The following is a guest post by Martha H. Kennedy, Curator of Popular & Applied Graphic Arts, Prints and Photographs Division. The recently opened exhibition “Drawn to Purpose” features more than 30 works by North American women illustrators and cartoonists, spans the late 1800s to the present and includes Golden Age illustration, early comics, magazine …
The following is an interview with Woody Woodis, Senior Cataloger in the Prints and Photographs Division, about discovering and cataloging a woven “print” memorializing Joseph-Marie Jacquard, inventor of the programmable Jacquard loom. Melissa: What can you tell us about this woven “print” depicting inventor-weaver Joseph-Marie Jacquard? Woody: During his lifetime Jacquard developed a loom attachment …
The calavera, or skull, is one of the most recognizable symbols of the Día de Muertos, or Day of the Dead, a Mexican celebration of the dead that has both Indigenous and Spanish Catholic roots. The Prints and Photographs Division holds a treasure-trove of prints by eminent Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada (1852-1913). Posada helped …