"We're really conscious of making sure that we have primary source material created by Native people."
Ayer Indigenous Studies Librarian Analú María López discusses the Newberry's efforts to expand our collection to reflect Native voices, perspectives, and knowledge systems. #IndigenousPeoplesDay
Look who has a new website ✨
We teamed up with Firebelly to reimagine and redesign our website.
Built for intuitive navigation, the new newberry.org more seamlessly connects you with our collections and services. The organization of the site and the design of individual pages serve the full range of Newberry users, from scholars, artists, and genealogists to teachers, students, and lifelong learners.
We believe our website is as open, accessible, and inviting as the Newberry itself. We hope you agree!
Visit: https://www.newberry.org
Happy #EarthDay 🌎
[Townsend’s Patent Folding Map, 1869. Map 6C G3170 1869 .T6]
You've heard of the card catalog. But have you heard of the Rudolph Continuous Indexer?
Newberry assistant librarian Alexander J. Rudolph unveiled his "continuous indexer" at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.
This product briefly competed with Melvil Dewey's card catalog for favor among libraries. The problem? Only one person could use the continuous indexer at a time.
Read more about the Rudolph Continuous Indexer in our recent blog post: https://www.newberry.org/there-was-card-catalog-there-was-rudolph-continuous-indexer
#LibraryHistory #LibraryTechnology #CardCatalog
Postcards: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Social Network
Author Lydia Pyne and Newberry Curator of Americana Will Hansen explore postcards as artifacts at the intersection of history, science, technology, art, and culture.
Lydia Pyne, a visiting researcher at the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author of "Postcards: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Social Network."
Only the Clothes on Her Back
A conversation Laura Edwards and Margaret Storey, about what dresses, bedlinens, waistcoats, pantaloons, shoes, and kerchiefs can tell us about the legal status of the least powerful members of 19th-century American society.
In her new book, "Only the Clothes on Her Back: Clothing and the Hidden History of Power in the Nineteenth-Century United States," eminent historian Laura Edwards demonstrates how these textiles tell a revealing story of ordinary people, illuminating how they made use of their material goods’ economic and legal value in the period between the Revolution and the Civil War.
Wars of Independence and Revolution in the Americas, 1775-1825
In this installment of the Colonial History Lecture Series, historian Eric Hinderaker delves into the resistance movements, international warfare, imperial crises, and struggles for independence that transformed the Western Hemisphere from 1775-1825.
Hinderaker highlights how these complex stories—which are often told in isolation—are in fact united by important continuities and connections.
Opening February 25: “Crossings: Mapping American Journeys" invites you to take four historic routes across the United States. Traveling through the exhibition, you'll see how centuries of movement––from the Lewis and Clark expedition to the American road trip––have forged deep relationships between people and places that survive to this day.
Maps, guidebooks, travelogues, postcards, and more from the Newberry collection recreate travelers’ experiences along the northern and southern borders of the US, across the continent’s interior, and up and down the Mississippi River.
These cross-country paths have been in use for centuries whether by water, railroad, car, or airplane. And they’ve remained remarkably consistent despite changes in transportation, commerce, and the people who’ve used them.
As always, entry into the Newberry galleries is FREE AND OPEN TO ALL.
#maps #exhibitions #history #ushistory #AmericanHistory #travel #migration #tourism
A Simple Cotton Sack: A Conversation about African American Women, Trauma, and Resistance
In this installment of our "Conversations at the Newberry" series, scholars Tiya Miles and Megan Sweeney discuss how seemingly simple historical artifacts can reveal the ways that enslaved African American women exercised agency under horrifying constraints and found meaning and beauty amid pain.
Finally, a puzzle that’s our speed. 🧩
It’s #NationalPuzzleDay, and we’re celebrating in #Caturday fashion with this purr-fect block puzzle from the 1880s.
[Wing Oversize ZP 8831 .89]
To the original owner of this manuscript who craftily sewed up the wholes in the vellum: thank you.
[Cistercian missal, 12th/13th century. Case MS 7]
Stonehenge: one of *the* places to be on the Winter Solstice. If you're not in England, we got you. ☀️🌎🪨
Stonehenge has long been thought to function as an astronomical calendar, among many other things. The stones are positioned for astronomical alignment on the Winter and Summer solstices, and thousands gather at the monument on both days to celebrate. For folks living in the Northern hemisphere, the Winter Solstice marks the shortest day of the year.
Pictured here is an 18th-century drawing of Stonehenge from a book featuring Inigo Jones, an English architect and engineer who famously (and incorrectly) claimed that the monument was built by the Romans. This book is quite large, and many of the Stonehenge drawings fold out to provide the viewer with tremendous detail.
[The most notable antiquity of Great Britain, vulgarly called Stone-Heng, on Salisbury Plain, restored. 1725. Case oversize F 0245 .455]
A Nation of Descendants
From family trees written in early American bibles to birther conspiracy theories, genealogy has always mattered in the United States.
Historian Francesca Morgan, author of "A Nation of Descendants," speaks with Newberry Curator of Genealogy Matt Rutherford about the long-standing American fascination with genealogy and family lineage.
Girdle books: for readers on the go. And fashion icons.
[Book of hours, use of Rome. ca. 1450. Case MS 38]
Meet the Author: Louise Erdrich
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Louise Erdrich speaks with Newberry Library Fellow Kelly Wisecup.
Chicago and Civil Rights in the 1960s
Historians Kevin Boyle and Clayborne Carson look back on Martin Luther King Jr.'s Chicago Freedom Movement and the resistance he faced in the city.
"Chicago Avant-Garde" - Video Tour
Step inside the Newberry's galleries to learn about the five groundbreaking women artists at the center of "Chicago Avant-Garde":
Painter Gertrude Abercrombie, poet Gwendolyn Brooks, curator Katharine Kuh, and dancers Katherine Dunham and Ruth Page.
All five subverted the social conventions of their era in subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle ways. In the process, they created art that was ahead of its time and that, over the years, has stood the test of time.
Voiceover narration by Liesl Olson, curator of "Chicago Avant-Garde."
Filmed and edited by Truth and Documentary.
Learn more about "Chicago Avant-Garde": https://www.newberry.org/chicago-avant-garde-exhibition
African American Composers and the Black Renaissance
Musicologist Samantha Ege discusses Margaret Bonds, Florence Price, and William Grant Still, three African American classical composers whose work is achieving renewed interest and recognition.
Don't forget to turn your clocks back tonight. ⏮⏰
["New and curious geographical clock," in "A view of the earth...,” 1766. Case folio G121 .T7 1766] #clocks #clock #turnbacktheclock #fallback #volvelle #speccolls
Extinguishing the Myths of the Great Chicago Fire
We’re extinguishing myths of the Great Chicago Fire with four experts on the history of Chicago: historians Carl Smith and Adam Green; Chicago History Museum Assistant Curator Julius Jones; and Newberry Director of Chicago Studies Liesl Olson.
With a few flap flips, Death comes for the greedy fat cat--whose wealth can't save him from illness and oblivion. 💀
Death/the narrator addresses the victim in verse on the final flap of this little pamphlet:
"O Man! now see, thou art but dust: Thy Gold and Silver is but Rust."
[Metamorphosis, or, A transformation of pictures: with poetical explanations for the amusement of young persons. Benjamin Sands. 1853. Wing ZP 883 .O76] #halloween #skeleton #mementomori #morality #pedagogical #lessons #reading #childrensliterature
Storytelling, Climate Justice, and Self-Determined Indigenous Futures
Storytelling, Climate Justice, and Self-Determined Indigenous Futures
Fuller Award Celebration: Reginald Gibbons
Reginald Gibbons receives the Fuller Award from the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.
The Fuller Award recognizes Chicago authors who have made an outstanding lifetime contribution to literature. The award was inspired by Henry Blake Fuller, one of Chicago’s earliest novelists and author of The Cliff-Dwellers and With the Procession. Both novels use the rapidly developing city of Chicago as their setting and are considered by many to be the earliest examples of American realism.
This year’s award recipient is poet Reginald Gibbons, whose prolific writing career has included publication of ten full-length poetry collections; a short story collection and a novel; numerous essays, reviews, columns, and translations; and, as editor, a myriad of anthologies.
His work is widely anthologized and has earned many prestigious literary honors, including the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Carl Sandburg Prize, and the Folger Shakespeare Library’s 2004 O. B. Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize. Gibbons will become the tenth Chicago author to receive the Fuller Award for his lifetime achievements as an author, scholar, teacher, and institution builder.
Women and the Revolutionary Age
Throughout the Western Hemisphere in the Age of Revolutions, women played essential roles in independence movements.
In this virtual program, a panel of experts share stories of remarkable women who actively engaged in intellectual debate, community and political organizing, legal challenges, and even military conflict.
Speakers: Zara Anishanslin, Sarah C. Chambers, and Patricia Galeana Herrera.
Hidden fore-edge paintings: yay or neigh? 🐎
[Montague, or, Is this religion? Charles Tayler. London. 1833. Case PR5548.T57 M6 1833] #foreedges #foreedgepaintings #foreedgefriday #paintings #bookarts #illustrations
Chasing the White Whale: Ray Bradbury’s Screenplay for John Huston’s Moby-Dick
Ray Bradbury is best known for fantasy and science fiction novels like Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and The Illustrated Man. Yet the writer also worked in many other forms, including poetry, non-fiction, children’s literature, and plays. In 1953, the renowned film director John Huston asked Bradbury to undertake the epic task of transforming Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick into a movie script—even though, as Bradbury confessed, he’d never “been able to read the damn thing.”
In this program, coinciding with the American Writers Museum’s new exhibition Ray Bradbury: Inextinguishable, scholars Robin Anne Reid and Jaime Campomar talk with the Newberry’s Will Hansen about Bradbury’s Moby-Dick script, the author’s place in the history of literature, and the connections between his work and the writings of Herman Melville.
This program is cosponsored by the American Writers Museum.
You never know what a little fore-edging through the stacks will turn up. #ForeEdgeFriday
[Fore-edge painting from "The Bouquet: a collection of tales, essays, and poems." London, ca. 1830. Case Y 144 .112] #foreedges #paintings #bookarts #illustrations
We sleep, we dream. 😴✨
One of only 15 copies, this tunnel book was created by Chicago-based book and paper artist Teresa Pankratz, who uses printmaking, bookbinding, sculpture, writing, and performance to tell stories about desire, loss, and transformation.
Inspired by the experience of sleep and dreaming, the book was created using seven original, hand-drawn lithographs and presents a "surrealistic visual portal 'fast-forwarding' the viewer through a year of dreaming toward a vision of mortality’s brink."
[Into the night. Teresa Pankratz. Chicago. 2016. Wing ZPP 2083 .T4783] #tunnelbooks #artistbooks #sleep #dreams #bookarts
Our Herman Melville collection comprises thousands of editions, translations, and adaptations--including this 🐳 of a pop-up book created by Sam Ita in 2007. Perhaps the largest collection of materials related to Melville (born #onthisday in 1819), our holdings also include books on whaling, books Melville used as source material, books that Melville owned, and Melville titles in various formats--like comic books, Braille, emoji, etc.
[Moby Dick, A Pop-Up Book. Melville folio PS2384 .M62 2007] #melville #hermanmelville #mobydick #literature #popupbooks
![Sled Zeppelin 🎄 🎈[Bryan L. Bossier collection of postcards, 1890s-1920s]Download image: https://collections.newberry.org...](https://img5.gluseum.com/152/783/208840221527830.jpg)
