From my earliest days of coloring school worksheets, cornucopias are the symbol I associate with the harvest season and the Thanksgiving holiday many Americans will be celebrating this week. Also known as the “horn of plenty,” the typical representation features vegetables and fruits spilling forth in abundance. In searching the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, …
The following is a guest post by Beverly Brannan, Curator of Photography, Prints and Photographs Division. When I read For Whom the Bell Tolls in my junior year of high school, it was just the most romantic thing I had ever come across, and I fell in love with the thought of fighting for one’s …
Recently, photo historian Mary Jane Appel came across an interesting connection within our collections. She graciously agreed to share findings from her research in the guest post below. On a sunny August day in 1938, Russell Lee snapped this photo of Roy Stryker on a downtown city street. At the time, Stryker directed a documentary …
What do bookplates tell us about book owners for whom they were designed? The small labels (also known as “ex libris”) were intended to be pasted inside an individual’s books to connect the book with its owner. But what other connections regarding the owner’s personal traits or interests might they reveal? Recently, we created an …