Pre-modern artists used almost anything to create vibrant colors for art and fabrics: bug guts, squid bones, shredded wood, hardened tree sap, walnut rinds, lye, tannic acid, iron sulfate, wine and, um, urine. Today, the Library’s Preservation Research and Testing Division is now recreating those colors the old-fashioned way as part of a newly developing field of preservation science.
Diego Rivera paintings of the Mayan creation myth, “Popol Vuh,” are being physically analyzed by Library curators and scientists to understand the artist’s materials and techniques.
Some of the Library’s rare photographs of a newly restored Notre-Dame Cathedral in the 1860s.
Paulette Hasier, chief of the LIbrary’s Geography and Map Division, is the ninth person and first woman to head the division since its creation in 1897. She talks about that work here.
You never know who will turn up at your favorite national library, and the other day it was none other than country music legend Marty Stuart, who dropped by to visit with Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. The Mississippi native started performing professionally as a pre-teen, and grew into a singer, songwriter and multi-threat […]
The cast of “Queer Eye” discuss LGBTQ+ youth issues during a conversation wtih moderator Jonathan Capehart, April 3, 2019
Giselle Aviles, the 2019 Archaeological Research Associate in the Geography and Map Division, is exploring the treasures of the Jay I. Kislak Collection of the History and Archaeology of the Early Americas.
Taking to the Constitution Hall stage during the Gershwin Prize concert the evening of March 13, co-honoree Gloria Estefan and her daughter, Emily, sang a duet of “Embraceable You,” one of the Gershwin brothers’ standards, near the show’s end. The concert was taped for broadcast on PBS on May 3, 2019.
The following guest post is by Jeff Shotts, executive editor at Graywolf Press, publisher in association with the Library of Congress of the anthology “American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time” by U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith. Regular, daily poetry programming on the airwaves has not only been saved, it’s been revitalized. American Public […]
Karl Schadow began his lifelong love affair with radio drama in the 1970s when, as a youth in Schenectady, New York, he became a fan of “CBS Radio Mystery Theater.” The program was a surprise hit between 1974 and 1982, appealing to an audience that included many who remembered radio drama fondly as a form […]