Finished

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1,676 still photographs of 42 painted backgrounds + dozens of puppets = 1 completed 9-minute animation!

Laurel Hill Cemetery Exhibition in the Daily News

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Guest Curator Aaron Wunsch points out the highlights of our current exhibition “Building a City of the Dead: The Creation and Expansion of Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery” in the following video courtesy of Jon Snyder of the Philadelphia…

Repeats

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I thought I'd show you some shots of my animation backdrops and puppets. To animate facial expressions, hand gestures, and other motion sequences, I make series of replaceable parts. I place each piece on a painted backdrop, snap a photo,…

Laying Out Exhibition Cases

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Reference Librarian Linda August and Curator of Prints and Photographs Sarah Weatherwax are collaborating on a small exhibition to accompany Jennifer Levonian's animated video. Women not only fought as men in the Civil War, they also concealed…

Busy

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March is flying by and I've been busy painting the backgrounds for my animation.

“Technology Versus Art”

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Join us on Wednesday, March 23 at 6:00 p.m. for “Technology Versus Art: The Early Daguerreotype’s Confounding Status in Philadelphia, 1839-1845" Sarah Gillespie, current William H. Helfand American Visual Culture Fellow at the Library…

“Revisiting Rural Cemeteries”

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Join us on Wednesday, March 16th, 1:00 - 5:45 p.m. for a Symposium Sponsored by Library Company of Philadelphia, the Laurel Hill Cemetery Company, and the Program in Historic Preservation, University of Pennsylvania In the three decades prior…

Wendy in Disguise

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As I continued to read about the topic of women soldiers in the Civil War, I learned that there are a number of women that disguise themselves as men to portray male soldiers in Civil War re-enactments. This discovery led me to the panhandle…

Choosing a Topic

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When I began to visit the Library Company’s Print Room to view the McAllister Collection of Civil War ephemera, I was both fascinated and overwhelmed by the collection and the scope of the subject. Not only did the Civil War seem much…

Stewardship Program

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Become a Steward of the collections of the Library Company and sponsor your own piece of history! Through our Stewardship Program, you can support the purchase of interesting and important rare books, pamphlets, prints, and photographs.…

Illustrating the Civil War

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Jennifer recently visited the Library Company to look at some of our printed material, including Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. Leslie’s was a heavily illustrated American literary and news serial founded in 1855. It portrayed the…

Introductions

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  I’m Jennifer Levonian, a Philadelphia artist working in painting and cut-paper animation. The above self-portrait is a still from an animation I made last winter. Currently, I’m making an animation inspired by the Library Company’s…

In-Service Day 2-4-11

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The Library Company has scheduled an in-service day for staff on Friday, February 4, 2011. Consequently, the Library Company reading rooms will be closed to all researchers except current fellows. The McNeil Center program in the Logan…

Friday, January 21, 2011

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This day in history: On January 21, 1738 Revolutionary War Hero, Ethan Allen was born in Litchfield, Connecticut. In our collection: Allen, Ethan. A narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen's captivity:from the time of his being taken by the…

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

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This day in history: On December 14, 1799 General George Washington died in Mount Vernon at the age of 67 breathing his last words: "Tis' well". In our collection: Caldwell, Charles, An elegiac poem on the death of General Washington…

Laurel Hill Cemetery Exhibtion

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Laurel Hill Cemetery is celebrating their 175th year with an exhibition at the Library Company. "Building a City of the Dead: The Creation and Expansion of Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery" was highlighted in a piece by Jon Snyder of the…

Library Company Receives NEH Grant to Catalog and Digitize Its 18th- and 19th-Century Ephemera Collections

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With the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Library Company will catalog, conserve, and selectively digitize between Spring 2010 and 2012 its uncataloged and recently donated collections of printed and graphic…

Early Book Structures and the Nag Hammadi Codices

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Friday, October 29 Program at 6:00 P.M. Julia Miller, former senior conservator on the staff of the University of Michigan conservation lab, will discuss the Nag Hammadi Codices. These are the manuscripts discovered in Egypt in 1945 that…

October 18th in History

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William Henry Seward, secretary of state under President Andrew Johnson, championed the purchase of Alaska from Russia for two cents an acre resulting in the United States taking possession of the territory on this day in 1867. In our collection: Seward,…

Photograph Collections from the Library Company now on PhillyHistory.org

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The Library Company has recently partnered with PhillyHistory.org, providing several photographic collections to its website. Run by the Philadelphia Department of Records, PhillyHistory.org includes photographs and maps from the Free…