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Posted by: Neely Tucker
Tim Gunn is an academic, bestselling author and pop culture icon. He won an Emmy Award for his role as host of “Project Runway.” He wrote this short essay on the difference between fashion and clothes for the Library of Congress Magazine's fashion issue.
Posted in: LCM, Performing Arts
Posted by: Neely Tucker
George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” a rapturous burst of music that has become a motif of the nation’s creative spirit, turns 100 today. It was first performed in New York on the snowy Tuesday afternoon of Feb. 12, 1924. Commissioned and premiered by the popular conductor Paul Whiteman at a concert designed to showcase high-minded …
Posted in: Events, Library Work and Employees, Music, Performing Arts, Today in History, Video
Posted by: Mark Hartsell
Harper’s Bazar magazine opened up a wide world for the modern woman of 1902, including a large foldout sheet of sewing patterns for the thrifty homemaker. When unfolded, the sheet revealed a bewildering tangle of dots, dashes, lines, X’s and ovals that crisscrossed a total of 1,134 square inches of paper in an unholy mess covering both front and back. The marks delineated patterns for 60 articles of clothing. When unfolded, the sheet reveals a bewildering tangle of dots, dashes, lines, X’s and ovals that crisscross a total of 1,134 square inches of paper in an unholy mess covering both front and back. The marks delineate patterns for a whopping 60 different component parts of articles of clothing.
Posted in: LCM, Women's History
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Fashion has always been an avenue for reference and reinvention, expressing societal viewpoints and political movements through fabric and adornment. As the Library’s collections demonstrate, this was especially true for 20th-century fashion in the U.S. The story of American style is depicted in the Library’s century-old newspapers and magazines; in department store catalogs and home-sewing pattern books; in vintage lithographs and high-gloss photography.
Posted in: Collections, Curators, LCM, Women's History
Posted by: Brett Zongker
Elton John and Bernie Taupin, one of the great songwriting duos of all time, will be the 2024 recipients of the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced today.
Posted in: Concerts, Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, Library Work and Employees, Music, National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, News, Performing Arts, Writers
Posted by: Maria Peña
he Library, in collaboration with the nonprofit organization StoryCorps, has launched the COVID-19 Archive Activation website to encourage everyone share their COVID-19 stories. Stories will be deposited into the American Folklife Center and made accessible at archive.StoryCorps.org. The new website is part of the COVID-19 American History Project — a congressionally mandated initiative to document and archive Americans’ experiences with the pandemic.
Posted in: American Folklife Center, COVID-19, Gazette, Influeza/Covid-19, Library Work and Employees
Posted by: Neely Tucker
On May 15, 1962, the British songwriting team of Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley were up-by-the-bootstraps types, just hitting their 30s, and would become big stars. On that day, they scratched out what would become perhaps their most influential hit, a deceptively simple song called "Feeling Good." Nina Simone would make it her anthem in 1965, and Michael Bublé would have a worldwide hit with it nearly three decades later. The Library's Bricusse collection preserves that moment of creation in one of his meticulously kept notebooks.
Posted in: LCM, Music, Performing Arts, Theater
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
Jessica Castelo is a museum technician in the Visitor Engagement Office. Here, she answers a short Q&A session about her work and life outside the office.
Posted in: Events, Gazette, Library Work and Employees, My Job, New Visitors Experience
Posted by: Neely Tucker
After Orville Wright's death in 1948, his estate donated a vast collection of his papers to the Library, including more than 300 glass plate and nitrate negatives of photographs taken (mostly) by the brothers between 1897 and 1928; images that provide an important and fascinating record of their home lives and of their attempts to fly. His "success house," Hawthorn Hill, is in many of these photos and is today a museum.
Posted in: Free to Use and Reuse, LCM, Photos