1a public display of works of art or items of interest, held in an art gallery or museum or at a trade fair:an exhibition of French sculpture [mass noun]:he never lent his treasures out for exhibition
2a display or demonstration of a skill:fields which have been ploughed with a supreme exhibition of the farm worker’s skills
a display of a quality or emotion:a false exhibition of concern for smaller nations
3 [usually as modifier] (in sport) a game whose outcome does not affect a team’s standing, typically one played before the start of a regular season:an exhibition match
4British a scholarship awarded to a student at a school or university, usually after a competitive examination:Brasenose awarded him a senior Hulme exhibition
make an exhibition of oneself
behave in a very foolish or ill-judged way in public:she looked around the bar to see if she was making an exhibition of herself