Library News / Special Collections

Concord Stories from Special Collections: Alexander von Humboldt and the United States

Fri, October 16, 2020

Concord Stories from Special Collections is a new virtual series that highlights the rich holdings of the Concord Free Public Library Corporation’s William Munroe Special Collections through stories about Concord’s people and places from a variety of guests, including Concord residents, scholars, researchers, and curators. The featured guest for our first installment on October 1, 2020 at 7:00 p.m., was Dr. Eleanor Harvey, the senior curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Click here to watch the premiere of Concord Stories. 

• Special Collections

Concord Stories from Special Collections: A Hopeful Heart: Louisa May Alcott Before Little Women

Thu, October 15, 2020

Concord Stories from Special Collections is a new virtual series that highlights the rich holdings of the Concord Free Public Library Corporation’s William Munroe Special Collections through stories about Concord’s people and places from a variety of guests, including Concord residents, scholars, researchers, and curators. On Thursday, October 15,  Deborah Noyes, author of A Hopeful Heart: Louisa May Alcott Before Little Women (2020) gave a presentation online. Click here to watch the presentation.

• Special Collections

Elizabeth “Aunt Lizzie” Sherman Hoar Returns to Concord

Wed, September 30, 2020

• Special Collections

“No picture could be more lovely”:  Ada Shepard with the Hawthornes in Florence, 1858 Exhibition

Thu, June 28, 2018

“No picture could be more lovely":  Ada Shepard with the Hawthornes in Florence, 1858 exhibition and accompanying take place from April 6 – June 28, 2018 at the Main Library.  Free and open to all.  [Read More] [Watch Exhibition Opening]

• Special Collections

Art Tour

Thu, November 30, 2017

 We are pleased to present an online audio tour of selected artwork from the Concord Free Public Library's William Munroe Special Collections.  Click here or on an image below to start the tour.

• Special Collections

“Concord, which is my Rome”: Henry Thoreau and His Home Town Exhibition:  Lecture Series

Sat, October 07, 2017

The next lecture is Saturday, October 7 at 5:00 p.m. in the Main Library Rotunda.  It is titled “The Nick of Time”: Coming of Age in Thoreau’s Concord and to be presented by Robert A. Gross, Draper Professor of Early American History Emeritus, University of Connecticut.  Free and open to the public.  [ [Watch Exhibit Opening Night]

• Special Collections

Picturing Emerson: A Selection of Lifetime Portraits of Ralph Waldo Emerson Exhibition

Tue, May 30, 2017

In her 2006 article in Nineteenth-Century Prose, "The Tenant is More Than the House": Selected Emerson Portraits in the Concord Free Public Library, our Special Collections' Curator Leslie Perrin Wilson wrote: Although the basic work of identifying and describing images begs to be done, Emerson iconography is about a good deal more than creator, date, medium, and circumstances of portrait. Ten years later, that work has been done. The result is a forthcoming book, Picturing Emerson: An Iconography (Harvard, summer 2017), co-written by Wilson and Joel Myerson, and an accompanying exhibit, Picturing Emerson: A Selection of Lifetime Portraits of Ralph Waldo Emerson, to be on display at the Main Library's Art Gallery from March 7 to May 30, 2017.

• Special Collections