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Rewards of Merit

Rewards of Merit

By Annika Dekker One of my favorite parts of working at the William L. Clements Library as a graduate student assistant is getting to explore types of artifacts that I had never heard of before. One of my first projects here was to create a finding aid for our Rewards...
An Ungentle Art: Pat Oliphant and the American Tradition of Political Satire

An Ungentle Art: Pat Oliphant and the American Tradition of Political Satire

Political satire is not a gentle art—it is meant to leave a mark. Since the heyday of James Gillray and William Hogarth in 18th-century England, visual satirists have been able to “say” things about political leaders in their illustrations that would get writers censored (or worse). As such, it has played an important role in American political culture for over two centuries. Many of the qualities that we most readily associate with political leaders in our past come to us from satirical illustrations, not from things those leaders actually did. This exhibit invites you to think about how visual satire has shaped the way you think about political life in America. What can visual artists say about politics that writers can’t? What role does visual satire play in American political life in an age when most of what we read (and see) is online, rather than in a newspaper?

Panting After History

Panting After History

By Jonathan Beecher Field In the fall of 2023, I had the privilege of being the Laramy Fellow in American Visual Culture at the Clements Library to pursue my interest in their extensive 19th-century ephemera holdings. My research trip to the Clements was part of a...

Potato Power: The Magic of Autochromes

One of the most rewarding aspects of working at a place like the Clements Library is that you never know what you might stumble across on any given day. For instance, last summer I noticed a box out of the corner of my eye with the word “Autochromes” scribbled in...