National Sporting Library & Museum

by Charles Caramello Lida Fleitmann Bloodgood (1894-1982) and Major Piero Santini (1881-1960) are among the few 20th-century individuals who were both accomplished equestrians and distinguished authors of equestrian books. Even more unusually, their lives were personally and professionally intertwined. The intimacy of their shared lives and careers—built on a mutual passion for horses,…

By Dr. Colleen Yarger, George L. Ohrstrom, Jr. Curator of Library Collections Currently on view until September 13, in the Library’s Forrest E. Mars, Sr. Exhibit Hall, is Drawn to Nature: 300 Years of Natural History Illustration. This exhibit provides a primer on the advancements in Natural History—the study of nature—and how that information was conveyed across Europe and America between the…

By Dr. Colleen Yarger, George L. Ohrstrom, Jr. Curator of Library Collections This coming Sunday, March 23, 2025, the curtain closes on the National Sporting Library & Museum’s (NSLM) popular exhibition, Honoring the Point: The Gwynne McDevitt Sporting Dog Collection. Honoring the Point in the LibraryHonoring the Point in the LibraryHonoring the Point in the MuseumHonoring the Point in the…

In 2016, the National Museum of Women in the Arts first launched its #5womenartists social media campaign to ask followers, “Can you name five women artists?” It was posted to bring attention to the under-representation of women in the arts. Since then, the National Sporting Library & Museum has continued to grow its fine art collection. In response to the NMWA’s question, we proudly share a…

I am still knee-deep in the Judith & Jo Tartt, Jr. Photography Collection: sorting, organizing, unmatting, cataloguing, etc.  Alas, a Collections Manager’s job is never done. It means, though, I have become very familiar with the photographs, and I have my favorites. This is one of them: Danny McAuliffe: A Jockey Who Rode a Mudder, September 16, 1932, gelatin silver print heightened with ink and…

Washington, DC, artist Jack Boul, perhaps, will be most remembered for his pastoral landscape paintings of cows, but his subject matter was much more diverse over his long career. He was born in Brooklyn in 1927, grew up in the South Bronx, and met his wife Vivian of 72 years while working at the Jewish Camp Kinderland in Upstate New York. At the end of World War II, Boul was drafted into the…

At the end of my last blog, I teased more highlights from the Judith and Jo Tartt, Jr. Photography Collection. Whilst it is still my intention, something else grabbed my attention, and I went down a different rabbit hole. In Hollywood is for the Horses, I highlighted Silver from “The Lone Ranger” cannon; the duo was featured across all entertainment mediums, from radio to movies. The Lone…

by Tom Sadler Last Sunday I had the chance to attend and speak briefly at the National Sporting Library & Museum’s Field Day. It was a chance to visit my old stomping ground in and around Middleburg, Virginia. The Field Day included crafts, fly casting lessons, fly tying demos, and art vendors. In the afternoon was the IF4™ International Film Festival showcasing a variety of fly-fishing…

It’s the early 20th century and you have five cents to spare, so you go to the nickelodeon to check out the latest motion picture. Chances are one of the stars of the show is a horse. The argument could be made that the earliest movie star was a horse: that of Eadweard Muybridge’s famous images of a trotting horse, named Abe Edgington, galloping in 1878. The following year, Muybridge invented…

In 1893, the American Hackney Horse Society (AHHS), established just two years prior in 1891, published an ambitious project—the first American Hackney Stud Book (a first edition of which is held in the National Sporting Library & Museum’s collections and is available on online.) As noted in the volume, the focus of the founders of the society was to establish American bloodlines for Hackneys by…

by Julie Banner #1 New York Times best-selling author Elizabeth Letts has perfected the art of writing extraordinary stories about seemingly ordinary people. Her most recent book, The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America, is no exception. Letts magically guides readers on a harrowing journey as she weaves American culture into this…

By Dr. Colleen Yarger, George L. Ohrstrom, Jr. Curator of Library Collections “Wear your jacket!” I’ll be completely honest: I have a significant amount of experience with this statement. First as a child impervious to the cold; and now as a parent delivering this line—seemingly, ad nauseum—to my own temperature-resilient children. My “obsession” with jackets extends to my work at the National…

By Monica Soto, Digitization Technician The National Sporting Library & Museum (NLSM) recently received a fantastic archival gift from Nina Fout on behalf of the National Beagle Club of America (NBCA). The NSLM is now the steward of the NBCA archives. This collection contains more than a dozen items including meeting minutes, field trial records, ledgers, transcribed histories, and…