The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division. Some 250,000 people, both white and black, crowded onto the National Mall on August 28, 1963, to demand civil rights for African Americans. It was the largest demonstration the city had seen—The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The concluding …
Where in the Prints & Photographs Reading Room can you find file cabinets full of photographs of everything from “Animals in Human Situations” to “Zoological Gardens,” from “Airplanes” to “Yachts and Yachting,” and from “Avalanches” to “Winter Scenes”? The Specific Subjects File (SSF). These 20,000 photographs of objects, events, activities, and structures, arranged by topical headings, now enjoy expanded …
Strange as it may appear, whatever may be a colored man’s natural capacity and literary attainments, I believe that, as soon as he leaves the academic halls to mingle in the only society he can find in the United States, unless he be a minister or lecturer, he must and will retrograde. –Augustus Washington, letter …
As a sixth grader, I didn’t give much thought to the man whose portrait hung in the front hall of my school. In my memory, he’s holding peanuts in his hand, looking calm as I scurried by on my way to class. Of course, I knew he was George Washington Carver. The brass plaque on …
The following is a guest post by Katherine Blood, Curator of Fine Prints. Picking a favorite Rembrandt might sound about as reasonable as choosing a favorite star or a single book to take to a desert island. But I do have a favorite–Rembrandt’s 1648 etching St. Jerome beside a Pollard Willow. St. Jerome (ca. 342-420) has …
