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 …
My initial impression of the jovial sailors pictured below was that a letter “d” must have been left out of the annotated title in the photograph’s upper left corner. This World War I era photo from the Bain News Service is one of more than 15,000 photographs (a hefty subset of the 40,000 available from …
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 …
The following is a guest post by Katherine Blood, Curator of Fine Prints, and Mari Nakahara, Curator of Architecture, Design, and Engineering, Prints & Photographs Division: As Washington’s beloved cherry trees are in full bloom, we are inspired to share an assortment of seasonal-themed images from the Library’s extensive holdings of Japanese woodblock prints. In Japanese …
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 …
The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was a landmark Civil Rights demonstration held on August 28, 1963 in Washington, DC. We have photographs in many collections that document this famous event. But the U.S. News & World Report Collection …
The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division. Since readers of this blog are fans of pictures, I’d like to introduce you today to the Flickr Commons, where you can enjoy intriguing images gathered together from many places. Since the Flickr Commons launched on January 16, 2008, more than 250,000 photographs …
The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division. The renowned editorial cartoon artist Herblock (1909-2001) was a vocal advocate for the environment throughout his long career. The new exhibition “Down to Earth” presents a fascinating look at toxic waste, air pollution, and land conservation by pairing Herblock’s hard hitting …
The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division When you look at a soldier’s portrait from the American Civil War, have you ever wondered what that particular person, or his regiment, experienced? For twenty of the Union and Confederate soldiers whose names survived with their photographs in the Liljenquist …