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Posted by: Mark Hartsell
Everyone who enters the Main Reading Room cranes their necks as far back as they can to take in “Human Understanding,” a mural created by American artist Edwin Howland Blashfield 125 feet above at the apex of the soaring, coffered dome. Here's a short guide to what some of the painted figures represent.
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, LCM, Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington DC
Posted by: Neely Tucker
The contents of Abraham Lincoln's pockets the night he was assassinated -- a gathering of the ordinary and everyday -- have long been one of the Library's most fascinating holdings. They, along with Lincoln's work on the Gettysburg Address, are featured in "Collecting Memories: Treasures from the Library of Congress,” the inaugural exhibit of the Library's new Treasures Gallery, opening June 13.
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, LCM, Rare Book and Special Collections
Posted by: Neely Tucker
This June, the Library will open “Collecting Memories: Treasures from the Library of Congress,” an exhibition that explores the ways cultures preserve memory and shows off some of the Library's most valuable holdings. The exhibition is the first in the Library’s new David M. Rubenstein Treasures Gallery.
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, Collections, Comics, Geography and Maps Division, LCM, Library Work and Employees, Music, Performing Arts, Rare Book and Special Collections, Thomas Jefferson Building
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Two Black seamstresses have left their mark on White House fashion history, as Elizabeth Keckley and Ann Lowe designed dresses for two of the nation’s most famous first ladies, Mary Todd Lincoln and Jacqueline Kennedy, respectively. Both designers developed their craft despite the brutal influences of slavery and Jim Crow segregation. This piece tells their stories.
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, African American History, Civil War, LCM, Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, U.S. Presidents, Women's History, Writers
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
Christopher Oakley, a prominent film animator turned university historian, used his knowledge of computer modeling -- and his research at the LIbrary of Congress -- to help solve a small but important mystery: Where exactly did Lincoln stand while delivering his famed Gettysburg Address?
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Gazette, Library Work and Employees, Researcher Stories, Today in History, U.S. Presidents
Posted by: Neely Tucker
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was 60 years ago today -- August 28, 1963. We look back at that historic day, both at how it developed and its aftermath, in an era when terrorism, violence and assassinations targeted civil rights volunteers, workers and organizers.
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, African American History, Civil Rights, U.S. Presidents, Washington DC
Posted by: Mark Hartsell
"A Library for You" is the Library's multi-year initiative to connect readers and patrons to our collections in new ways. These new galleries, exhibits and showcases will present some of the Library's most stunning items, whether they are recent or thousands of years old. These include Lincoln's handwritten first draft of the Gettysburg Address, fragments of the ancient Greek epic the "Iliad," cuneiform tablets that are among the oldest examples of writing, pre-Columbian artifacts, Rosa Parks' papers and watercolors by Diego Rivera. They'll begin to open in 2024.
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, African American History, Civil War, Collections, Exhibitions, Hispanic and Latino, Jay I. Kislak Collection, LCM, Library Work and Employees, New Visitors Experience, Thomas Jefferson Building
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Novelist, short-story writer and essayist George Saunders was awarded the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction Saturday evening in one of the final sessions of the 2023 National Book Festival, conferring a lifetime honor on a versatile writer whose most famous book cast one of Washington's most famous residents in a surreal light. Saunders' 2017 novel "Lincoln in the Bardo" took a fantastical look at the visit President Abraham Lincoln paid to his young son's tomb in a Georgetown cemetery one night in 1862.
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Events, Gazette, Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, Library Work and Employees, National Book Festival, Washington DC, Writers
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Rebecca Pomeroy, a Civil War nurse, was assigned to the White House in 1862 to help the grieving Lincoln family deal with the loss of their 11-year-old son, Willie, to typhoid fever. The story of her relationship with the Lincoln family is revealed in a collection of her papers, photographs are artifacts that are now preserved at the Library as part of the Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs.
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, LCM, Researcher Stories, Washington DC, Women's History