Carole King, winner of the Gershwin Prize

But one of the most satisfying things about her storied career is how she wrote song after song and hit after hit for everyone’s voice, it seemed, but her own – and when she finally put her own singing behind her own words, the result was “Tapestry,” an album that blew the doors off the music industry.

That breakout 1971 album remains one of the best-selling record albums of all time.  It became the first solo album by a female artist to reach the Recording Industry Association of America’s “Diamond” status, meaning it sold more than 10 million copies. (Actually, more than 25 million copies.) Packed with hits – “You’ve Got A Friend,” “It’s Too Late,”  “I Feel The Earth Move,” and her own rendition of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”—“Tapestry” was named to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2003 as worthy of preservation for coming generations.

Tonight her voice was heard once again, as Carole King and a cast of stars celebrated her career and her prize in the Library’s Coolidge Auditorium, closing with rousing collective renditions of “You’ve Got A Friend” and “I Feel The Earth Move.”  Tomorrow night, she’ll sing again at the White House, and President Barack Obama will present her with the Gershwin Prize medal.

Is there a moral to this amazing story? Sure. Something like: Share your gifts, but don’t forget to share them with yourself.

Congratulations to Carole King.

The Library’s new exhibition “The Gibson Girl’s America: Drawings by Charles Dana Gibson” features works by a great American master of pen-and-ink drawing selected from the Library’s Cabinet of American Illustration.

In his 1910 illustration “Know All Men by These Presents,” Coles Phillips’ depiction of the “Fade-away Girl” is reminiscent of the “Gibson Girl.” Prints and
Photographs Division.

The story of how drawings by Gibson (1867-1944) and other illustrators became part of the cabinet presents a fascinating case history of building a collection. A special initiative launched in the 1930s enabled the Library to acquire many masterworks from the Golden Age of Illustration (1880-1930), a pre-radio and pre-television era when illustrated books, magazines, and newspapers provided essential sources of entertainment, enlightenment, and self-improvement for the American public.

The cabinet came into being largely through the dedicated efforts of William F. Patten, who persuaded Leicester Holland, then the chief of the Library’s Division of Fine Arts (now the Prints and Photographs Division), to start a collection of original illustration art for the nation. Holland provided modest support to Patten as he contacted illustrators or their heirs to request original drawings. As the art editor of Harper’s magazine in the 1880s-1890s, Patten was passionate about illustration and knew many leading illustrators and pursued his mission with urgency, as many of them were elderly and had not always saved much of their work.

Most leading Golden Age illustrators acquired excellent drawing skills through fine-art training and applied their best efforts to completing book, magazine and advertising assignments—often on tight deadlines. Although peak demand for illustration drawings had passed by the 1930s, Holland and Patten both comprehended the artistic and cultural significance of the art form. In the Librarian’s 1932 annual report, Holland asserted that illustration “was probably not only the most highly developed art in this country but had reached a higher development here than anywhere else in the world.”

When Patten contacted Gibson, the artist replied in a letter that he was honored by the invitation, supported the endeavor, and pledged gifts of his work, promising “only those that can make the grade.”

His response was typical of many illustrators and their heirs. By 1935, Gibson had generously donated more than 75 exemplary drawings, most featuring his signature creation, the “Gibson Girl”—a vibrant new feminine ideal. These included some works from two of his best known series, “The Education of Mr. Pipp” and “The Weaker Sex.”

The Cabinet of American Illustration grew rapidly and today numbers 4,000 drawings and prints by more than 250 artists. From 1933-1939, the Library mounted exhibitions of newly acquired works, thereby affirming enthusiastic support for building the collection and recognizing the high esteem in which illustration art was held. The cabinet’s holdings of outstanding works by leading illustrators embody the diverse array of styles, genres, techniques and subject matter characteristic of the art form during its Golden Age. Today, the Library continues to acquire selected examples of original illustration art.

The Cabinet of American Illustration is an excellent resource not only for enjoying individual works of art on paper but also for studying how artists influenced one another. Images of Gibson’s idealized young women inspired imitators as well as rivals, and examples of other illustrators’ icons of feminine beauty abound in the cabinet. “Know All Men by These Presents” by Coles Phillips (1880-1927) beautifully represents his stunning creation, the “Fade-away Girl.” Wladyslaw Benda (1873-1948) fashioned the “Benda Girl,” an exotic, almond-eyed beauty that graced the covers of Hearst’s International Magazine and other magazines. Nell Brinkley (1886-1944) portrayed her “Brinkley Girl” in such lovely forms as “Golden Eyes,” her dynamic World War I heroine.

Strong representation of several prominent women illustrators also distinguishes the cabinet’s excellent coverage of Golden Age illustration. Among them, Elizabeth Shippen Green (1871-1954), Jessie Wilcox Smith (1863-1935) and Alice Barber Stephens (1858-1932) all became known and well-respected in a field dominated by men. This was no small feat when illustrators were often public figures, and some, like Gibson, even achieved celebrity status.

Along with Gibson, Stephens gained standing when she won a commission in 1897 from the Ladies’ Home Journal for six cover drawings that alternated with his cover designs. Among more than 90 drawings and prints by her in the cabinet are award-winning works also considered her finest book illustrations—for George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” (1899), and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Marble Faun” (1900). The cabinet also holds Daniel Carter Beard’s drawings for another classic, Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” (1889).

In addition to illustrations for literary classics, the cabinet holds many drawings created for popular fiction and children’s readers. Rosina Emmett Sherwood (1854-1948) drew an amusing example of the latter, “Miss Cloud and Miss Sunbeam” (1888) for “Harper’s Third Reader.”

The Library mounted exhibitions of works by both Stephens and Edward Penfield (1866-1925) in 1936. Penfield, who was influenced by French poster design, took a leading role as a poster artist and key player in the transformation of magazine covers into poster-like designs. His drawing in the cabinet, “The Doughboys Make Good” (1918) stands out vividly among his many masterful works as a model of innovative design and use of color in WWI cover art.

Edward Pennfeld’s 1918 cover design for Collier’s magazine highlights the bravery and skill of the “doughboys,” the American infantrymen of World War I.
Prints and Photographs Division.

The cabinet holds hundreds of other war-related drawings, including dramatic scenes of military action by William Glackens (1870-1938) and pointed cartoon commentaries by W. A. Rogers (1854- 1931). Gibson, too, created powerful cartoons sharply critical of Germany during WWI and the current exhibition includes examples of his engagement with such leading political issues later in his career.

By virtue of their artistry alone, Gibson’s drawings represent a crowning glory within the Cabinet of American Illustration. Known primarily for drawings of archetypal beauties for magazines, he was surprisingly versatile and prolific, like many of his peers, producing book illustrations, advertising posters and political cartoons. His work offers a window into the visual riches to be found in the Cabinet of American Illustration, a collection of original art that reflects and visually documents the multi-faceted experiences and aspirations of American society during an era whose final years signal transition toward modernism in
American art forms.

This article is featured in the May-June 2013 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM, now available for download here. You can also view the archives of the Library’s former publication from 1993 to 2011.

On April 26, the Library celebrated the achievements of veteran sportscaster Bob Wolff, whose collection the institution also acquired. Outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Baseball Nation, WTOP and the Washington Examiner, among others, all ran stories leading up to the event and afterward.

“The stories behind his stories remain vivid,” wrote Tyler Kepner for the New York Times. “The interviews are compelling historical documents, and Wolff preserved many of the early ones on 16-inch lacquer discs – slices of sports’ oral history on pizza-size records.”

“The best way to describe sportscaster Bob Wolff is a treasure,” said Thom Loverro for the Examiner. “The best way to describe Wolff’s life is that it has been a treasured one.”

On April 25, celebrated novelist Don DeLillo was named the first recipient of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, which will be presented to him at the 13th annual National Book Festival in September. National Public Radio, The Washington Post, The Examiner, CBS News, the Associated Press and the Miami Herald all ran stories.

“His most famous books have explored the prevalence of conspiracies, violence and political terror in a world of mass media saturation,” wrote Ron Charles for The Washington Post. “He’s still pounding away on his Olympia typewriter, transcribing his startling vision of modern America.”

And, adding another honor to its name, the Library of Congress was honored by the music industry with a special Grammy Award for its work to preserve historic audio recordings. The Associated Press wrote an article that was also featured in outlets across the country. In addition, broadcast coverage included affiliates of CBS, ABC and NBC.

“The Grammys on the Hill Awards are meant to connect the music industry with the world of policy and politics in Washington,” wrote the AP’s Brett Zongker. “Songwriter Kara DioGuardi said the library’s preservation work is critical.”

Speaking of preservation efforts, online magazine The Connectivist featured a great story on the Library’s digitization efforts.

“The library works with old books so brittle their pages go to powder if turned, and their spines snap when opened too far. Slides and negatives can crack beneath insensitive hands,” wrote Emma Bryce. “There are papers and maps so old and impossible to handle that without digitization, they’d never meet the public’s gaze. Digitizing, then, becomes a way to ‘protect’ the materials by preserving them for generations to come.”

And there, in the flickering light of the screen, in the roar of the soundtrack, a famous career is born – as a youngster named Ray, already obsessed with dinosaurs, tells himself “Wow.  I want to learn how to make creatures like that.”

Ray Harryhausen — whose “stop-motion” animation using models that appeared to move after being painstakingly filmed, frame-by-frame, as their articulated bodies were adjusted just a bit this way and then just a bit more – died today at the age of 92.

He is famously remembered for the scene in which skeletons engage in swordfights with live-action heroes (“Jason and the Argonauts,” 1963).  His film “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad,” (1958) featuring a cyclops, a dragon, and another sword-wielding skeleton, was named by the Librarian of Congress to the 2008 National Film Registry of movies deemed worthy of preservation due to their cultural, historic or aesthetic value.

Harryhausen, a friend of science-fiction giant Ray Bradbury, became synonymous with the best of fantasy and sci-fi moviemaking from the 1940s (when Harryhausen assisted on the film “Mighty Joe Young”) through the early 1980s, when Harry Hamlin met Harryhausen in “Clash of the Titans.”  (Hamlin played Perseus, and no less an actor than Sir Laurence Olivier played Zeus in this Greek mythfest.)

Then computer-assisted special effects overtook the field.  But many special-effects artists and directors whose work features these latest effects pay homage to Ray Harryhausen.

Here’s a link to a museum in England that contains much of Harryhausen’s collection.

What’s your favorite Ray Harryhausen movie?

In the Muse: Performing Arts Blog

• An “Appalachian Spring” Collaboration

Students from the Baltimore School for the Arts talk about working with the Music Division collections.

Inside Adams: Science, Technology & Business

• The Great Sheet Cake Mystery
  

Jennifer Harbster researches the origins of the Texas Sheet Cake.

In Custodia Legis: Law Librarians of Congress

• In God We Trust

Margaret Wood uncovers the history of this national motto.

The Signal: Digital Preservation

• Older Personal Computers Aging Like Vintage Wine (if They Dodged the Landfill)

Older computers can have secondary value.

Teaching with the Library of Congress

• What’s the Difference Between the National Archives and the Library of Congress?

Stephanie Greenhut and Stephen Wesson discuss the key differences between the two institutions.

Picture This: Library of Congress Prints & Photos

• Fresh Eyes on a Classic: Photographers Share Pictures of the Main Reading Room on Flickr

Selected favorites from visitors during the President’s Day Main Reading Room Open House are featured.

Copyright Matters: Digitization and Public Access

• Cumulative Motion Pictures and Dramas

Seven more volumes of the Catalog of Copyright Entries from 1891 to 1978 have been digitized.

From the Catbird Seat: Poetry & Literature at the Library of Congress

• “But Why Write a Poem?”: Remembering Danial Hoffman

Former Consultant in Poetry Hoffman passed away March 30.

Roseate Spoonbill from “The Birds of America.” 1836. Rare Book & Special Collections Division.

“Bird” has been the word around my house lately. And, today, we celebrate Bird Day – a holiday established in 1894 by Charles Almanzo Babcock, a school superintendent in Oil City, Penn. Babcock hoped the initiative would promote conservation and awareness to the public, especially school children.

Recently, a friend of mine started talking about “The Big Year” bird-watching competition and her desire to participate. And, I’ve been enlisted to help. The informal competition takes bird watching to a whole new level, with birders vying to spot or hear the largest number of bird species within a single calendar year and within a specific geographical area. Sandy Komito holds the current record with 748 species seen in North America in a calendar year. Neither of us are really bird watchers, so things will certainly be interesting on this adventure. Fortunately, we can look to some Library of Congress resources in preparation.

Perhaps we could use as our starting point the works of John James Audubon (1785-1851), known for his famous drawings and paintings of North American birds. The first edition of his “Birds of America” book, also known as the “elephant folio,” is the largest book in the Library, at 39.37 inches high.

Cardinals with red tanager from “American Ornithology.” 1808. The Filson Historical Society.

Searching the Library’s Prints and Photographs online catalog for the title displays several lithographs from the book. In addition, a selection of paintings from his penultimate “Birds of America” can be found in the Library of Congress presentation “The First American West: The Ohio River Valley, 1750-1820” along with a three-volume ornithological biography with descriptions of the birds found in the book.

Another resource is the bird illustrations by painter Louis Agassiz Fuertes (1874-1927), whose work is featured in “The Harriman Alaska Expedition: Chronicles and Souvenirs” (1899) as part of the Library presentation “The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920.”

Scottish ornithologist Alexander Wilson (176-1813) made a comprehensive study of the birds of North America by studying the specimens skillfully mounted and displayed by artist Charles Wilson Peale and his sons in the Philadelphia Peale Museum. The museum became the repository for a wide array of natural history specimens from commercial and government-sponsored expeditions. Wilson’s masterwork, “American Ornithology,” would eventually grow to nine volumes and was the first comprehensive survey published on the birds of North America.

Just as important as knowing what the birds look like is knowing when and where to actually find them. The Library’s Science, Technology and Business Division has put together a reference guide on using space-based technology like remote sensing to track bird migration.

Annual convention of the American Ornithologists’ Union held at the American Museum of Natural History, November 1935. Prints and Photographs Division.

The Library is also home to the papers of ornithologists Hans Hermann Carl Ludwig von Berlepsch (1850-1915), who was one of the first zoologists to apply Darwinian principles of systematic classification to the study of birds; Charles Bendire (1836-1897), honorary curator of the Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution; W.L. McAtee (1883-1962), an expert on the food habits of birds; and T.S. Palmer (1877-1954), former secretary of the American Ornithologist Union.

Photo by Abby Brack Lewis

Washington Nationals newest mascot, William Howard Taft, stopped by the Library of Congress last Friday during a special event celebrating the acquisition of the historic recording collection of Hall of Fame sports broadcaster Bob Wolff. A selection of Library treasures was put on display for guests, including Taft’s papers, which the National’s mascot is seen here perusing.

During the event, the 92-year-old Wolff, who was the pioneering television voice of the Washington Senators for 15 years, wowed the crowd with a review of his more than 74-year career as a sportscaster. He entertained with stories and personal anecdotes about the sports legends he interviewed over the years — among them, Babe Ruth, Jim Thorpe, Vince Lombardi, Ted Williams, Joe Louis, Yogi Berra, George Steinbrenner, Clark Griffith and Rocky Marciano.

The Washingtonians, ca. 1925. Photo by Steven Lasker.

One of the great joys of working with the Library of Congress film and video collections is learning more about our holdings from the astonishing variety of researchers the Moving Image Reference Center attracts. While we’re justifiably proud of our in-house expertise, we rely on patrons, scholars and consultants to help us understand even more about our treasures.

A perfect example of this happy circumstance happened just recently when we were contacted by Ken Steiner, an historian specializing in the life and work of Duke Ellington, whose 114th birthday we celebrate today. I’ll let Ken set the stage:

Duke Ellington’s early days in New York are a Prohibition-era tale of torrid jazz, hot shows, Broadway stars and Treasury raids. Before he rose to fame at Harlem’s Cotton Club, Ellington spent three and a half years in a cellar dance club and cabaret near Times Square, which had opened as the Hollywood in September of 1923. Ellington assumed leadership of the house band, the Washingtonians, in February 1924, and they cut their first record late in the year. By 1925, the Hollywood had re-opened as Club Kentucky, and the Washingtonians had developed a small following for their “indigo modulations.”

I was doing some research on the Washingtonians when a one-sentence paragraph in the June 13, 1925, edition of the Philadelphia Tribune caught my attention:

“Johnn[y] Hudgins, the Kentucky club band and four girls from the club Alabam have been filmed in the Rue La Paix [sic] scene in a feature film called ‘Headlines’ being produced by the St. Regis Picture Corp.”

I immediately knew that “the Kentucky club band” had to be Duke Ellington’s Washingtonians, the only band to have played at the club to that point. The question then became: was there a copy of the film “Headlines” still in existence?

So, Ken immediately googled “Headlines 1925,” which led him to a website devoted to the film’s star, Alice Joyce, where he learned that “a copy of this film is located at the Library of Congress (35mm, not preserved).” He contacted Reference Specialist Zoran Sinobad, who in turn alerted me to this tantalizing possibility.

Our nitrate print of the silent film “Headlines” was indeed unpreserved. It was acquired from the Netherlands Film Archive (now called EYE Film Institute Netherlands) in 1992 and has Dutch intertitles. One of the first steps in film preservation after physically preparing the reels is setting the exposure levels for individual scenes, otherwise known as “timing” or “grading” a film. I asked timer Frank Wylie to keep an eye out for the Rue de la Paix sequence and, if possible, get some frame grabs that might help identify Ellington. He did—with his phone’s camera—but despite the poor resolution and the fact the band remains far in the scene’s background, I sent them to Ken with eagerness and trepidation. He quickly responded that he had shared the stills with several other Ellington experts and that they unanimously agreed the fellow with the distinctive “bean-shaped head” at the piano was definitely Duke Ellington. “Headlines” has since been fully preserved, although we still have some work to do in translating the intertitles.

So while we may wish that the Washingtonians had been favored with a closeup, we’re pleased to present Duke Ellington in his (so far as we know) first ever film appearance, thanks to the detective work of Ken Steiner. This clip is excerpted from the seven minute nightclub sequence.

From left, David H. Grinspoon, Jean-Francois Mouhot and Matthias Klestil discuss the environment during a Kluge Center panel discussion. Photo by Abby Brack Lewis.

On Feb. 28, the John W. Kluge Center brought together three of its scholars to discuss these perspectives and their moral implications in a panel titled “The Evolving Moral Landscape: Perspectives on the Environment, Literary, Historical and Interplanetary.” And, what better time then Earth Day today to take a look at perceptions of human’s relationship to our planet and its environs.

According to American astrobiologist David H. Grinspoon, the first Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology at the Kluge Center, humans are now changing the earth “as a kind of new type of geological force.” We are in what he calls the Anthropocene, a phrase that scientists and others are increasingly using to describe the current phase of earth history.

“The Anthropocene is focusing these questions of the relationship between humanity and nature in a new way,” said Grinspoon. “Should we be pragmatic?  There’s ecopragmatism where you recognize we live on a planet that’s permanently altered by humanity, and rather than seek to return to or preserve pure wilderness, we recognize that’s an illusion and we proceed under the new knowledge that we live, in fact, in a human-dominated planet.

“Then there are these more purist movements within environmentalism that say that’s surrender. We should seek to protect wilderness and not give up and admit that we live in a human-dominated planet.  So as we go forward into the future the Anthropocene serves as a sort of locus for some of these questions – is nature something that we can even think of meaningfully anymore as separate from humanity, or do we acknowledge that now having arisen from nature we are actually running this place?”

Environmental historian Jean-Francois Mouhot, a Marie Curie Fellow from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris), presented his take on climate change, using slavery as an example, and the underlying moral issues. Mouhot believes that at some point in the future, we may be held accountable for reparation to other countries and people for things that we do today, in terms of our impact on the environment. He used the Haitian Revolution as an example. The slaves revolted in the country that became Haiti and became dependent. Years later, France forced Haiti to essentially pay them for that loss of property in order to give them diplomatic recognition. According to Mouhot, that was normal at that time.

“Driving cars or taking planes or drying your clothes in the dryer … activities that we all do on a regular basis that we find normal and nobody really finds morally appalling or anything like that,” he said.  “Now, if you think about the implications of the use of these machines that all rely on fossil fuels … in the light of the Anthropocene about the fact that we are now altering especially the climate of the earth but also that we are disrupting a lot of other things through our activities, this might in the future be regarded as activities that are not morally neutral.”

Bavarian Fellow Matthias Klestil from the University of Bayreuth in Germany, who is researching the development of environmental consciousness in African-American literature, discussed how the African American community is perceived in regards to its relationship with nature and the environment. Citing an August 2009 trip taken by President Barack Obama to Yellowstone, the media exchange that followed really triggered the perception of how deeply unfamiliar the image of not only Obama but of an African-American in general enjoying a frontier setting seemed to be, he said.

“You know, we might not find much if we think about African-American literature in terms of having an explicit activist or conservationist/preservationist ethics underlying,” Mouhout said.  “So instead I’m implying the wider definition of environmental knowledge. I’m looking at the ways in which there are specific attachments or identifications with nature in African-American literature.”

Using slavery as a case in point, he talked about three aspects to this environmental consciousness.

“First, there is the aspect of vision. So I look at how, for example, the fugitive slave narrative has a different mode of visually relating and perceiving nature than, you know, mainstream transcendentalists have,” he said. “The second aspect would be that of labor.  So what does it mean to actually work with environments under slavery but also more general terms? How does that shape the human’s relation to natural environments, having actually to do work but not just going there in their free time?”

The third aspect, he said, revolves around the abolitionist debate versus the pro-slavery debate of nature.

“Basically both sides are in a sense drawing on nature,” Klestil said. “One side is saying slavery is unnatural, and the other side is saying slavery is totally natural because that’s how they [slaves] were made, what they were made for.”

The John W. Kluge Center brings scholars and best thinkers to the nation’s capital to utilize the Library’s collections, to energize and inspire one another and to engage in dialogue with leaders in Washington and the public.

You can watch the panel discussion in full here.

Grinspoon summed up the discussion: “We have to learn to become a new kind of entity on this world that has the maturity and the awareness to handle being a global species with the power to change our planet and use that power in a way that is conducive to the kind of global society we want to have.”

In the Muse: Performing Arts Blog

• Lincoln and the Blair House Binder’s Volumes

Sharon McKinley talks about musical scores belonged to the Blair family, a prominent family during the Civil War.

Inside Adams: Science, Technology & Business

• Getting to Know Sir Arthur C. Clarke

Jennifer Harbster posts about Arthur C. Clarke, chairman of the British Interplanetary Society.

In Custodia Legis: Law Librarians of Congress

• Marmite: A Sticky Legal Situation

Former New Zealander Kelly Buchanan writes about the New Zealand-made condiment and some legal importation issues.

The Signal: Digital Preservation

• Death, Taxes, Digital Audits and PUPPIES!

How to get and keep your digital tax and financial files in order.

Teaching with the Library of Congress

• Stereotypes and Humor in Historic Films from the Library of Congress

A guide for students in exploring how humor in film changes over time.

Picture This: Library of Congress Prints & Photos

• Caught Our Eyes: A Giant Bat Roost?

The Prints and Photographs Division spotlights an early 20th century photo of a bat roost.

Copyright Matters: Digitization and Public Access

• Copyright Digitization: Moving Right Along

Mike Burke reports on the digitization efforts of the Copyright Card Catalog.

From the Catbird Seat: Poetry & Literature at the Library of Congress

• Radical Form: Lesley Dill’s Poem Dress of Circulation

Art intersects with poetry in Dill’s “Poem Dress.”