Happy belated President’s Day! Today, February 22, marks Washington’s actual birthday so I thought we’d celebrate with a peek at Washington’s earliest surviving letter.(If you want to get precise, when he was born Washington would have thought of his birthday as February 11, since England and her colonies still used the Julian calendar, but it …
Titanic Out Takes
The collections department has been busy this week with our new exhibit, Titanic: The Rise of Rosenbach, which opened yesterday. One of the challenges in any exhibition is that there are all sorts of fascinating tidbits that just don’t fit into the story arc and therefore have to (sadly) get left off of the labels. …
“I Am Born”–200 Years Ago
The birthdays are coming fast and furious. Last week it was James Joyce; this week we celebrate the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens, who was born February 7, 1812. While many find Joyce daunting, almost everyone has read some Dickens–even if it was just A Tale of Two Cities in high school English class. What …
Happy Birthday to James Joyce and Ulysses
About a month ago I posted about James Joyce’s death date (Jan. 13, 1941) and its effect on copyright. Today we can celebrate his birth date: February 2, 1882. I think he’s doing quite well for a man of 130! At his birth, Joyce’s name was famously misrecorded as James Augusta Joyce, rather than James …
The Zodiac Man
The answer to last week’s puzzle is that the image is a detail from the Zodiac Man from Poor Richard’s Almanac. I specifically took this image from our 1733 Poor Richard, but it can be found in other editions as well, and versions of the Zodiac Man were a standard feature of most period almanacs. …
What Is It?
I’ve been super-busy this week getting ready for our upcoming exhibition, Titanic: The Rise of Rosenbach, so instead of my usual wordy post, I’m going to tempt you with a mystery object. This is a detail from an item in our book collection. What is it? Hint, it has something to do with someone famous …
Dave Burrell
It’s hard to believe, but we’ve been getting to enjoy Dave Burrell’s wonderful Rosenbach-inspired compositions for over five years now. We first started collaborating with him back in 2006, to accompany our exhibition Look Again: African American History is American History. That first year sticks out in my mind because I had my second child …
Joyce in Public (Domain, that is)
2012 marks a number of important milestones related to the Rosenbach; not only is it the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic and Charles Dickens’s 200th birthday, but on January 1st, 2012, significant portions of the Joyce oeuvre entered the public domain. Copyright is a tricky thing and the laws vary by country, …
Rosenbach Recap
As 2011 draws to a close, here’s a look back at some of my personal picks for highlights of the past Rosen-year: The conservation and unveiling of the only surviving Sendak mural: The Chertoff mural, post-conservation. © 1961 by Maurice Sendak, all rights reserved. Given by Nina and Larry Chertoff in loving memory of Roslyn …
My First Annual Fund
Dana Byrd here, Development Assistant at the Rosenbach. Most of you have probably spoken to me about membership or registering for a program, event, or reading group. As a relatively new Rosenbacher, I was pretty overwhelmed by my first annual fund campaign and I’ve decided to steal Kathy’s soapbox for a week to tell you …