Exhibition Collecting Memories: Treasures from the Library of Congress

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.

Dynamic moving images of treasured collections envelop the Gallery. They are a testament to the astounding range of what is here at the Library, while signaling that the collections themselves continue in a perpetual state of expansion. The table at the exhibition’s center gives visitors direct interaction with a sampling of collection items and underscores a fundamental tenet of this remarkable institution: the Library of Congress collects, preserves, and serves its collections to you.

The Library of Congress gratefully acknowledges the generous support of David M. Rubenstein.

The David M. Rubenstein Treasures Gallery is dedicated to sharing the rarest, most interesting, or significant items created across the globe and drawn from every corner of the world’s largest library.