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Archive: 2016 (165 Posts)

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Curator’s Picks: All That Jazz

Posted by: Erin Allen

(The following is an article from the March/April 2016 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM. You can read the issue in its entirety here.) Music Division Curator Larry Appelbaum highlights items from the Library’s exhibition “Jazz Singers.” BILLIE HOLIDAY No matter how many times I’ve seen this iconic portrait of Ms. Holiday by …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Gathered Around the Seder Table: Images from the Passover Haggadah

Posted by: Erin Allen

(The following is a guest post by Sharon Horowitz, reference librarian in the Hebraic Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division.) Exodus 23:15 tells us that Passover should be celebrated in the spring. The rabbis understood this to mean it was their job to maintain the holiday in the spring, which required some manipulation …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Here’s to a Couple of Ruff Characters

Posted by: Jennifer Gavin

Four hundred years ago this weekend, two of the greatest geniuses in wordcraft this world has ever seen both died: William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes. Shakespeare’s plays still dazzle, written though they are in Elizabethan English and iambic pentameter; their story lines are still fresh enough to inspire endless straight-play performance worldwide, Broadway musicals …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Pic of the Week: Happy 216th Library of Congress!

Posted by: Erin Allen

The Library of Congress celebrates its 216th birthday on Sunday. Founded on April 24, 1800, thanks to an appropriation approved by Pres. John Adams of $5,000 for the purchase of “such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress.” What started with a whopping 740 books and three maps has evolved to more …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

The Changing Field of Folklife

Posted by: Erin Allen

(The following is an article by Stephen Winick from the March/April 2016 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM. You can read the issue in its entirety here.) Changes in technology have facilitated global access to the Library’s folklife collections. This year, the Library’s American Folklife Center turns 40. During that time, the world …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

WWI Exhibit Opens Next Month

Posted by: Erin Allen

An exhibition showing how American artists galvanized public interest in World War I will open Saturday, May 7 at the Library of Congress. “World War I: American Artists View the Great War” opens in the Graphic Arts Galleries featuring 25 fine prints, drawings, cartoons, posters and photographs drawn from the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division. An additional 70 photographs will …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Pic of the Week: An Encore for the Poet Laureate

Posted by: Erin Allen

Juan Felipe Herrera, U.S. poet laureate consultant in poetry, has been appointed a second term – an appointment announced, then celebrated in the Coolidge Auditorium on Wednesday night. “What a great joy, what a great joy this is,” Herrera, the 21st laureate, told the audience. “How beautiful it is to be here. How beautiful the Library of Congress is. …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Jacob Riis Exhibition Opens Today

Posted by: Mark Hartsell

Half the world, journalist Jacob Riis once said, doesn’t know how the other half lives, and it doesn’t know because it doesn’t care. Riis, a social reformer, author and newspaper reporter, used his work to make society take notice, exposing the squalid living and working conditions in late 19th-century New York during the height of …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Technology at the Library: StoryCorps Goes Global

Posted by: Erin Allen

(The following is an article by Nicole Saylor of the American Folklife Center for the March/April 2016 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM. You can read the issue in its entirety here.) The StoryCorps oral history collection is growing through a new mobile app and website. In a matter of months last fall, …