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Category: Art and Design

Celebrate America with Gibson’s “Americans”

Erin Rushing
July 3, 2015
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Charles Gibson (1867-1944) is one of the best known illustrators of the Gilded Age primarily due to his creation, the Gibson Girl, who became an icon of American beauty. As an illustrator he was talented in depicting relationships between men and women and submitted illustrations to such magazines as Harper’s Weekly, Life, and Harper’s Monthly. In 1890 he introduced a modernized beautiful female character with upswept hair, fashionable clothes, and imbued with independence and glamor – the Gibson Girl.  Gibson’s book, Americans, is currently available for adoption in our Adopt a Book program.


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What’s in a Name? The Related Talents of Mark Catesby and Gertrude Jekyll

Julia Blakely
June 22, 2015
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What’s in a Name? The Related Talents of Mark Catesby and Gertrude Jekyll

The Catesby Commemorative Trust launched the publication of The Curious Mister Catesby with a program at the National Museum of Natural History this past April. Smithsonian Libraries’ own Leslie Overstreet, a contributor to these various perspectives on Mark Catesby’s The natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama islands (London, 1729-1747), spoke on that work’s long, complicated printing history. Another speaker, E. Charles Nelson, presented his research into the naturalist’s biography. His mention of the author’s maternal family name, Jekyll, caught my attention˗˗could this early 18th-century Englishman, who produced the great study of the flora and fauna of colonial America, be related to the later renowned horticulturist, influential garden designer and wonderful writer Gertrude Jekyll?

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“Langley Leap” at the Hirshhorn Library

Erin Rushing
June 15, 2015
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HMSG stacks
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Library stacks.

This post was written by Lily Zhang, a senior at Langley High School.

I had no idea how real senioritis was until I caught it. Worse than the common cold, the dreaded senioritis hinders motivation with distracting visions of prom, parties, and graduation. But at Langley High in McLean, we are provided with a novel cure: no school. While other seniors in surrounding high schools continue to attend school in May, Langley seniors have the opportunity to “leap” outside school walls and participate in a 10-day internship of our choosing. The Langley Leap program gives us a chance to explore possible areas of interest beyond classroom lectures and tests, an opportunity I believe to be irreplaceable and essential to the overall high school experience.

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Swahili Coast: Exploration by French Captain Charles Guillain, 1846-1848. Part 3, Encounters and Partnerships

Erin Rushing
May 13, 2015
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The blog post, last of three, was written by Xavier Courouble, research assistant for Sailors and Daughters: Early Photography and the Indian Ocean, an online exhibition part of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art’s Connecting the Gems of the Indian Ocean: From Oman to East Africa.

Charles Guillain’s three-volume work, Documents sur l’histoire, la géographie, et le commerce de l’Afrique orientale and the accompanying atlas folio of lithographs and map engravings, Voyage à la côte orientale d’Afrique give an account of travels undertaken in a pre-colonial context, where European explorers politically and logistically depended on the African inhabitants and sovereigns they encountered in Africa. The interactions experienced by Guillain and his African counterparts allowed for a reaffirmation of exploration as an encounter and a partnership rather than as an unequal confrontation constructing insurmountable otherness.

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The Chakras at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Library

Erin Rushing
May 1, 2015
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The Chakras at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Library

This post was originally featured on the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s “Object of the Day” blog, written by digital media technologist Katie Shelly.

Last year, our librarian Stephen Van Dyk picked up this slender blue hardcover at a rare book auction. He didn’t know exactly what a “chakra” was, but still he found the worn old book remarkable, if not a bit weird, for its striking illustrations of big painted circles.

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Swahili Coast: Exploration by French Captain Charles Guillain, 1846-1848. Part 2, Campaign Description

Erin Rushing
April 10, 2015
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VoyageaYlacoYteAtlaBayo_0113The blog post, second of three, was written by Xavier Courouble, research assistant for Sailors and Daughters: Early Photography and the Indian Ocean, an online exhibition part of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art’s Connecting the Gems of the Indian Ocean: From Oman to East Africa. Read the first post in the series here.

From 1836 to 1848, successively in command of the corvette “La Prévoyante,” “La Dordogne,” and finally the frigate “Le Ducouëdic,” Charles Guillain (1808-1875) navigated the Indian Ocean from the Cape of Good Hope to the western coast of the Indian sub-continent.  During his several missions he accumulated extensive knowledge on Zanzibar, Madagascar, the Comoros, as well as the Swahili and Somali coast of Africa.  Accounts of these expeditions were all published and gave this St. Simonien a solid reputation of ethnologist and geographer.  Yet a certain degree of confusion remains of the political and commercial purposes of his ambitious campaigns of exploration, influenced by personal convictions, regional aspirations, and France’s global interest in the region.

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