Upcoming & Current Events

Current Exhibition in the Library Company’s
Louise Lux-Sions and Harry Sions Gallery:

Remnants of Everyday Life: Historical Ephemera in the
Workplace, Street, and Home

Exhibition on View:
May 1–December 13, 2013

Gallery Open
Monday–Friday, 9:00 a.m.–4:45 p.m.

The exhibition and its accompanying programming are supported by funds from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the
Philadelphia Cultural Fund.

Unmediated History:
The Scholarly Study of 19th-Century Ephemera

September 19-20 2013

The Visual Culture Program at the Library Company of Philadelphia has joined forces with The Ephemera Society of America to present this conference, which seeks to further acknowledge and promote printed and graphic ephemera not only as sources of striking illustrative images, but also as primary evidence in the reconstruction of popular movements and visual cultures.

Click Here to view Conference website.

City Water, City Life: Water and the Infrastructure of Ideas in Urbanizing Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago

Co-sponsored by Fairmount Water Works

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Reception, 5:30 p.m.

Program, 6:00 p.m.

In City Water, City Life, historian Carl Smith explores the development of the first successful waterworks systems in Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago between the 1790s and the 1860s. Through an analysis of a broad range of sources, Smith shows how the discussion, design, and use of waterworks reveal how Americans framed their conceptions of urban democracy and how they understood the natural and the built environment, individual health and the well-being of society, and the qualities of time and history. Smith is the Franklyn Bliss Snyder Professor of English & American Studies at Northwestern University.

Click here to register