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Posted by: Neely Tucker
Maria Sibylla Merian, a 17th-century natural scientist, artist and engraver, gained lasting fame for her pioneering scientific illustration techniques, enabling her to bring a soft, delicate touch to her brilliantly shaded work.
Posted in: LCM, Library Work and Employees, Preservation, Preservation and Conservation, Researcher Stories, Science
Posted by: Neely Tucker
The papers of Jonathan Larson and Leonard Bernstein are among many of the Library's musical holdings that have been used extensively by composers, actors and musicians in producing works on Broadway and in Hollywood. Lin-Manuel Miranda drew on Larson's papers for his production of "tick...tick...BOOM!" and the creative team behind the Bernstein documentary "Bernstein's Wall" and the feature film "Maestro" used Library collections for their works.
Posted in: Alexander Hamilton, LCM, Library Work and Employees, Music, Performing Arts, Researcher Stories, Theater
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Journalist, author and historian Clay Risen spent six years working on “Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism and the Making of Modern America,” a narrative history of the anti-Communist panic that consumed the country in the decade after World War II. He'll be discussing the book at the National Book Festival on Sept. 6, but we caught up with him for a conversation beforehand.
Posted in: Civil Rights, Cold War, Congress, National Book Festival, Researcher Stories, Washington DC, World War II, Writers
Posted by: Neely Tucker
We're talking today with David Baron, author of “The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America,” who will be at this year’s National Book Festival on Sept. 6. It’s about the public fascination between 1890-1910 with what looked to be the very real possibility of life of Mars. The main cultural artifact of this belief might be H.G. Wells’ 1898 novel, “The War of the Worlds,” which imagined hostile Martians invading Earth in spectacular fashion. But as Baron writes, most of the views were utopian, picturing Martians as a far advanced, heroic people.
Posted in: Gilded Age, Kluge Center, Library Work and Employees, National Book Festival, Researcher Stories, Science, Technology
Posted by: Neely Tucker
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.
Posted in: LCM, Library Work and Employees, Native Americans, Prints and Photographs Division, Researcher Stories, Womens History
Posted by: Neely Tucker
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.
Posted in: African American History, LCM, Library Work and Employees, Prints and Photographs Division, Researcher Stories
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Because George Washington and King George III were on opposite sides of America’s war of independence from Britain, we have learned to think of them as opposites. Our research for an upcoming Library of Congress exhibition, “The Two Georges: Parallel Lives in an Age of Revolution,” however, has turned up something much more interesting: They were surprisingly alike in temperament, interests and, despite the obvious differences in their lives and experiences.
Posted in: American Revolution, Exhibitions, George Washington, LCM, Manuscripts, Researcher Stories, U.S. Presidents, Washington DC
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Richard Morris Hunt was perhaps the most influential American architect of the late 19th century. He went to Paris to study, then returned to spread the Beaux-Arts gospel and give America architecture that matched its ambitions. He designed castles that defined the Gilded Age, such as Breakers and Marble House in Rhode Island, and the Biltmore in North Carolina. The Library preserves his papers and has just published "The Gilded Life of Richard Morris Hunt" in association with Giles Ltd.
Posted in: Architecture, LCM, Library Work and Employees, Prints and Photographs Division, Publishing Office, Researcher Stories
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Bestselling author Louis Bayard has written nine historical novels over the past two decades and has researched them all at the Library, poring over maps, sorting through personal love letters, consulting societal details of the lost worlds that he brings to life. His latest novel, “The Wildes,” a fictionalized account of Oscar Wilde and his …
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, Capitol Hill, LGBTQ, Libraries, Manuscripts, Researcher Stories, Writers