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Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
The anniversary of Earth Day this past weekend (coupled with some gorgeous spring days!) has me thinking about being outdoors more. From there my mind jumps to ideal places to explore, bringing national parks to the surface in my daydreams. Finally, the thought of national parks reminds me that Prints & Photographs has been adding …
Posted in: Photographs
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
Nearly half a million people lived in San Francisco, California on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The majority of them were fast asleep when the world began to shake apart. At 5:12 a.m. the city was struck by a massive earthquake, one which modern science estimates at anywhere from 7.8 to 8.2 on the Richter scale. …
Posted in: News & Events, Photographs
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
Who are the two little French boys that were dropped, almost naked, from the deck of the sinking Titanic into the arms of survivors in a lifeboat? From which place in France did they come and to which place in the new world were they bound? There is not one iota of information to be …
Posted in: News & Events, Photographs
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division. When house and garden historian Sam Watters first learned about Frances B. Johnston’s color garden photos from the early 1900s, he e-mailed us right away. An appointment was soon arranged to show him these fascinating but uncataloged “magic lantern slides.” We …
Posted in: News & Events, Photographs, Researcher Stories
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
When each heart gives out its best, Then the talk is full of zest: Light your fire and never fear, Life was made for love and cheer. (Henry Van Dyke, “Inscriptions for a Friend’s House”) When American illustrator Elizabeth Shippen Green created a watercolor painting to accompany Henry Van Dyke’s “Inscriptions for a Friend’s House,” …
Posted in: Drawings
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
As I write this post on March 29th, Washington’s cherry trees have already bloomed . . . and gone . . . and another rite of spring has passed as well: baseball’s spring training! The 2012 Major League Baseball season commenced yesterday in Tokyo as the Seattle Mariners defeated the Oakland Athletics (who got their …
Posted in: Photographs
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
We are still savoring the comments visitors to the National Book Festival offered last fall while viewing sample photographs from our collections. This visitor’s comments seem particularly apt as we continue to celebrate Women’s History Month. The commenter recognized the well-known subject of the photograph, educator and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune. Bethune served …
Posted in: African American History, News & Events, Photographs
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
One hundred years ago, the city of Tokyo sent Washington, D.C. a gift of friendship that continues to bloom today. Quite literally, in fact! Three thousand flowering cherry trees arrived in D.C. in 1912, and started what has become an annual spring tradition for residents of the D.C. area and thousands of tourists: going to …
Posted in: News & Events, Photographs, Prints
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
Start with a solid upbringing as the daughter of an artist father in late 19th-century Kansas; add a college education at a time when women were generally not college-bound; combine a heaping helping of five years in turn-of-the-century New York City with a dash of women’s rights. Then, fold in recovery in a Colorado sanitorium …
Posted in: Photographs, Women's History