Library of Congress Magazine March/April 2026

LCM logo
Into the unknown
Inside
The Woman Who First
Mapped the Sea Floors
Sir Francis Drake and
The Elizabethan World
Plus
The Magic of Mucha
Real Maps, Imaginary Places
Snakeskin Bookmarks — Really
March/April 2026
▪ On the cover: A copper-engraved, hand-colored map of the Eastern and Western hemispheres by prolific Ottoman scholar Katip Çelebi. The map, printed by Ibrahim Müteferrika in Constantinople in 1732, reflects European knowledge of their New World explorations. African and Middle Eastern Division/photo by Shawn Miller
▪ An early map of the Strait of Magellan, published by Jodocus Hondius in Amsterdam in 1611. The map, oriented with north at bottom, shows water depths in the strait made from soundings. Geography and Map Division

Features

Departments

Art Nouveau–style illustration of a woman with long flowing dark hair wearing a draped pink gown adorned with red flowers, posed within a decorative circular frame.
Stage performance scene with a group of children in matching light blue sailor-style costumes singing and gesturing energetically on a staircase set, with an adult performer standing above them.
Decorative title panel from an early nineteenth-century map reading “A Map of the discoveries of Capt. Lewis & Clark,” featuring ornate lettering and a scale of English miles.
Portrait of a middle-aged man seated indoors with hands clasped, wearing a dark shirt and bracelet, looking calmly toward the camera.
  • LCM logo
  • March / april 2026
    Vol. 15 No. 2
  • Mission of the Library of Congress
  • The Library’s mission is to engage, inspire and inform Congress and the American people with a universal and enduring source of knowledge and creativity.
  • Library of Congress Magazine is issued bimonthly by the Office of Communications of the Library of Congress and distributed free of charge to publicly supported libraries and research institutions, donors, academic libraries, learned societies and allied organizations in the United States. Research institutions and educational organizations in other countries may arrange to receive Library of Congress Magazine on an exchange basis by applying in writing to the Library’s Director for Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington DC 20540-4100. LCM is also available on the web at loc.gov/lcm. All other correspondence should be addressed to the Office of Communications, Library of Congress, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington DC 20540-1610.
  • news@loc.gov
    loc.gov/lcm
    ISSN 2169-0855 (print)
    ISSN 2169-0863 (online)
  • Robert Randolph Newlen
    Acting Librarian of Congress
  • William Ryan
    Executive Editor
  • Mark Hartsell
    Editor
  • Ashley Jones
    Designer
  • Shawn Miller
    Photo Editor
  • Contributors

    Kaley Harman
    Jane Hudiburg
    Josh Levy
    Melissa Lindberg
    Carissa Pastuch
    Hampton Sides
    Meagan Snow
    Julie Stoner
    Neely Tucker

Connect On

loc.gov/connect

An older woman smiles warmly at a young girl in a pink shirt and white visor as they sit together at a table during an arts and crafts activity.
Graphic with the message “Preserve the Past. Power the Future.” and a teal “Give Today” button
Graphic with the message “Preserve the Past. Power the Future.” and a teal “Give Today” button
Trending
Split image showing an exhibition display with a painted portrait of George Washington and historical documents on the left, and the exterior of the Library of Congress with an American flag flying in front of the domed building on the right.
▪ Left: “The Two Georges” exhibition explores the parallel lives of George Washington and King George III. Shawn Miller
▪ Right: With the Library’s Jefferson Building as a backdrop, the U.S. flag flutters in a summer breeze. Shawn Miller

‘It’s Your Story’

The Library celebrates America’s 250th birthday with exhibitions, programs and initiatives.
This year, the Library of Congress invites every American to explore our nation’s rich history through captivating exhibitions and vibrant programs that bring the institution’s extraordinary collections to life.

Under the theme “It’s Your Story,” the Library is celebrating America’s 250th birthday by offering opportunities for all to explore our shared history in the world’s largest research collections.

As part of the celebration, the Library is launching several exciting new exhibitions.

Opening July 3, “The Declaration’s Promise” highlights treasures like Thomas Jefferson’s rough draft of the Declaration of Independence and Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, exploring the enduring ideals that shaped the nation.

favorite place
Ornate circular ceiling mural featuring the Great Seal of the United States at the center, surrounded by decorative scrollwork, flags, symbolic figures, and richly colored classical motifs.
Carol M. Highsmith Archive/Prints and Photographs Division

Pavilion of the Seals

Tucked into the northeast corner of the Jefferson Building, the reading room of the African and Middle Eastern Division — also known as the Pavilion of the Seals — transports visitors across time and continents, immersing them in the late 19th-century United States, classical Greece and Rome and societies that emerged across the globe. Its Africana, Hebraic and Near Eastern collections span millennia — from a cuneiform livestock receipt dated to 2047 B.C. to Ethiopian manuscripts and contemporary newspapers.

At the heart of the domed ceiling, Elmer E. Garnsey’s rendering of the Great Seal of the United States is encircled by allegorical imagery, blending symbols of the Old World with the new. The Four Winds — figures from ancient iconography — sweep across depictions of American fruits and grains, while dolphins, lyres and torches symbolize fisheries, fine arts and the pursuit of knowledge. An inscription of Abraham Lincoln’s enduring vision forms the border: “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Hand-drawn historical map detail showing a coastal island with hills, forests, and handwritten labels marking geographic features and routes.

Real Maps for Imaginary Places

A journey into the cartography of literature.
by Neely tucker
Annotated map of Jefferson in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, associated with William Faulkner, showing roads, landmarks, and handwritten notes describing locations in the fictional county.
▪ Top: This map, drawn by Robert Louis Stevenson, inspired him to create the classic adventure novel “Treasure Island.” Rare Book and Special Collections Division
▪ Middle: Dick Martin’s colorful 1988 map takes readers on a journey into Oz. Geography and Map Division
▪ Bottom: William Faulkner drew this map of fictional Yoknapatawpha County, labeling himself at lower left as its “sole owner & proprietor.” Rare Book and Special Collections Division
The novelist started with a map.

His name was Robert Louis Stevenson, it was 1881, and he was playing a game with his stepson when he sketched out an idea.

“I made the map of an island; it was elaborately and (I thought) beautifully colored; the shape of it took my fancy beyond expression; it contained harbors that pleased me like sonnets; and with the unconsciousness of the predestined, I ticketed my performance ‘Treasure Island,’” he wrote years later. “… The next thing I knew, I had some papers before me and was writing out a list of chapters.”

“Treasure Island,” the adventurous story of a boy, gnarly pirates and a treasure map, would become one of the most influential novels of the era. Stevenson’s sketch has become one of the most famous literary maps in world literature.

Online offerings
▪ Alphonse Mucha created this art nouveau poster advertising JOB cigarette rolling papers circa 1898. Prints and Photographs Division

The Magic of Mucha

This Czech artist’s lush, irresistible designs helped define art nouveau.
The Library’s vast print collections include more than a dozen striking images by Alphonse Mucha, the Czech artist widely credited as an originator of the art nouveau style, most notably in the realm of the graphic arts.

Like many other aspiring artists from Central Europe in the period, Mucha had moved to France in 1887 to further his already extensive artistic training. Although he worked steadily as an illustrator for Parisian publishers into the early 1890s, he was living in relative obscurity when he got his big break through a fortuitous collaboration with famed French actress Sarah Bernhardt.

For You
Stage performance of “The Sound of Music” featuring a woman and a group of children in sailor-style costumes singing and celebrating on a staircase set.
▪ The cast of “The Sound of Music” onstage in October of last year. Jeremy Daniel

On the Road with ‘Sound of Music’

Collaboration with touring company offers inside look at creation of beloved musical.
The Library and a national touring company are offering theatergoers a peek behind the curtain of one of Broadway’s most cherished musicals: “The Sound of Music.”

In a first-of-its-kind collaboration, the Library and the national tour of “The Sound of Music” are presenting “Inside the Vault,” a new traveling and virtual display that offers a rare look at the creation of one of the most beloved musicals of all time.

“Inside the Vault” invites audiences to explore original archival materials from the Library’s Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II collections that reveal how the show’s iconic songs were conceived, developed and brought to life.

extremes
Preserved shed snakeskin fragments arranged flat against a light background, showing the translucent scales and segmented texture of the reptile’s skin.

Snakeskin Bookmarks — yes, really

You never know what you’ll find in the pages of old books.
Linnea Vegh was working at a large, well-lit workspace in the Conservation Division, considering an unusual problem in an 1869 Persian-Arabic dictionary published in India: snakeskin.

Staff in the African and Middle Eastern Division had found five pieces of snakeskin — thin, desiccated, brownish, each several inches long — among the 500 or so pages of “Muntakhab al-lughāt.” It’s one of several hundred rare Persian-language lithographs Vegh was preparing for scanning and digitization.

Unlikely as it might seem, “they were probably used as a convenient bookmarker,” said Vegh, who, as a book conservation technician, is familiar with finding weird things in old books. In this collection alone, she’s found “leaves, flowers, insects, spiders … breadcrumbs, tobacco and, of course, lots of handwritten notes.”

Relief map of the Atlantic Ocean showing the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and surrounding continents including North and South America, Europe, and Africa.
▪ Above: Artist Heinrich Berann painted this world map of the ocean floor, created by Marie Tharp and Bruce Heezen — the first realistic depiction of complete ocean-floor bathymetry. Geography and Map Division/Used by permission of the estate of Marie Tharp

The woman who mapped the ocean

The revolutionary sea floor charts of Marie Tharp.
By Meagan Snow and Carissa Pastuch
Marie Tharp was an American geologist and marine cartographer whose groundbreaking visualizations of ocean floors and discovery of the mid-Atlantic rift valley challenged the widely accepted geological views of the time.

Although plate tectonics (the idea that the Earth’s surface is built of moving plates) is accepted today, Tharp’s theory originally met opposition within the scientific community. Over time, her work sparked the plate tectonics revolution, a shift in geological thinking that transformed how scientists understand and map the Earth.

Tharp was introduced to geology and cartography at a young age, often accompanying her father, a U.S. Department of Agriculture soil surveyor, into the field to survey and map soil. During World War II, she earned a master’s degree in geology at the University of Michigan, then moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to work for Stanolind Oil and Gas Company while completing a mathematics degree at the University of Tulsa.

Dissatisfied, Tharp moved to New York to work as a cartographic assistant at the Lamont Geological Observatory. Barred from ocean expeditions as a woman, she stayed ashore and used sonar depth measurements taken by male colleagues to manually create revolutionary visualizations of the sea floor.

At the time, it was newly understood that the ocean floor was not just a flat surface. Tharp used depth measurements — known as soundings, which record the time it takes a sound signal to travel from a ship to the ocean floor and back — to visualize this for the first time.

With those soundings, she created six depth profiles of the North Atlantic. Across the profiles, she noticed a V-shaped indentation — a large valley, she surmised, in the center of the ocean floor. Tharp began creating physiographic diagrams that visualized the ocean floor’s transition from smooth plains to spiked undersea mountains — all done without computers.

▪ An armillary sphere from a sumptuous atlas produced by Italian cartographer Battista Agnese in 1544. The atlas, illustrated in watercolor and illuminated with gold and silver, reflected the latest geographic knowledge. Geography and Map Division

Into the Unknown

Voyages of exploration in the Library’s collections.
By Neely Tucker
From the vast reaches of outer space to the depths of the Mariana Trench, the Library’s collections chronicle some of the Western world’s greatest voyages of discovery and exploration, often yearslong epics that illuminated the mysteries of the world and of ourselves.

These are journeys that crossed time and space, shattering the old realms of myth and superstition and revealing the known world, a place of maps and charts and taxonomic tables. Giants and dragons did not exist, it turned out, but a whole new universe filled with strange and wonderful things did.

“Ocian in view!” an ecstatic William Clark wrote in his journal on Nov. 7, 1805, when he and Meriwether Lewis’ expedition thought they had sighted the Pacific Ocean after trekking westward for 18 months from St. Louis with the aid of Native Americans. The blue waters (of what turned out to be the Columbia River estuary) seemed to promise a sort of glimmering paradise: “O! the joy!”

Portrait of Scottish explorer James Bruce shown in 18th-century attire, placed over a historic map background marking regions of Ethiopia and the Nile.
▪ Right: James Bruce chronicled his quest to discover the source of the Nile in this epic five-volume book, complete with maps. Portrait from Scottish National Gallery; book from Rare Book and Special Collections Division
page from the past
Historic hand-drawn map depicting the route of the Lewis and Clark expedition across North America, showing rivers, mountain ranges, and geographic features from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast.
▪ Pvt. Robert Frazer intended to publish this map alongside an account of his trek across the continent — a project that never came to fruition. Geography and Map Division

Across the Wilderness with Robert Frazer

A soldier made this map of his journey with Lewis and Clark.
When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set out from Camp Dubois into the unknown on May 14, 1804, they led a bustling caravan of dozens of soldiers, guides, interpreters, hunters and boatmen. One who made the entire round-trip journey was Pvt. Robert Frazer.

Born in Augusta County, Virginia, in 1775, Frazer originally joined the Lewis and Clark expedition as a temporary member to help man the barges as far as what’s now North Dakota. When a member of the permanent party deserted, Frazer was chosen to take his place.

off the shelf
Arrangement of historical documents and photographs including a portrait of an early aviator or scientist, handwritten correspondence, engineering diagrams, and a French technical journal page about balloon exploration.
▪ The Manuscript Division holds artifacts related to Salomon Andrée’s voyage to the North Pole, including a photo of the explorer himself and fabric samples from the construction of his balloon, shown in the lower left. Shawn Miller

When Discovery Falls to Earth

A fragment of a failed balloon expedition to the North Pole.
Only traces remain of Salomon August Andrée’s 1897 attempt to reach the North Pole. From a base on the Svalbard archipelago, the engineer and his two companions had hoped to float a hydrogen balloon gracefully over the pole, drop a Swedish flag and claim the glory of first discovery. Their friends never saw them alive again.

At first, the public received communications from Andrée directly, delivered by carrier pigeon. Then there were rumors of possible sightings that thinned as time passed, then silence. And then, in 1930, the accidental discovery of the expedition’s wreckage: clothing, diaries, undeveloped photographs and the scattered remains of the explorers themselves.

Sir Francis Drake & the Elizabethan World

Detail from a historic illustrated map showing a coastal settlement with soldiers, ships, and small boats landing along the shoreline during a military expedition.
▪ A detail from a map of St. Augustine, Florida, illustrating Sir Francis Drake’s West Indian voyage of 1585-86. Rare Book and Special Collections Division
Collection chronicles the high-seas exploits of one of history’s great explorers.
By Neely Tucker
The captain set sail with five ships and 164 crew members from Plymouth, England,
at 5 p.m. in the early darkness of Dec. 13, 1577. The ships headed south and vanished from sight.

He didn’t return for nearly three years, sailing back into Plymouth with only a fraction of his fleet intact. But he had the hold of his last ship “very richly fraught with gold, silver, pearls and precious stones.” In today’s terms, the cache was worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

He also had the world at his feet, for Francis Drake — soon to be Sir Francis Drake — was the first captain to sail around the world and live to tell about it. (Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed during the world’s first circumnavigation half a century earlier; his crew finished the trip.)

Around the Library
Speaker presenting at a Library of Congress podium beside a display screen showing a slide titled “African Sufi Poetry,” addressing an audience in an ornate interior hall.
Oludamini Ogunnaike discusses African Sufi poetry during a “Conversations with African Poets and Writers” series event hosted by the African and Middle Eastern Division on Jan. 22.
Historic rare books displayed on a table beside a brass lamp, with an open antique volume in the foreground showing handwritten notes and an early printed title page.
A 1605 first edition of “Don Quixote” is displayed with subsequent editions in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division reading room on Jan. 14.
Exterior view of the Library of Congress Jefferson Building in winter, with snow-covered grounds and a large supported tree in the foreground against a clear blue sky.
The Library’s Yoshino cherry tree stands above the snow outside the Jefferson Building on Feb. 2.
Two older adults standing indoors holding a commemorative plaque together during a Library of Congress recognition event.
Acting Librarian of Congress Robert Randolph Newlen presents Mari Coté with a plaque honoring her 30 years of volunteer service to the Library on Feb. 9.
Three adults examining historical documents and photographs laid out on a table, leaning in closely during a research or archival review session.
“Chez Joey” cast and crew members (from left) Kevin Cahoon, Richard LaGravenese and Samantha Massell look over Music Division collections items on Feb. 9.
Ensemble performance on a concert hall stage featuring vocalists and instrumentalists, including piano and string musicians, performing before a seated audience.
Broadway stars perform during “Loewe & Behold: An Evening with the Music of Frederick Loewe,” a concert in the Coolidge Auditorium celebrating the composer’s collections at the Library on Feb. 2.
ALL PHOTOS BY SHAWN MILLER

News Briefs

  • ‘Philadelphia,’ ‘Glory’ Among Titles Added to Film Registry

    The Library has selected 25 films for the National Film Registry due to their cultural, historical or aesthetic importance to preserve the nation’s film heritage.

    The selections for 2025 date back to the silent film era with six silent films dating from 1896 to 1926 — a significant number of films in this class. The newest film added to the registry is from 2014 with filmmaker Wes Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” the creation of which included meticulous historical research at the Library to create visually striking scenery.

    Iconic Hollywood films from the last 50 years selected for the registry this year include “The Karate Kid,” “Glory,” “Philadelphia,” “Inception” and the teen comedy “Clueless.” Classic Hollywood selections include the 1954 musical “White Christmas” and “High Society” from 1956.

    MORE: loc.gov/item/prn-25-008

  • ‘American Pachuco’ Awarded Prize for Film

    In October, the seventh annual Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize was awarded to the film “American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez.”

    Directed by David Alvarado, the film chronicles the extraordinary life of renowned playwright and screenwriter Luis Valdez, who transformed American theater in the 1960s and ’70s and brought the Mexican American experience to the stage and screen. The film was awarded a $200,000 prize. It also was an official selection of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

    “Diamond Diplomacy,” directed by Yuriko Gamo Romer, received the runner-up prize of $50,000. The film recounts how baseball became the national pastime of Japan even while enduring challenges of war and racism and how it helped to forge a bond between the U.S. and Japan with unexpected ambassadors like Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio and Masanori Murakami.

    Underwriting for the prizes is made possible by donations from Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine through the Crimson Lion/Lavine Family Foundation, and additional funding is provided by The Better Angels Society.

    MORE: loc.gov/item/prn-25-072
Collage graphic promoting the Library of Congress National Film Registry, featuring iconic film characters and scenes from different eras arranged around a central image of a grand hotel and the animated superhero family from “The Incredibles,” with the text “Library of Congress National Film Registry.”
25 new films are joining the registry due to their cultural, historic and aesthetic importance.

Shop

Lewis and Clark themed notebook with a brown cover and a printed wraparound band featuring historic expedition imagery and text.

‘Lewis & Clark and the Revealing of America’

Product #21102194
Price: $69

This portfolio of images is based on the Library exhibition commemorating the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Comes in a box measuring 18.5 by 2 inches.
Book cover titled “The Two Georges: Parallel Lives in an Age of Revolution,” featuring full-length painted portraits of King George III and George Washington.

‘The Two Georges’

Product #21111121, #21111120
Price: $49.95 (hardcover), $24.95 (paperback)

This beautifully illustrated volume — the companion to the Library exhibit — compares the lives of George Washington and King George III.
Book cover titled “A Renaissance Globemaker’s Toolbox” showing historic celestial and cartographic illustrations with images of globes and scientific diagrams.

‘Globemaker’s Toolbox’

Price: $29.95
 

Explore the seminal work of mathematician and scientist Johannes Schöner. This volume reproduces the original world maps made by Martin Waldseemüller and celestial globe gores by Schöner.
support
Colorful interactive exhibition space with educational displays, worktables, and multimedia stations designed for hands-on learning and research activities.
▪ A rendering of the Library’s new educational gallery for young people, The Source. Center for Exhibits and Interpretation

A new research space for kids

Philanthropy helps bring Source initiative to fruition.
Private support allows the Library to expand upon ideas that create new resources for the public. The Source, the new 4,000-square-foot experiential and education gallery in the Jefferson Building, will come to life this May thanks to this collaboration of public funds and private donations. Among several private donors, Exelon and GM have provided support that funds experiences that will enhance the new space with activations for visitors.

Until now, children ages 8-15 could visit the Library and participate in planned programs, but they did not have a dedicated learning space. Opening in May, The Source will allow these young people and the adults who love and support them to participate in creative, bespoke research explorations. They will be encouraged to practice their critical-thinking skills and learn what it means to be an active citizen researcher — gathering and processing information and collaborating with others.

Graphic announcing the Library of Congress National Book Festival with the headline “Save the Date” and text noting the event returns to the Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, August 22.
last word
Author Hampton Sides seated indoors with hands lightly clasped, wearing a black shirt and bracelets, looking thoughtfully toward the camera.
Kitty leaken

HAMPTON SIDES

A few months ago, while traveling in Portugal, I paid a visit to one of the most extraordinary shrines ever built to celebrate the enterprise of exploration. Lisbon’s Monument of the Discoveries, inaugurated in 1960, is a formidable structure of ce-ment and rose-tinted stone that takes the shape of a mighty ship’s prow looming over the Tagus River estuary. Along the sides of this figurative vessel, historical luminaries from Portugal’s golden age of exploration — including Vasco da Gama, Prince Henry the Navigator, Bartolomeu Dias and Ferdinand Magellan — struggle heroically toward the sky, as though exploration were a divine activity, synonymous with grandeur itself.

The monument recalls a time when tiny Portugal ruled the seas, when its sleek carracks and caravels were launched from wharves on the Tagus to probe the farthest reaches of the planet, and when Lisbon boasted the world’s preeminent shipbuilders, mapmakers and inventors of ingenious navigational instruments.

The monument seems to be telling us: A great nation is an exploring nation. A great nation soars upward when it ventures outward.

ink coneflowers in bloom with a bumblebee resting on one flower in the foreground, with the domed Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress softly blurred in the background.
▪ A bumblebee enjoys echinacea flowers on a Madison Building balcony, with the dome of the Jefferson Building looming in the background. Shawn Miller
White text on a transparent background reads: "Create your LIBRARY legacy with a gift in your will," with "LIBRARY" emphasized in bold capital letters.
White text on a transparent background reads: "Create your LIBRARY legacy with a gift in your will," with "LIBRARY" emphasized in bold capital letters.

Current Exhibitions

Promotional graphic featuring painted portraits of King George III and George Washington with the title “The Two Georges: Parallel Lives in an Age of Revolution,” alongside images of a grand piano on display and a marble bust sculpture, highlighting historical artifacts connected to the exhibition.
THE TWO GEORGES
Through July 4, 2026

HERE TO STAY: THE LEGACY OF GEORGE AND IRA GERSHWIN
Ongoing

THOMAS JEFFERSON’S LIBRARY
Ongoing

More Information

loc.gov/exhibits

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