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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Tomorrow, Thursday, April 19 - 7:30 p.m. "Celebrating the American Antiquarian Society, 1812-2012" Philip F. Gura Philip Gura, William S. Newman Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is the author of the just-published bicentennial history of the American Antiquarian Society. He will tell ...
The Society has published two new books in this, its bicentennial year. The works are completely different and from the hands of different authors and designers, both of whom incorporated the Society’s seal on the back cover. With all this extra attention to this device, Abby Hutchinson, who edits the Society’s newsletter, Almanac, concluded that ...
As AAS gears up for the most momentous occasion of its bicentennial in 2012, I thought it would be fitting to take a look back in the AAS archives to see how we celebrated the first 100 years. In 1912, the Society had just moved into its new (and now current) home at 185 Salisbury ...
The first of the books about the history of the American Antiquarian Society to mark the 2012 bicentennial has arrived. It is A Place in My Chronicle: A New Edition of the Diary of Christopher Columbus Baldwin, 1829-1835, co-authored by Jack Larkin and Caroline Sloat. We always call it “diary” in the singular, ...
