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Posted by: Kristi Finefield
The following is a guest post by Jan Grenci, Reference Specialist for Posters in the Prints and Photographs Division – as well as a long-suffering Pittsburgh Pirates fan. For almost as long as the game has been played, baseball imagery has been used to advertise a wide variety of products. These items from the Prints …
Posted by: Melissa Lindberg
The Prints and Photographs Division’s Popular Graphic Art (PGA) Collection is a rich resource for nineteenth-century portraits, views of cities and landscapes, and interpretations of historical events. It is also a great source of pictures that were designed to serve educational purposes and reflect particular values and tastes. I came across several PGA prints that …
Posted in: Prints
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
Spring in Washington, D.C., is marked by changing weather, gardens coming back to life and of course, cherry blossoms. The famous cherry blossom trees surrounding the Tidal Basin and Jefferson Memorial, a gift from Japan more than a century ago, are nearing peak bloom which also means peak volume of visitors to view them! To …
Posted in: Drawings, News & Events, Photographs, Prints
Posted by: Melissa Lindberg
The Prints and Photographs Division’s collections include images that evoke every possible emotion. This year’s International Day of Happiness – designated by the United Nations to recognize that “the pursuit of happiness is a fundamental human goal” and to help more people meet that goal – felt like a fitting time to take an informal …
Posted in: Photographs, Posters, Prints
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
The following is a guest post by Jan Grenci, Reference Specialist for Posters, Prints and Photographs Division. When you take a vacation, do you buy souvenirs to remember the sights you see? Over the past few months, several reference staff members and I worked on a project to improve the access and housing of the …
Posted in: Drawings, Photographs, Prints
Posted by: Melissa Lindberg
The first time I browsed through the Prints and Photographs Reading Room Graphics File, I came across a reference copy of a striking triptych of Japanese woodblock prints depicting a crowd of spectators in Western dress observing a balloon ascension. When I looked the image up in the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog and saw digitized …
Posted in: Prints, Series: Caught Our Eyes
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
In the first entry in this occasional series, Profiling Portraits, we examined occupational portraits, a type of portrait designed to tell the viewer a specific fact about the sitter: their occupation. We will now look at another type of portrait, one which is very popular today, thanks to the advent of smartphones with cameras: self-portraits, …
Posted in: Drawings, Photographs, Portraits, Prints, Series: Profiling Portraits
Posted by: Melissa Lindberg
The following is an interview with Kit Arrington, Digital Library Specialist in the Prints and Photographs Division, about a project to scan the entire Popular Graphic Arts collection, for which she served as project manager. About a month ago I had a conversation with Senior Cataloger Woody Woodis about his work on the same project. …
Posted in: Prints, Series: Behind the Scenes
Posted by: Melissa Lindberg
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 …
Posted in: Prints