By Vicki Denby, Houghton Library Technical Services A Houghton Library manuscript, on loan as part of the exhibition Beyond Midnight: Paul Revere, will once again be on public view when the Concord Museum reopens on August 6, 2020….
On the Shoulders of Giants: Scientific Innovation and the Apollo 11 Mission
This post is a condensed version of an essay from the catalogue of Houghton Library’s most recent exhibition, Small Steps, Giant Leaps: Apollo 11 at Fifty, which is on view from April 29 – August 3, 2019. Follow us on Instagram, where we will feature images from the exhibition every Monday during its run. In…
An Intimate and Symbolic Bond: Quentin Roosevelt, the Great War, and American-French Relations
By Vincent Harmsen, 2017–2018 Houghton Library Visiting Fellow and recipient of the William Dearborn Fellowship in American History. Mr. Harmsen holds a master’s degree in history from the Sorbonne University, Paris. November 19, 1918 would have been the twenty-first birthday of Quentin Roosevelt, son of Theodore Roosevelt. However, Quentin had died in France a few…
r.ed in residence
By Dale Stinchcomb, Assistant Curator of the Harvard Theatre Collection Frankenweek is in full swing and Houghton is participating in a Harvard-wide celebration of all things Franken-Shelley. A film series, an exhibition, and a marathon reading are just a few of the activities planned to mark the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein. Mary Shelley’s influence…
Exhibition catalogs digitized
We’re pleased to share the news that we’ve digitized a few of our favorite exhibition catalogs from the past, focused on our collection of Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. We hope those interested in the field will find them a valuable resource. Late Medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts, 1350-1525, in the Houghton Library (1983) The Bible…
Proto-Maus
This post is part of an ongoing series complementing the upcoming exhibition Altered States: Sex, Drugs, and Transcendence in the Ludlow-Santo Domingo Library on display in the Edison and Newman Room from September 5 – December 16, 2017. Art Spiegelman is best known for Maus, his graphic novel based on interviews with his father, a…
A Real Old Devil
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the exhibition Open House 75: Houghton Staff Select on display in the Edison and Newman Room from May 8 – August 19, 2017. Refashioning, revising, re-reading, restoring: the adaptation of musical works was a perennial source of fascination for Harvard University music professor John Milton Ward….
Interpreting History Through Art: The Kelmscott Chaucer, William Morris
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the exhibition Open House 75: Houghton Staff Select on display in the Edison and Newman Room from May 8 – August 19, 2017. The iconic Kelmscott Chaucer—this copy being one of only three printed on vellum and bound in full pigskin—is the crowning achievement of William…
A Curious Manuscript
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the exhibition Open House 75: Houghton Staff Select on display in the Edison and Newman Room from May 8 – August 19, 2017. Melesinda Munbee’s Miscellany found its way into my hands one day in 2002 when I was browsing our stacks, looking for manuscripts to…
All power to the people! Black Panther Party
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the exhibition Open House 75: Houghton Staff Select, on display in the Edison and Newman Room from May 8 – August 19, 2017. In September of 1966, Hunters Point, a predominately black neighborhood in San Francisco, erupted after the murder of sixteen-year-old Matthew Johnson by…