Tuesday May 8, 2018
5:30-7:30 pm
John Hay Library, Brown University
20 Prospect Street, Providence, RI
Please join us for Richard Gutman’s illustrated talk on his 1979 limited-edition book, John Wilkes Booth Himself. It is a monograph of all the known photographs of Booth at the time of its publication. The book is used as a source document in identifying both pictures of Booth and the photographers who took them. He will discuss the photographs in the context of the 1860s cult of celebrity, as well as the use of imagery in newspapers and books from Booth’s lifetime.
There will be time for discussion and viewing items from the Charles Woodberry McLellan Collection of Lincolniana. Light refreshments will be served.
Attendees arriving after 6pm should enter the Hay Library through the accessible door on the North side of the building.
About Richard Gutman: He is an expert on the photographs of Lincoln’s assassin, as well as the leading authority of the history of diners, writing four books on the subject. As the former director and curator of the Culinary Arts Museum at Johnson & Wales University, he mounted 96 exhibits in eleven years. The museum is now closed to the public.