Posts from Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

In this episode, NYPL's Matt Knutzen and NYU Professor Tom Augst probed the archives of Brown Brothers & Company and revealed the hands-on role that the financial firm played in managing one Southern plantation.

In this episode, NYPL’s Ian Fowler and Elizabeth Cronin revealed the cultural and technological origins of aerial photography, analyzed several examples, and provided historical context for its use in exploration, the military, mapmaking, and more.

The New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers has selected its 23rd class of Fellows: 15 talented academics, literary artists, and independent scholars.

In this episode, NYPL's Jessica Cline and photographer, publisher, and Pratt Institute photography professor Peter Kayafas discussed the history and scope of the Picture Collection, analyzing the concept of subjectivity in the subject headings assigned to images and considering how description shapes representation and creates trust in the work of librarians.

On March 4, 2021, Doc Chat kicked off Women's History Month by examining the intersection of gender, conservation, activism, fashion, and birds—yes, birds!—in the early 20th century.

The first woman artist to be regularly employed by Houghton Mifflin—and one of the most prolific designers of her day—was Sarah de St. Prix Wyman Whitman. She frequently collaborated with author Sarah Orne Jewett.

Diane Kiesel is writing a book about the trials of Charlie Chaplin and researching with historical newspapers from home.

Maud Malone is known by history as a radical suffragist, but her work at the Library had its own activist bent.

Melanie Yolles is an archivist who was on the cutting edge of digital access to archives, entering the Library’s first archival inventory in digital form in 1988.

Madra is a PhD candidate researching her dissertation on ways that contemporary art practices from Turkey offer alternative modes of engaging violent pasts and challenging official histories.

In this episode, the Schomburg Center's Zakiya Collier and Dr. Yarimar Bonilla of Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center explored Schomburg's #Syllabi web archive collection and the Puerto Rico Syllabus, and discussed erasure and underrepresentation in academia, digital protest, and ways of deploying Hashtag Syllabi in the classroom.

Romana Javitz led The New York Public Library’s Picture Collection, improving access for patrons and focusing on capturing American folk art and crafts, particularly African American culture and art.

Although controversial for its socialist overtones, 'Germinal' was a popular success that was quickly adapted to the stage, and has since spurred countless reprints, translations, and adaptations.

This week NYPL's Ian Fowler and Camilla Townsend, Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers University, analyzed John Ogilby's 1671 atlas of the Americas that depicted Indigenous peoples and lands along with fantastic elements like fictional beasts.

In this episode we're joined by Amaka Okechukwu, professor of sociology at George Mason University, to analyze excerpts from 'Black Dialogue' and discuss the historical context in which the magazine was written, published, and circulated.

In this episode, we were joined by Barbara Heller and Anna Pinto who worked on a new edition of 'Pride and Prejudice' filled with reproductions of the book's Regency-era correspondence.

In this episode, NYPL's Zulay Chang and public historian Richard Cheu analyzed several 19th-century photographs related to the construction and completion of the transcontinental railroad.

In this episode, NYPL's Joshua Chuang and renowned art historian Svetlana Alpers, author of the recently published Walker Evans: Starting from Scratch, will discuss how the great American artist came to develop his eye, as well as the influential encounters Evans had as a young artist at the NYPL.

In the final Doc Chat of the year, we dug into the stories behind photographs of radical demonstrations in early 20th-century New York City.