Sir Francis Drake was the swashbuckling man of action in 16th-century England. He circled the globe, made England rich, raided Spanish ships and ports with wild abandon, claimed California for the queen and rescued the first British settlers in North America on Roanoke Island. The Library's stunning collection of contemporary Drake material brings the Elizabethan age back to breathing life.
Wendy Red Star is a Native American visual artist whose work has received widespread acclaim and been awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, commonly called the "genius grant." Her work is also collected at the Library. In this short essay, she writes about a research trip to the Library and how the collections inform her work.
Richard Morris Hunt was the iconic American architect of the Gilded Age,
designing estates that still have their own names – Biltmore, The Breakers, Marble House. His collection of more than 15,000 items is preserved at the Library. The collection is the subject of a new Library video as well as a six-month exhibit in Newport, Rhode Island, where he designed several palatial estates.
Chaeli Cantwell is a producer in the Multimedia Group, where she produces videos for the National Film and Recording registries, as well as reporting and producing videos from some of the the Library's most fascinating collections, including those of J. Robert Oppenheimer and George Gershwin.
In the spring of 1868, with the nation awash in loss and grief following the Civil War, veterans of the Union Army set May 30 as a day “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion.” An instant success, it evolved into Memorial Day.
Edward Gorey, that bearded patron saint of the sad and whimsical, the strange and witty, would have turned 100 this year, and centennial celebrations are happening all year long. The Library preserves hundreds of his works, including rare and unique items, such as a tiny edition of ... "The Gashlycrumb Tinies."
If you were a well-born English lady in a 17th-century family, you might be just as likely to accessorize your satin gown with earrings or a fan as you would an elaborately embroidered prayer book. The Library preserves a customized 1641 Book of Psalms, a marvel not only for its diminutive size, but also for its remarkable condition and lavish decoration. At more than 380 years old, its golden threads remain unfrayed and its intricate swirls of tiny seed pearls — hundreds of them — are perfectly intact.
The Library has worked for more than two decades to boost its holdings of modern Native American art and now has more than 200 prints and photographs by more than 50 contemporary Indigenous printmakers and photographers from the United States, Canada and Latin America. These include dazzling works by artists and photographers such as Wendy Red Star, Kay Walkingstick, Brian Adams, Zig Jackson and Rick Bartow.
“The Tale of Genji,” one of the foundational works of Japanese literature, was written 1,000 years ago and is more than 1,000 pages long. Penned over the course of a decade or so by Murasaki Shikibu, it is widely considered the world’s first novel. The Library recently added to its impressive “Genji” collections with a beautiful edition of Genji kokagami, or “A Little Mirror of the Tale of Genji,” set in wooden moveable type, from around 1625. It’s a summary of the original with excerpts and explanations, filling three slender notebook-size volumes with thin pages and delicate type. The typeface is so finely wrought that it appears at first glance to be calligraphy.
