April 6, 2010 Library of Congress to Host Millennium Arts Salon 10th Anniversary Lecture By Walter O. Evans, Noted Collector of African American Art, Books, Manuscripts

Walter O. Evans, well known for his remarkable collection of 19th- and 20th-century African American artworks, has also assembled an extensive collection of more than 100,000 books and manuscripts. He has taken on the formidable task of selecting his favorite 10 to discuss at the Library of Congress on April 30.

In an illustrated lecture, Evans will present “Ten Favorite Books and Manuscripts in My Collection” at noon on Friday, April 30, in the Mumford Room on the sixth floor of the James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. Free and open to the public, no tickets or reservations are needed.

The talk is part of a planned series of events, through 2010, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Millennium Arts Salon in Washington, D.C. Founded in 2000, the Salon is dedicated to advancing cultural literacy through its arts and cultural programming, including salons, exhibitions, tours and special events.

The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs and Rare Book and Special Collection divisions are co-hosting the lecture by Evans, a retired surgeon based in Savannah, Ga., who was named one of America’s top 100 collectors by Art and Antiques Magazine in 2006.

Evans’ widely exhibited art collection includes more than 500 paintings, photographs and sculptures by such major American artists as Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, Henry O. Tanner, Alma Thomas, Charles White and many others. Earlier this year, The Savannah College of Art and Design broke ground on a new facility to house the Walter O. Evans Center for African American Studies.

Evans studied as an undergraduate at Howard University in Washington, D.C., before completing his medical studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

The Millennium Arts Salon (MAS) is based in a restored 1923 town home in Columbia Heights, Washington, D.C. MAS programs bring artistic and cultural perspectives of the world’s prominent artists and practitioners in the visual, curatorial, performing, film, historical narrative, musical and literary arts to an ever-expanding audience in the mid-Atlantic corridor and beyond. Most of its salon talks are held at MAS. Through its outreach program, however, MAS co-hosts programs around the Washington, D.C., area. For more information, visit www.millenniumartssalon.org.

The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division holds more than 14 million photographs, drawings and prints from the 15th century to the present day. International in scope, these visual collections represent a uniquely rich source of human experience, knowledge, creativity and achievement, touching on almost every realm of endeavor: science, art, invention, government and political struggle, and the recording of history. For more information, visit www.loc.gov/rr/print/.

The Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division holds more than 800,000 books, broadsides, pamphlets, theater playbills, title pages, prints, posters, photographs, and medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. More than 100 collections are maintained, including the personal libraries of Harry Houdini and Susan B. Anthony, author collections of Walt Whitman and Hans Christian Andersen, subject collections on gastronomy and cryptography, and generic collections such as dime novels and Bibles. At the center is Thomas Jefferson’s book collection, which was sold to Congress in 1815.

For more information about the Library of Congress, visit its award-winning website at www.loc.gov.