Library art — The Pavilion of the Seals

This is a guest post by Jane Hudiburg, an analyst in the Congressional Research Service. It also appears in the March/April issue of the Library of Congress Magazine. Tucked into the northeast corner of the Jefferson Building, the reading room of the African and Middle Eastern Division — also known as the Pavilion of the Seals — transports visitors across time and continents, immersing them in the late 19th-century United States, classical Greece and Rome and societies that emerged across the globe. Its Africana, Hebraic and Near Eastern collections span millennia — from a cuneiform livestock receipt dated to 2047 B.C. to Ethiopian manuscripts and contemporary newspapers. At the heart of the domed ceiling, Elmer E. Garnsey’s rendering of the Great Seal of the United States is encircled by allegorical imagery, blending symbols of the Old World with the new. The Four Winds — figures from ancient iconography — sweep across depictions of American fruits and grains. Dolphins, lyres and torches symbolize (respectively) fisheries, fine arts and the pursuit of knowledge. An inscription of Abraham Lincoln’s enduring vision forms the border: “… that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Below…

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