Only traces remain of Salomon August Andrée’s 1897 attempt to reach the North Pole. From a base on the Svalbard archipelago, the engineer and his two companions had hoped to float a hydrogen balloon gracefully over the pole, drop a Swedish flag and claim the glory of first discovery. Their friends never saw them alive again. Their remains were found in 1930 on a small island in the Arctic Ocean and the story became internationally famous. The Library preserves several artifacts from the expedition, including fabric samples from the construction of the balloon.
Marion Post Wolcott was an unknown 28-year-old photographer when she first picked up her cameras for the Farm Security Administration in the autumn of 1938. What followed was a remarkable four years of near constant travel and photography that would elevate her, over time, into being regarded as one of the most significant photographers of the American 20th century.
Marie Tharp was an American geologist and marine cartographer whose groundbreaking studies into ocean floors and discovery of the mid-Atlantic rift valley challenged the widely accepted geological views of the time. Her papers are preserved at the Library, a window into the thinking of a scientist who changed the understand of the world we live in.
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett argued last week that preserving the Constitution depends not only on the courts but also on American citizens, urging them to maintain a culture of respect for the rule of law. “Respect for the law, reverence for the Constitution, really begins with American citizens. It’s really more of a trickle up than a trickle down,” said Barrett during a lecture on March 12 to a packed audience in the Coolidge Auditorium.
From the vast reaches of outer space to the depths of the Mariana Trench, the Library’s collections chronicle some of the Western world’s greatest voyages of discovery and exploration. These are journeys that crossed time and space, shattering the old realms of myth and superstition and revealing the known world, a place of maps and charts and taxonomic tables. Giants and dragons did not exist, it turned out, but a whole new universe filled with strange and wonderful things did.
Pvt. Robert Frazer was one of the members of the Lewis and Clark expedition and his hand-drawn map of their route was one of the first to be published. However, his plans to publish the (error filled) map and his journal of the trip never came to anything. Today, his map resides in the Geography and Map Division.
More than a dozen striking images by Alphonse Mucha, the Czech artist widely credited as an originator of the art nouveau style, are preserved at the Library. He got his big break when he happened to be in his Paris office when Sarah Bernhardt, the famous actress, needed help with an advertising poster for one of her plays. A star was born (offscreen, in this case).
In 1855, when Thomas Ayres published the first images of Yosemite Falls, the rest of the country was enchanted. His sketchwork of the Yosemite Valley predated the famous photographs by Carleton Watkins and the monumental paintings by Albert Bierstadt in the 1860s that would cement the valley’s reputation as the romantic dream of the American West incarnate. The Library recently acquired one of Ayres sketches, along with a companion lithograph, preserving them — and their moment in national history — for generations to come.
The Library recently acquired the collection of jazz legend Gil Evans, an arranger and composer whose work, particularly with Miles Davis, helped reshape the art form in the mid 20th century. This story shows how the pair recorded "Sketches of Spain," their Grammy-winning 1960 album that is still considered a classic.
