Memorial Day Recap

I hope everyone enjoyed the lovely weather over Memorial Day weekend. As you probably know, the holiday was originally known as Decoration Day and it originated as a way of honoring the Civil War dead. Although most of us no longer visit cemeteries on Memorial Day, the parades and speeches that many of us attend …

Two Terrific Tours

First of all, I think Smithsonian magazine must be stalking the Rosenbach. I noted in a previous blog post that the April issue features a look at Lewis Carroll and then what should I find in the May issue–a story on William Henry Ireland , whose Shakespeare forgeries are currently on display in Friend or …

Paige M. Gutenborg

It’s been a quiet week at the Rosenbach. Most of the collections staff has been away, either on vacation or out in Wyoming, installing a traveling Sendak exhibition at the National Museum of Wildlife Art. I have spent the week hunched over my computer, learning the intricacies of Chenhall Nomenclature and editing object information in …

Field Trips

It’s been a busy week at the Rosenbach. We started out the week with the annual docent trip, which focused this year on two of our hometown treasures: the rare book department at the Free Library and Bartram’s Garden. Monday morning did not look auspicious, as the rain poured down during the morning rush hour, …

Happy Poetry Month

T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land, may describe April as the cruelest month, but that’s only because National Poetry Month hadn’t been established yet. National Poetry Month was inaugurated in 1996 to “highlight the extraordinary legacy and ongoing achievement of American poets” and to”introduce more Americans to the pleasures of reading poetry,” among other laudable …

Faux Ford

Today is not only tax day, but also the 145 anniversary of the death of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was shot on April 14, 1865 while attending a performance of Our American Cousin, lingered through the night without regaining consciousness, and died at 7:22 A.M. on April 15, 1865. One of the items in our current …

Dino-mania

I like dinosaurs. I always have. I grew up in Stamford, CT and therefore was ideally placed to enjoy the dinosaurs at the Peabody Museum at Yale (click here to see some old-school Peabody postcards from the Marianne Moore collection) and the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. I guess I was destined for …