A Place of Reading: Three Centuries of Reading in America
Neilson Library at Smith College in Northampton, MA is currently featuring an exhibit called A Place of Reading: Three Centuries of Reading in America . This exhibition illuminates the rich history of reading in America that showcases—through books, broadsides, woodcuts, etchings, lithographs, watercolors, etc.—the places and events that particularly prompted the act of reading. By exhibiting these material and visual objects of the past, and in exploring the geography of reading, we hope to raise new questions—and answers—about readers and reading in America. A Place of Reading is a collaboration between the Smith College Mortimer Rare Book Room and the Center for Historic American Visual Culture at the American Antiquarian Society , which has loaned most of the items on display. Main themes of the exhibition include: the Colonial Home; Revolutionary Taverns; North/South/East/West: Newspapers, Periodicals, and the Popular Press; and Reading at the Front: The Civil War. In...
