With the opening of the new Library of Congress Experience in April 2008, the Library entered a new era of showcasing its unparalleled collections. The use of interactive digital technology makes it possible for the Library to interpret and make accessible its exhibitions to onsite visitors and in libraries, homes and classrooms around the globe on its
Web site at www.loc.gov/exhibits/ and myLOC.gov. This article looks back at more than a century of Library of Congress exhibitions.
When the Library of Congress opened its doors on Nov. 1, 1897—nearly a century after being housed in the U.S. Capitol Building—its grand Italian Renaissance facade and elaborately decorated interior spaces set it apart from any other public structure in the United States in existence at that time. Immediately upon its opening, the Congressional Library (as it was originally called) met with overwhelming approval from both Congress and the American public.
The Southwest Gallery of the Thomas Jefferson Building has played host to exhibitions from as early as 1901 (right, a display of prints) to the present, with the new “Creating the United States” exhibition, left. - Levin C. Handy (right)
The Library occasionally displayed items from its collections prior to 1897. However, from the turn of the 20th century through the new millennium, the Thomas Jefferson Building—as it would later be named—has provided a beautiful venue for exhibiting the Library’s treasures.
A Home of Its Own
Eager to develop the Library’s national reputation, Librarian of Congress Ainsworth Rand Spofford, who held the position 1864-1897, wished to begin an exhibitions program that would display the Library’s treasures, including items acquired through copyright deposit. (Through an Act of Congress, the U.S. Copyright Office was placed in the Library of Congress in 1870, during Spofford’s tenure.)
Exhibitions were part of a preliminary plan for the Congressional Library building, which Spofford presented to Congress in 1895. He designated second-floor gallery space for “the arrangement and display” of the Library’s graphic arts collections, pointing out that after being “so long buried from view,” the collections would present “to art-students and to the general public … a most instructive illustration of the progress of the arts of design.”
Adjoining the art gallery would be rooms “well-adapted for an extensive and very instructive display of specimens of early-printed books, choice and illuminated manuscripts, rare Americana, interesting autographs, and illustrated works.” Exhibited in glass cases, these items would “constitute a museum of the arts of typography, illustration, etc., of much interest and value.”
In his revised plan for the new building, which was submitted to Congress on Jan. 18, 1897, Spofford was more specific regarding the special rooms and facilities needed in the new building. He announced his plans for several separate exhibition spaces, including extensive “halls” for the “gallery of art” and the display of maps and charts. In addition, there were to be separate rooms to exhibit early printed books, early Americana, early specimens of engraving and the progress of book design and “specimens of book binding, ancient and modern.”
When he became Librarian of Congress on July 1, 1897, John Russell Young accepted Spofford’s recommendations calling for much of the new building’s commodious second floor to be devoted to the exhibit halls and rooms. By June 1900, the Library’s Prints Division had mounted five exhibitions of European prints and one featuring photographs and etchings by American artists.
The 20th Century
Herbert Putnam, who served as Librarian of Congress from 1899 to 1939, initiated a number of major exhibitions during his tenure as Librarian of Congress. In 1904, the Library presented a major display as part of the U.S. Government pavilion at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. Emphasizing the “National Library … as a function of our Government,” Putnam proudly pointed out that the exhibit marked “the first direct participation of the Library in any of the great international expositions.”
Left, prints on display in the Library’s Jefferson Building, ca. 1910. Right, the Geography and Map Division developed this 1935 display of maps drawn by Gen. George Washington during the Revolutionary War.
Putnam also initiated the transfer of the original copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States from the Department of State to the Library in 1921. The documents, encased in a specially designed “shrine,” went on public display in the Library’s Great Hall in 1924. They remained in the Library’s custody until 1952, when they were transferred to the National Archives.
As Librarian of Congress from 1939 until 1944, Archibald MacLeish, like his predecessors, viewed exhibitions as an important means of enlarging knowledge about the Library and its collections. Envisioning a new public role for the institution, he included exhibitions as an important part of the plan.
On Dec. 18-21, 1940, the Library celebrated the 75th anniversary of the 13th amendment, which officially ended slavery in the United States, with a music festival and a series of exhibits. Foreseeing the need for a more formal structure for Library displays in the wake of the impending bicentennial of Thomas Jefferson’s birth in 1743, MacLeish established an Exhibits Office and a Committee on Exhibits in 1942. Herbert J. Sanborn headed the Exhibits Office between 1942 and 1976.
An exhibition marking the bicentennial of Jefferson’s birth opened at the Library on April 12, 1943. In the 1943 “Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress,” MacLeish called the Jefferson Bicentennial Exhibits program “perhaps the most ambitious exhibit ever mounted” at the Library. It consisted of nine groups of materials selected with reference to Jefferson’s various interests, displayed throughout the Library’s two buildings. (The Annex Building, later named the John Adams Building, opened in 1939.)
The Library opened its first national print exhibition in 1943, a juried show supported by the Library’s Joseph Pennell Fund that was displayed annually through 1976. The prize-winning prints were added to the Library’s collections.
MacLeish believed that much remained to be done regarding exhibitions and stated his hope that the Library would make every effort to pursue an exhibitions program “on a permanent basis.” When MacLeish’s chief assistant, Luther H. Evans (1945-1953), became Librarian of Congress in 1945, he began a series of exhibitions to honor significant anniversaries in the histories of U.S. states and territories. The first, which marked the centennial of Florida’s admission to the Union, was opened by Florida Senator Claude Pepper on March 3, 1945.
Through the years, the Library has developed catalogs for its exhibitions, starting, at far left, with the program for a 1950 display commemorating its 150-year history.
Accompanied by handsome catalogs, the Library’s 26 state and territorial exhibitions between 1945 and 1972 fulfilled Evans’s plan to illustrate how the Library’s collections could, on a state-by-state basis, help Americans “come to know what is ours, and what we may become.” Members of Congress were invited and frequently participated in the opening of exhibits about their respective states.
In his Annual Report to Congress for 1950, Evans enthusiastically stated that the Library’s exhibitions were attracting “unprecedented public interest.” The major reasons, he felt, were a growing “general recognition of the powers of visual presentation” and the Library’s “eagerness,” within certain limits, “to dedicate its resources to cooperation with institutions serving a common purpose.”
During Evans’s tenure, the Library began actively lending its items to outside exhibitions and, in return, hosted exhibitions from other institutions. Through the Department of State, Library of Congress exhibitions even traveled abroad.
According to Evans, “the most widely noticed exhibit ever produced under the auspices of the Library of Congress” was the display, from Oct. 23 to Nov. 6, 1949, of three ancient Hebrew scrolls. The “Dead Sea Scrolls,” as they came to be called, had been discovered several years earlier by a Bedouin shepherd in a cave in Qumran, Israel. (A subsequent exhibition, “Scrolls from the Dead Sea,” which opened at the Library in 1993, highlighted the scholarship in scroll research since the 1947 discovery of the ancient scrolls.)
Exhibitions were an important Library of Congress activity from 1950 through the administrations of Librarians Quincy L. Mumford (1954-1974) and Daniel J. Boorstin (1975-1987). Under Mumford’s direction, the Library commemorated the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth with an exhibition on view from Feb 12 through Dec. 31, 1959.
Boorstin encouraged the Library’s staff to develop imaginative exhibitions that would appeal to a wide public. Two notable and successful examples were “Fifty Years of Animation: Building a Better Mouse” (1978), and “The American Cowboy” (1983).
President and Mrs. Reagan led a list of distinguished guests who were present for the March 24, 1983, opening of “The American Cowboy.” The exhibition, which drew heavily on documentation gathered from the Library’s American Folklife Center, presented images of the American cowboy from origins in the migrant agricultural workers of the 19th century to the cowboy’s modern status as a mythical hero showcased in the movies. Funding of the exhibition from United Technologies Corporation marked the beginning of private support for many of the Library’s major exhibitions.
Exhibitions in the Digital Age
Since his appointment as the 13th Librarian of Congress in 1987, James H. Billington has implemented an ambitious program of major exhibitions, which has not only included international treasures from the Library’s collections and other institutions but uses digital technology to make those exhibition accessible globally. To reflect Billington’s wish for Library exhibitions to provide a broad, educational focus, in 1989 the Library changed the name of the Exhibits Office to the Interpretive Programs Office.
With support from the James Madison Council (the Library’s private-sector advisory group, founded in 1990) and other private-sector donors, the Library launched “Great Libraries and Written Traditions,” a series of cooperative exhibitions featuring treasures from institutions around the world. The first, “Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture,” marked the 1993 reopening of the renovated southeast second floor gallery in the Jefferson Building. The exhibition was accompanied by a book of essays and a catalog of items on display.
The second exhibition in the “Great Libraries” series was “Creating French Culture: Treasures from the Bibliothéque nationale de France,” which also featured a companion volume, published by Yale University Press. (These internationally focused exhibitions would lead to other global collaborative digital projects, which were, in turn, the seeds of the World Digital Library initiative that Billington proposed to UNESCO in 2005.)
In June 1993, the Library announced its initiation of “a new program of traveling exhibitions that will share the rich intellectual content of its collections with cultural institutions across the United States and extend the reach of its interpretive programs beyond the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.” That year alone, eight different exhibitions traveled. The successful outreach program continues today, bringing selected Library exhibitions to national and international venues and reaching millions of visitors in the U.S., Austria, Brazil, Britian, Israel and Japan.
In the early 1990s, the Library began making its exhibitions available online, beginning with “Revelations from the Russian Archives” in 1992. To date, approximately 80 Library exhibitions are accessible on the Library’s Web site.
When President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin visited the Library on Sept. 28, 1994, they toured the exhibition “In the Beginning Was the Word: The Russian Church and Native Alaskan Cultures.” They also took a “virtual” tour of the electronic version of the exhibition that would eventually be accessible on the Library’s Web site.
Public interest in Library of Congress exhibitions increased greatly in the mid-1990s as the decade-long renovation and restoration of the Thomas Jefferson Building neared completion, to coincide with the building’s centennial in 1997. That year saw the opening of “American Treasures of the Library of Congress,” a rotating exhibit drawn from the Library’s collections, made possible by support from the Xerox Corporation. Also that year, an exhibition titled “The Thomas Jefferson Building: Book Palace of the American People” opened in the Library’s Great Hall to mark the building’s centennial.
As part of the 1997 reopening of the Jefferson Building, specialized exhibition galleries and a Visitor’s Center for the general public were established in the building. New galleries were created to feature three different Library of Congress collections: the George and Ira Gershwin Room, highlighting the Gershwin Archives; the Caroline and Erwin Swann Memorial Exhibit Gallery for Caricature and Cartoon; and the Bob Hope Gallery of American Entertainment, which presents items from the Library’s Bob Hope Collection.
The George and Ira Gershwin Room opened to the public in March 1998 with the exhibition “Here to Stay: The Legacy of George and Ira Gershwin.” The display featured George’s piano and desk, Ira’s typing table and typewriter, a self-portrait oil painting of each and documents chronicling their careers. (The exhibition, which closed temporarily for construction of the Capitol Visitor Center passageway, will reopen in December 2008.)
In the decade since its opening, the Swann Gallery has allowed the Library to showcase its rich holdings of original drawings by generations of America’s best cartoonists and illustrators such as Arthur Szyk, Chic Young, Elizabeth Shippen Green, Jessie Willcox Smith, Anita Kunz, Al Hirschfeld and Herbert Block (Herblock). (Also closed for construction, the gallery will reopen in 2009.)
Drawing upon selections from the newly acquired Bob Hope Collection and additional material from the Library’s extensive resources relating to the history of American entertainment, the Bob Hope Gallery opened to the public on May 10, 2000, with an inaugural exhibition titled “Bob Hope and American Variety.” The week following Hope’s death on July 27, 2003, at age 100, fans flocked to the exhibition to pay their respects and remember his legendary career.
The New Millennium
Exhibitions were a highlight of the Library’s bicentennial celebration in 2000. Three major exhibitions illustrated the bicentennial theme of “Libraries, Creativity, Liberty.” They were: “John Bull and Uncle Sam: Four Centuries of British-American Relations,” a joint exhibition with the British Library; “The Work of Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention”; and “Thomas Jefferson.”
A smaller display, “The Wizard of Oz: An American Fairy Tale” celebrated American creativity by marking the 100th anniversary of L. Frank Baum’s timeless American classic. The exhibition included Baum’s 1900 application for copyright and the title page of the work, which came through the U.S. Copyright Office in the Library of Congress.
In June 2001, with support from the Xerox Corporation and others, the Library opened a companion exhibition to its highly successful “American Treasures” installation: “World Treasures of the Library of Congress” in the Jefferson Building’s second-floor northwest gallery. On view through March 2003, the exhibition drew upon unique items from the Library’s international collections in more than 460 languages to explore how various cultures explained the beginning of the world and to depict the first human beings as well as the heavens and the Earth.
In its tradition of documenting the American experience in all formats, the Library opened a special exhibition titled “Witness and Response: September 11 Acquisitions in the Library of Congress” in September 2002 to display the collections that the Library amassed during the year following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The powerful display told the story of how the materials arrived at the nation’s library—some within hours after the attacks—and how they reflected what America experienced in the aftermath of these tragic events.
In 2003, the Library exhibited for the first time one of its most significant acquisitions: the 1507 world map by cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, which gave the name “America” to the new lands explored by Columbus and Vespucci. The item was featured in a Library exhibition titled “Rivers, Edens, Empires: Lewis & Clark and the Revealing of America,” which presented highlights from the Library’s rich collections of exploration material documenting the quest to connect the East and the West by means of a waterway passage. (A special protective display case has since been constructed for the map, which is currently on public view as part of the new Library of Congress Experience.)
With the October 2003 opening of the Library of Congress/Ira Gershwin Gallery in the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Library established a permanent West Coast presence for the first time. Designed by architect Frank Gehry, the concert hall is the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. The inaugural display featured prints, photographs, architectural drawings, music manuscripts and rare recordings to demonstrate the depth and breadth of the Library’s collections. The gallery has also displayed maps of Los Angeles from the Library’s Geography and Map Division.
In 2004, the Library opened an exhibition titled “Churchill and the Great Republic” to mark the 130th anniversary of the British statesman’s birth and the 60th anniversary of D-Day, (the allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France on June 6, 1944) in which Churchill played a pivotal role. The exhibition marked the close relationship between the Englishman, born to an American mother, and the country he called “The Great Republic.” In an address at the Library of Congress on the opening of “Churchill and the Great Republic” before members of the Churchill family and members of Congress, President Bush praised Winston Churchill and said: “This exhibit bears witness to one of the most varied and consequential lives of modern history.”
Library exhibitions in 2003-2007 marked historical and cultural milestones such as the centennial of flight, honoring the Wright brothers’ 1903 achievement (“Dream of Flight”), the 350th anniversary of Jewish life in America (“From Haven to Home”), the 1954 Supreme Court decision that ended school segregation (“Brown v. Board at Fifty”), the 150th anniversary of the publication of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” (“Revising Himself: Walt Whitman and ‘Leaves of Grass’”); Benjamin Franklin’s 350th birthday (“Benjamin Franklin: In His Own Words”); the 100th anniversary of the MacDowell artists’ colony (“A Century of Creativity: The MacDowell Colony 1907-2007); and the 50th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story” (“West Side Story: Birth of a Classic”).
During the past decade, donations to the Library of several significant cartoon collections have been the inspiration for several exhibitions such as “Oliphant’s Anthem: Pat Oliphant at the Library of Congress,” “Humor’s Edge: Cartoons by Ann Telnaes;” “Enduring Outrage: Editorial Cartoons by Herblock” and “Cartoon America,” selections from the Art Wood Collection of Cartoon and Caricature.
A Closing and an Opening
The Library’s popular exhibition, “American Treasures,” closed in August 2007 after a decade on view to enable the construction of a new interactive experience for Library visitors, which opened in April 2008. (See Information Bulletin, May 2008.) While on display, “American Treasures” drew approximately 2.5 million visitors who viewed more than 2,700 treasured historical items from the world’s largest library. These include the original rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, the contents of Abraham Lincoln’s pockets on the night of his assassination, the first motion picture and the first baseball card.
The anticipated increase in visitors as a result of the construction of a Capitol Visitor Center and a passageway linking the Thomas Jefferson Building to the Capitol (scheduled to open in December 2008) prompted the Library to design a new, more interactive, way for people coming to the nation’s capital from around the world to experience the grandeur of the building and the unparalleled resources housed within. For people unable to visit the Library in person, a companion Web site to the Library of Congress Experience (myLOC.gov) features interactive versions of the same exhibition content as the onsite experience, along with other educational resources.
In addition to showcasing the art and architecture of the Jefferson Building, the new Library of Congress Experience includes three major exhibitions: “Exploring the Early Americas: The Jay I. Kislak Collection,” “Creating the United States” and “Thomas Jefferson’s Library.”
Drawn from collector Jay I. Kislak’s extensive collection of some 3,000 items, which he donated to the Library, “Exploring the Early Americas” examines indigenous cultures and the changes caused by the encounter between Native Americans and Europeans. (See Information Bulletin, January/February 2008.) The cornerstone of the exhibition is the 1507 Waldseemüller map with interactive kiosks that allows visitors to explore segments of the map in detail and compare it with a 1516 map by the same cartographer.
After an extensive search that began in 2000 on the occasion of the Library’s bicentennial, the reconstructed personal library of Thomas Jefferson is on display in the building named for the third president of the United States. (See Information Bulletin, June 2008.) The original collection totaling 6,487 volumes was sold to Congress in 1815 to replace the holdings of the Congressional Library that were destroyed when the British burned the Capitol. A chimney fire in 1851 destroyed all but about 2,000 volumes. Those original tomes, along with replacement copies, comprise the current display. The display is accompanied by interactive kiosks that allow visitors to “browse” the shelves in greater detail. To date, all but about 300 titles listed on Jefferson’s original inventory have been secured.
Jefferson’s genius, along with that of the other Founding Fathers, is demonstrated in the third new exhibition, “Creating the United States,” which focuses on the seminal documents that established the new Republic: The Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. (See Information Bulletin, June 2008.) Interactive kiosks allow visitors to view annotated versions of the documents and discover the source texts that provided the basis of many of their ideas.
In one of the most supreme endorsements of the Library’s exhibitions in its 208-year history, historian David McCullough said, “If visitors to this, our capital city, whether they’re from our own country or from abroad, were to see only one exhibition, one building, one place during their visit, ‘Creating the United States’ would be the one to see, here at the Library of Congress.”
