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Author: Allie Swislocki

You’re Invited: Adopt-a-Book Evening

On November 7, we invite you to join us for an evening celebrating the scintillating collection of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library at our Adopt-a-Book event in New York City. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library is the nation’s premiere resource for books, trade catalogs, serials, pictures, and archival material on design and decorative arts from the Renaissance to the present. The Library features more than 8,000 rare treasures.

Support the Warren M. Robbins Library at the National Museum of African Art

Librarian Janet Stanley with a researcher in the Warren M. Robbins Library at the National Museum of African Art.

Every day, librarian Janet Stanley and the staff of the Warren M. Robbins Library at the National Museum of African Art work tirelessly in support of the Smithsonian’s guiding purpose: to foster the increase and diffusion of knowledge. This African Art Library plays an essential role in connecting colleagues, researchers, and artists around the world to engage in promoting the critical work that ensures a future of knowledge and discovery of African art.

Make your gift by September 15th and it will be matched by a special anonymous donor, doubling your impact.

Finding family ties in the American Art and Portrait Gallery Library

Librarian Anne Evenhaugen and Cristina Price perusing a carte de visite album.

On a rainy April morning, Smithsonian Libraries Advisory Board member Amy Threefoot Valeiras and her family visited the American Art and Portrait Gallery Library (AA/PG). What they found surprised everyone!

Anne Evenhaugen and Alexandra Reigle, staff at the AA/PG Library, selected a variety of books and artists’ books to show our visitors. One of these was a carte de visite book, featuring photographic trading cards for nineteenth-century American painters. (What is a carte de visite, you ask? Click here to learn more!) After a few turns of the page, Amy’s sister-in-law, Cristina Price, stumbled upon a familiar face and name: her own distant relative W.T. Richards!

Consider a gift for Giving Tuesday

2016 has been a landmark year for the Smithsonian Libraries. Because of donors like you, the Libraries is able to continue in its role as the pinnacle of museum libraries, serving as a scholarly resource for Smithsonian researchers and curators and for brilliant thinkers from all around the world, as well as increasing access into our collections for learners of all ages. Some examples of what we have been able to accomplish in 2016 are: