The following is a guest post by Martha H. Kennedy, Curator of Popular & Applied Graphic Arts, Prints and Photographs Division. The vibrant colors and massive watermelon in this hand-colored lithograph first caught my eye. Tucked around, beside, and below the melon are rosy apples, golden pears, peaches, plums, blackberries, a cantaloupe, and dark and …
Clearly the ladies below are determined to get in their game of Mah-Jongg! A photographer for the National Photo Company snapped a photo of this inventive method of taking a game on the go while still enjoying a cooling dip in the water: A recent blog post about board games focused on the games themselves, …
George Washington delivered the country’s first inaugural address 225 years ago on April 30th, 1789. Just as the legends pertaining to Washington have grown and persisted since his lifetime, so has the iconography. Throughout the years, artists have provided their own conceptions of the first presidential inauguration, as in this print published in 1849, which …
Like many kids – and lots of adults – I love playing board games. I’ve spent many an hour rolling dice and moving around a board in a race against my opponents to either the finish line or to some other goal, like accumulating the most wealth or properties. But I have not yet tried …
As I made my way to work in temperatures hovering near zero degrees Fahrenheit, it was hard to think of anything except staying warm. Millions of Americans were bundled up like me, experiencing this week’s shock of unusual Arctic cold. Once I thawed out and could start to think of other things, I recalled this …
Tomorrow many households in the U.S. will be celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday. Holidays–particularly food-centered ones–conjure up many personal associations. They also tend to inspire evocative pictures. Turkey in many shapes and forms predominate in the array of images that turn up when you search the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog for “Thanksgiving.” But my family …
The gentleman with the long pipe and the colorful garments (right) points to a document. What is it? Take a closer look (below). It does not appear to be a letter or excerpt from a text. Some letters are recognizable as part of the Roman alphabet: I can see an A, an H, a J, …
If every collection in the Prints and Photographs Division is an apple tree, full of tantalizing visual treats, then all of our holdings combined make for a vast orchard, ripe with possibility. My extended food metaphor is no accident, as we are launching a new monthly series here at Picture This entitled Feast Your Eyes. …
As we near Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday on Oct. 27th, we have ongoing cause for celebration. A project to broaden access to images relating to Roosevelt’s life and times is putting new digital images and descriptions online each week. Last year, the project brought us illustrations from Puck magazine, including this visual jab at Roosevelt’s positive …