I realize that I never finished my something old, something new… series of posts from a few weeks back, so here’s the last installment–something borrowed. Along those lines I thought I’d fill you in on some of our items that are currently being borrowed by other institutions, or will be soon. Lending to other institutions …
Dave Burrell’s Civil War time machine
Dave Burrell called last week to say he would no longer be making his weekly visits to the Rosenbach’s reading room. After spending months reading through the museum’s collection of early civil war letters, broadsides, maps, photographs and diary entries he was retreating to his composition books to process his thoughts into music. The basic …
Now We Are Five
This week marks the 5th anniversary of the Rosen-blog, which began on Thursday August 25, 2005. In lieu of my regular post, I encourage our loyal readers to revisit the blog archives and see where we’ve been. Here are some of my favorites from deep storage [none written by me], to get you started: Black …
A Rose by Any Other Name
No, the Rosenbach does not own the Earl of Oxford’s jug. If you came to the Friend or Faux exhibit you are familiar with the story of our Bellarmine jug; the jug is a genuine Elizabethan era object, but by the mid-20th century an unusual (and false) legend had attached itself to the piece—it was …
Westward Ho! with Abraham Lincoln
I meant to post a link to this a while back, but back in July the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum announced that Abraham Lincoln’s writing had been found on papers carried by the Donner Party. Apparently James Reed, one of the organizers of the Donner Party, lived in Springfield Illinois and served with …
Something New
As promised, the “something new” this week is our new Westward Ho! exhibit, which opened on Wednesday. The exhibit got a nice shout out in the City Paper yesterday, so thanks to them for that. This show, like pretty much everything we do here at the Rosenbach, was a real team effort:it was co-curated by …
Something Blue
Picking up on last week’s theme of “something old”, I’m jumping to the end of the rhyme to highlight a few of my favorite “something blue” items in our collection. Patch box. 1954.2058 First off is this lovely blue box, which dates from the late eighteenth-century (ca 1790-1800). The picture doesn’t do it justice, but …
Something Old
It’s good to be back after a week’s vacation. Earlier this week I was giving a walk-through to some folks who were very interested in finding out about the oldest items in our collection. This is actually a question I’ve had several times, so for all of you who’ve wondered about this, here’s the answer. …
Poetry
As one last follow up on the Declaration of Independence, I’d like to give a hat-tip to our friends at Independence National Historical Park for their annual reading of the Declaration, which happens every July 8, the day the Declaration was first read publicly. It has become a bit of a collections department tradition to …
More on the Declaration
After I published last week’s musings on our copy of the Declaration I heard this story on NPR about the Library of Congress’s use of hyperspectral imaging to determine word changes in Jefferson’s rough draft. Apparently Jefferson changed the word “subjects” to “citizens,” no small matter. Here’s the official LC news release on the topic.