News, events, website updates from AAS
The American Antiquarian Society is somewhat of a rare bird in the way we exhibit our holdings. On the one hand, the fact that we have virtually no display space means that materials are lent for other institutions to display; on the other hand, we’re just itching to show off our collections. So when the ...
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 ...
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 ...
We are pleased to announce the start of our signature bicentennial Fall Public Programs! The programs this fall include an impressive array of scholars and artists who will share new perspectives on key moments and fascinating people in American history. We will be kicking off the series on September 28 at 7 p.m., when Vincent Carretta, ...
As many of you may already know, the story of the American Antiquarian Society is in many ways linked to the War of 1812. For if the war had not been underway when Isaiah Thomas decided to found the Society, we could very well have ended up in Boston rather than here in Worcester. As ...
Although we're often holding newsworthy events, conferences, and lectures, the bicentennial has brought even more media attention than usual to AAS and its offerings. Just yesterday, the Society was prominently featured in a front page story on the Constitution in Worcester's Telegram and Gazette. You can read the article here: The source of it ...
Today, poetry occupies one of the smallest possible corners of the publishing landscape. The market for books of poetry by contemporary poets is miniscule, and—apart from occasionally having one of the poems in, say, the New Yorker catch one’s eye—many readers can go months (if not years) without seeing a contemporary poem in print. This ...
Each year, the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) honors a person or an organization with the Isaiah Thomas Award in Publishing in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the industry. This year’s award honors AAS, in honor of the 200th anniversary of our founding by none other than Isaiah Thomas himself. The award ceremony will take place ...
After Antiquarian Hall’s signature copper dome was renovated this summer, five bicentennial banners were installed on the Park Avenue and Salisbury Street facades. Custom-designed hardware will allow the banners to be changed in the future. Four of the banners are on the library stacks, brick walls without windows that provide an excellent backdrop. Each features a ...
Special exhibition to mark the Society’s bicentennial, at the Grolier Club, New York, September 12 through November 17, 2012. As most readers of this blog already know, the American Antiquarian Society was founded two hundred years ago, in 1812 in Worcester, Massachusetts, by the patriot, printer and publisher Isaiah Thomas. In fact, Thomas’s personal ...
It’s funny (and a bit embarrassing for an organization that’s all about historical accuracy) when facts get obscured by the mists of time (and foggy memory) and then re-emerge with such clarity that one is left with only “Duh!” to say. For some time now – through all the planning and the fundraising – we have ...
Check out this preview for the second segment featuring the American Antiquarian Society on C-SPAN3's American Artifacts program. This segment is led by James David Moran, our Director of Outreach, and Philip Lampi, chief researcher on the "A New Nation Votes" project. It will showcase some of AAS's political collections, including ballots, political cartoons and ...
The American Artifacts program on C-Span 3 will air a 30-minute television program on the American Antiquarian Society this weekend. The program is a virtual tour of Antiquarian Hall showcasing some of the Society’s treasures with our president, Ellen Dunlap. A short segment featuring the Eliot Indian Bible can be seen here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=muBe1woHuVA The full ...
This is the type of post which started out as an “In Memoriam.” Something lighthearted which included lines about the deceased card catalog’s birth in the 1970s, it being a ‘descendent of generations of particleboard furniture’ and that it ‘leaves behind grieving relations such as the filing cabinet, map drawer, etc.’ But the more I ...
Back in the 1950s, the AAS used to exhibit its items in places with traffic – (skeptical? Check out this 1952 photograph taken by Ted Woolner showing the front window of the Industrial City Bank and Banking Co. in Worcester with our Graphic Arts items) – but then the Internet was born and we learned ...
