The Library of Congress preserves collective memories representing entire societies as well as intimate records of important moments and rites of passage in individual lives.
The inaugural exhibition in the David M. Rubenstein Treasures Gallery draws from the Library’s rich Americana and international holdings in more than 450 languages and in forms created across time and continents. Collecting Memories marks the ways and the means by which cultures preserve memory.
This exhibition juxtaposes voice recordings, moving images, scrolls, diaries, manuscripts, prints, photographs, maps, books, and so much more to inspire us to consider the connections and divergences among individual memory, collective memory, and recorded history.
Collecting Memories explores how cultures may guide and honor memory, memorialize the past, assemble knowledge of the known world, create collective histories, recall the events of the day, or recount a life.
Credits - Library of Congress - Collecting Memories - David M. Rubenstein Treasures Gallery