Collecting Memories: Treasures from the Library of Congress

Memory formation, memorialization, collective history, and knowledge of the known world are guided by individuals and their cultures. Collecting Memories: Treasures from the Library of Congress explores the ways people have preserved their history, culture, and personal recollections in a variety of artifacts, including letters, diaries, photographs, maps, books, quilts, rugs, murals, scrolls, and monuments.

The official companion to the Library of Congress exhibition, Collecting Memories uses vivid photographs and interpretive text to bring context to a wide variety of historic objects, from President Abraham Lincoln’s handwritten draft of the Gettysburg Address to Steve Ditko’s original drawings of the Spider-Man origin story. Other highlights include:

* Maya Lin’s original competition drawings for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

* The first Italian cookbook, Libro de arte coquinaria, published in the late 1400s

* An incredibly rare crystal flute given to President James Madison by French flute maker Claude Laurent

* Illustrations from a thirty-nine-foot nineteenth-century Japanese scroll

* Scenes from the fifteenth-century Washington Haggadah

* Images of a colorful six-by-nine-foot canvas family tree documenting a Black family genealogy dating back to the eighteenth century

* A hand-painted scroll, or thangka, given to the Library by the fourteenth Dalai Lama

* A small pocket notebook carried by Sigmund Freud

Carla Hayden is the fourteenth Librarian of Congress.