museum of the Former Residence of Sun Yat-sen in April of 2020. This was followed by an exhibition in Xi'an at the Northwest University's Center for Edgar and Helen Snow Studies in May 2020. Another offshoot of this series of exhibitions was held at the Sichuan University Library featuring Agnes Smedley's friendship with Zhu De. Lastly, the final exhibition will be held at Peking University in the spring of 2022. An online exhibition catalog will be included in this repository collection.