Print Size: 12" x 18" (Frame Size: 18" x 24") Architect: Edward Pearce Casey; Painter: Edwin Howland Blashfield; Photographer: Carol Highsmith
Although its official name is the Library of Congress, it is really the Library of the United States, executed by leading American architects, painters and sculptors in the first comprehensive artistic program commissioned by the government for a major public monument. The main reading room marks its central importance with a dome that dissolves from darker tones at bottom to lighter tones at top as gilded coffers diminish from 4.5’ to 2.5’ square. The whole is unified by eight iron ribs and by an extraordinary stucco ground of interlaced fantastic creatures. Populating the painted collar are 12 nations, epochs and contributions that most influenced America’s development. Enthroned above, in the 160-foot-high sky blue lantern, is “Human Understanding.” Iconography completes on the reading desks below where opening a book becomes solemn ritual and research, irrespective of subject, assumes a mantle of importance.
