The following is an interview with researcher Kate Heard, Senior Curator of Prints at Royal Collection Trust. Melissa: Thank you for participating in this interview. We always enjoy having you in the Prints & Photographs Reading Room, and we’re delighted to have this opportunity. Could you start by describing where you work? Kate: I’m Senior …
No one relishes being made fun of, especially when celebrating a birthday. But Susan B. Anthony, who was born February 15, 1820, will perhaps not turn over in her grave if we acknowledge just how prominently she appeared in cartoons during the years she actively campaigned for and wrote about the history of women’s suffrage. …
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 …
The following is a guest post by Lara Szypszak, Reference Technician in the Prints & Photographs Division. One of my favorite feelings is the wave of excitement and anxiety that washes over me as I join the crowds at the starting line of a race. There is something so special about joining a group of willing …
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 …
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 Martha Kennedy, Curator of Popular and Applied Graphic Arts, Prints and Photographs Division. One of the great innovators in the world of comic art, Will Eisner forged a legendary, multi-faceted career that spanned the birth of the comic book through the rise of the graphic novel. The Library …
With the many new faces on Capitol Hill this month as the 114th Congress gets underway, it’s an apt time to revisit the faces and activities of members of Congress of yesteryear. A new guide, “Pictures of Congress: An Overview,” helps researchers do just that. Although the Prints & Photographs Division generally does not receive …
This New Year’s cartoon published in Life in January 1917 offers a commentary on what a difference fifty years can make. Whether you plan to celebrate quietly, as though it’s 1867 (left), or in a slightly more boisterous fashion, as though it’s 1917 (right), we hope you enjoy ringing in the New Year in your …