In 2016, I stumbled across a surprising body of materials at Houghton Library while conducting research for my dissertation project on the establishment of East Asian art history as a discipline in the United States, circa 1900-1960. I had been aware for some time of the life and legacy of Langdon Warner (1881-1955)—the first curator…
Announcing Houghton Library Visiting Fellows 2018-2019
Each year, Houghton Library awards visiting fellowships to support scholars whose research requires extensive use of the library’s collections. We are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2018-2019 awards, including two inaugural fellowships: the Maryette Charlton Fellowship for the Performing Arts, and Donald and Mary Hyde Fellowship for Research in Early Modern Black Lives, including…
More Mystery Film Stills
We received an enthusiastic response to our first post on uncaptioned film stills in our Ludlow-Santo Domingo Collection, including a very nice writeup in the Boston Globe. Thanks to all who posted comments to help us identify those mystery movies. It seemed like readers had fun with the process, so we’ve asked the cataloger of…
Calling All Movie Buffs!
UPDATE: The response to this post was so great we’ve posted 25 new unidentified movie stills–let us know if you can help! We recently cataloged a collection of several hundred film stills as part of the Ludlow-Santo Domingo Library. Many identify the film or actor depicted, but to make this collection as useful as possible…
Aspects of Edward Lear (Part IV)
‘Never was there a luckier piece of work!’, remarked Philip Hofer when recalling W. B. O. Field’s gift of over 3,500 of Lear’s pictures to Houghton in 1942. In recent years a comprehensive online finding aid has been created, which includes high-resolution images of the drawings and detailed transcriptions of the annotations Lear made on…
Born-Digital Post #3: Space
This post continues the series, “Behind the Scenes at Houghton”, giving a glimpse into the inner workings of the library’s mission to support teaching and research. Thanks to Magdaline Lawhorn, Administrative Fellow & Project Archivist, for contributing this post. Our born-digital journey continues to be filled with research, trial and error, and lots of excel…
Collections Now Available for Research: April 2018
Houghton Library is pleased to announce that the following collections now have descriptive finding aids and are available for research in the library’s reading room. Richard Baldridge Manuscripts and Letters, 1927-1964 (MS Thr 125) – processed by Irina Klyagin Boris Bilinsky Costume Designs for Cinema, Theater and Ballet, 1924-1943 (MS Thr 317) – processed by…