Last-Minute Christmas Shoppers, Your Moment Has Arrived!

Due to popular demand, more items have been added to our Adopt-a-Gift-Book catalog. Adopt now to avoid disappointment and in order to ensure you receive your gift card in time for Christmas. Or, perhaps consider adopting a gift book as a gift to yourself... and to AAS! Choice selections still remain available for adoption. ...

Frederick Douglass Project Gets National Award

For the past two years, the American Antiquarian Society has partnered with Mass Humanities to co-host a Worcester edition of the foundation’s interactive program “Reading Frederick Douglass in the Era of Barack Obama” in connection with the Fourth of July.  We were therefore very happy to hear that the National Federation of State Humanities Councils ...

Historical Re-gifting: Adopt a Gift Book!

Jan 1/1846 A friend how sweet that sacred sound It sheds a heavenly music round Which falls with pleasure on the ear To cheer us while we tarry here. A friend Dedicatory poems like the one quoted above appear in many of the gift books in the American Antiquarian Society's collections. This particular inscription is in AAS's copy of The ...

How to Celebrate a 200th Birthday – AAS’s Bicentennial Gala

Some of us on the AAS staff are still recuperating from October’s bicentennial celebrations. There were three days of events, beginning with the Baron lecture by Patricia Nelson Limerick on Thursday night.  On Friday morning the curators presented a celebration of bicentennial gifts, followed by lunch across the street at the Goddard Daniels House.  On ...

When I Say AAS You Think…Chocolate?

Each year at the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair, AAS has a booth on Cultural Row (booths given to local libraries to promote themselves).  When regular visitors to the fair walk by our booth, they usually think one thing.  Chocolate!  Early on we had a dish with small candy bars or other chocolate confectionery delights ...

Archaeology and AAS

Central American archaeology may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of AAS, but check out this Facebook post from the Getty Research Institute about a new book called Past Presented: Archaeological Illustration and the Americas, edited by their Director of Scholarly Programs. The post features a photograph of AAS ...

Tribute to a Legendary AAS Staff Member

As a description of a professional trajectory in the research library world, it certainly makes for an impressive resume: Library Assistant, American Antiquarian Society Curator of Maps and Prints, American Antiquarian Society Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Graphic Arts, American Antiquarian Society Director, Center for Historic American Visual Culture, American Antiquarian Society At the same time, it’s not unheard of. ...

Celebrating the Retirements of AAS Staff Members

The 200th annual meeting provided the opportunity to celebrate many accomplishments and transitions, but among the most poignant were the retirements of three long-time colleagues:  Gigi Barnhill and Caroline Sloat (who retired this summer) and John Keenum (who will retire at the end of the year).  A blog post about Gigi’s retirement will appear in ...

Huzzah! A Special Tribute to AAS at 200

A familiar voice begins, “…two years ago, it was a great honor to be elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society,” as President Bill Clinton sends his bicentennial congratulations via video. The Society has elected fourteen U.S. Presidents to membership, beginning with John Adams in 1813. Given the demands on a President’s – and a ...

Public Program: “From Emancipation to Civil Rights and Beyond: Legacies of the Civil War at 150”

The last public program in our fall lineup will be delivered by one of the nation’s foremost historians of slavery and resistance, David Blight, next Thursday, November 1 at 7 p.m. In recent public programs we have discussed the bicentennial of AAS and the War of 1812. Now, Blight will shift focus to another current ...

Baron Lecture: Patricia Limerick Reflects Upon “The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West”

Patricia Nelson Limerick, A Western American historian at the University of Colorado, will deliver the ninth annual Baron Lecture on October 25 at 7 p.m. This lecture is named after Robert C. Baron, past AAS chairman and president of Fulcrum Publishing in Denver. This lecture invites a distinguished AAS member who has written a ...

Helen Keller’s Handwritten History Now Open to View Online

For the first time ever, the extensive 1880s-era correspondence between Helen Keller, her teacher Anne Sullivan and Sullivan’s mentor at Perkins School for the Blind, Michael Anagnos, are available online. An unusual collaboration between the American Antiquarian Society and Perkins (www.perkinsarchives.org) harnesses the power of social media to create a revealing new online exhibit that ...

Public Program: “The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies”

Second up in our fall line-up of public programs is a lecture by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Alan Taylor. Although the War of 1812 is an oft-forgotten part of American history, it looms much larger in the memory and story of Canada, along the border of which much of the fighting took place. Taylor’s lecture, based ...

Video: New Film Showcases the Society’s Culture and Collections

Everyone connected closely with AAS knows our old orientation film, produced in 1987 for the 175th anniversary celebration and hosted and narrated by Walter Cronkite. (If you haven’t seen it, it’s still available on our website.) Although this film has served us well over the years, we believe that it’s time the Society shows how ...