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Posted by: Kristi Finefield
One month ago, a blog post in Picture This featured photos of New York’s Hell Gate Bridge, marking the centennial of its dedication. Today, I turn my attention to prints and drawings of the Hell Gate in our holdings. These drawings and etchings enable us to look at the bridge through an artist’s eyes. American …
Posted by: Julie Stoner
While browsing through the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, the title of this photograph made me stop and take a closer look. Upon closer scrutiny, I realized that attached to the rope beneath the kite was a person! With my curiosity piqued, I decided to find out more about this man-flying contraption. An avid kite …
Posted in: Drawings, Photographs, Series: Double Take
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
Along with my picture-loving colleagues, I’d like to nominate one of our favorite depictions of Minerva, Roman goddess of wisdom, as an appropriate symbol with which to mark the arrival of the new Librarian of Congress, Dr. Carla Hayden. This mosaic of a studious Minerva greets visitors, researchers and staff in an area overlooking the …
Posted in: Architecture, Drawings, Photographs
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
As summer gets into full swing, I’m recalling how much I enjoyed my public library’s summer reading club challenges when my children were younger (shout-out to all the public libraries that run summer reading clubs for children and adults!). One thing I loved about the challenge was the “randomizer” techniques library staff designed to inspire …
Posted in: Drawings, Photographs, Prints
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
The following is a guest post by Katherine Blood, Curator of Fine Prints, who co-curated the exhibition with Sara Duke, Curator of Popular and Applied Graphic Arts: When exhorted by Charles Dana Gibson to “draw ‘til it hurts!” hundreds of his fellow artists contributed over 1,400 designs, including some 700 posters, to promote the country’s …
Posted in: Cartoons, Drawings, News & Events, Photographs, Posters
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
The following is a guest post by Martha H. Kennedy, Curator of Popular & Applied Graphic Arts, Prints and Photographs Division. Travel by train, or what some called the “Iron horse,” dominated other forms of transport in America for nearly fifty years. During this “golden age” of railroads that began in 1865, public fascination with …
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
The January 1848 chance discovery of gold in northern California rapidly altered the course of America. On this day, August 19, in 1848, word finally reached the East Coast, when the New York Herald published a report of the discovery. By 1849, the rush was on in earnest, leading to the well-known term for gold …
Posted in: Drawings, Photographs
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
Coffin that passes through lanes and streets, Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land, With the pomp of the inloop’d flags with the cities draped in black, . . . . With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour’d around the coffin, The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs–where amid …
Posted in: Drawings, News & Events, Photographs
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
In the U.S., editorial cartoonists come in all stripes of the multi-hued American political spectrum. So, it’s not surprising that the points of view expressed in their visual commentary are as varied as their cartooning styles. A recently-opened Library of Congress exhibition, Pointing Their Pens: Herblock and Fellow Cartoonists Confront the Issues, as described in its Overview “offers viewers an …
Posted in: Cartoons, Drawings, News & Events