This article also appears in the March-April issue of the Library of Congress Magazine. The Thomas Jefferson Building has awed visitors ever since it opened its doors in 1897. The grand building is more than a marvel of art and architecture, though; it’s also a monument to function and safety — fire safety in particular. …
A major new Library exhibition, “The Two Georges: Parallel Lives in an Age of Revolution,” uses original documents such as letters, diaries, maps, newspapers and political cartoons to shed light on striking likenesses between men long supposed to be polar opposites -- George Washington and King George III. The two opposed one another during the Revolutionary War, but actually shared many personal and leadership traits. The exhibit, a joint project between the Library of Congress and the Royal Archives, runs at the Library through next March. It is also online via the Library's website and in a companion book.
Maya Freelon’s immersive exhibition “Whippersnappers: Recapturing, Reviewing, and Reimagining the Lives of Enslaved Children in the United States” at Historic Stagville in Durham, North Carolina, drew on Library materials to a new lens on the lives of enslaved children at a former plantation.
The Arthur Singleton and Jessie Lockett collections are the Veterans History Project’s first from African American veterans of World War I, and their letters, journals and photographs offer glimpses into the adversity and resilience that characterize the African American experience of that war. They are small time capsules into another era of American life.
—This is a guest post by Adam M. Silvia, a curator in the Prints and Photographs Division. As a photojournalist, Taro Yamasaki photographed at-risk children in the United States and around the world — Nicaragua, Bosnia, Rwanda, the Middle East. The Prints and Photographs Division recently acquired three collections that document such work by the …
When the Library of Congress began in 1800, it had 152 works in 740 volumes. Also, there were three maps. Today, as its 225th birthday arrives, the Library has amassed more than 181 million items from around the world, forming what is widely considered to be the greatest collection of knowledge ever assembled. How did it happen? This story walks readers through the Library's fascinating history.
From saplings to centenarians, the fabled cherry blossom trees of Washington, D.C., entice more than 1.5 million visitors to the capital each spring. The initial 1912 gift of 3,020 cherry trees from the city of Tokyo to Washington launched such treasured and enduring traditions as the National Cherry Blossom Festival, which officially began in 1927. We look at some of the marvelous festival posters that have advertised and celebrated the festival.
Jessica Fries-Gaither, an elementary school science teacher from Columbus, Ohio, is serving as an Albert Einstein distinguished educator fellow at the Library this year. We caught up with her to ask her about her work and some favorite projects.
Recreating Thomas Jefferson's personal library, which became the DNA of the Library of Congress, has been a fascination for antiquarians since an 1851 fire burned about two thirds of his original books. But for 27 years, one of the Library’s most ardent projects has been to examine its own stacks, other libraries, rare book dealers and antiquarians from multiple countries to replace the burned and missing volumes with exact copies — the same edition, publisher and so on — to replicate the world view that led the author of the Declaration of Independence to pen such a world-changing set of ideas. That effort is now getting as close to complete as it is ever likely to get.
