So what, you may ask is the connection between Stephen Colbert, comedian and political satirist, and our copy of the Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed in the United States. (Ok, if you want to be picky, as Colbert no doubt would, its real title is “The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully TRANSLATED into …
Upcoming Events
All That Glitters
Our newest exhibit, Friend or Faux, opens tomorrow and we’ll be kicking off our programming for the show this Saturday (11/14) at noon with the first of a series of seminars on authenticity. This inaugural seminar focuses on silver and will presented by David Barquist, Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Philadelphia Museum of …
Take Me Out to the Ball Game
Marianne Moore throwing out first pitch in Yankee Stadium, 1968. Moore XII:17:12a With game six of the World Series on tonight (go Phils!) I figured we should own up to having some pretty cool Yankees memorabilia, courtesy of Miss Marianne Moore. Moore was, of course, originally a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers and her poem …
What We’re Up To
Sorry to be a bit behind on blogging this week, but I thought I’d give you a glimpse of what I and my collections colleagues have been working on. We’re preparing to install the new exhibit “Friend or Faux: Imitation and Invention from Innocent to Fraudulent” and so we’ve been busily patching and painting walls …
John Brown’s 150th
W. Dewitt, portrait of John Brown. Charles Town W.V., 1859. 1981.7 Trying to define the beginning of the Civil War is a bit tricky. The first shots were fired at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, but the causes and lead-up to the war can be seen to stretch back decades or more. One key …
Guest Post: A Rosenbachiana Mystery
This guest post is brought to you by the Rosenbach fall collections intern Jessica Walthew.When, where and how was this interesting photo taken? Clue #1: This “photo-multigraph” shows five Dr. Rosenbachs seated around a table. Photo multigraphs are an example of a type of trick photography that was popular at the end of the 19th …
Sendak on Screen
OK, with the Where the Wild Things movie coming out on Friday, it’s about time for a blog post on Sendak’s ventures into film. For those of you counting down the days until the release, you might enjoy this Newsweek article about the film, this MTV page in which the actors talk about their memories …
Rosenbach on the Road
I’m a bit behind on blogging this week, since I just got back from New Haven, where we are lending our miniature of James I to the Yale Center for British Art for an exhibit on the collector and commentator Horace Walpole. The exhibit runs from October 15-January 3 and it won’t even cost you …
Forgers and Experts
A couple of weeks ago I blogged about our upcoming exhibition “Friend or Faux” which deals with the nature of authenticity. Recently in doing research for the exhibition I had occasion to delve into the story of the forger Mark Hofmann. For those of you who are not familiar with his case, Hofmann was a …
Banning Books: God, Sex, and Politics
The last week in September is marked annually by the American Library Association (and its numerous partners) as Banned Books Week. Given that the Rosenbach’s best known collections include Ulysses (which was seized and banned in both the U.K. and the U.S.) and Maurice Sendak (whose In the Night Kitchen clocks in at #28 on …