The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division. When the elegant Hispanic Reading Room opened in October 1939, its closest neighbor at the Library of Congress was the Division of Fine Arts, known today as the Prints & Photographs Division. Over the last 75 years, we have enjoyed collaborating …
The following is a guest post by Verna Curtis, Curator of Photography, Prints and Photographs Division. Imagine how people understood photographs in 1900, when photography had been around for just over sixty years. Were photographs factual documents? Could they be a new form of artistic expression? Those producing photographic prints knew, but the public was …
This year’s anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has offered occasion to pause and reflect on the injustices the legislation was meant to address, the actions that called attention to those injustices, and the continued struggle to see legislative ideals become everyday reality. Last week we added a new “album” to the Library …