The Louis Armstrong House Museum (LAHM) launched “That’s My Home,” a new online exhibition that shares with homebound citizens around the globe a glimpse into Louis’s life at his home in Corona, Queens, where he lived the last 40 years of his life. LAHM’s Research Collections Director, Ricky Riccardi, has been hard at work with the Museum’s staff to create an online portal documenting Armstrong’s life at home through archival footage, rare photographs, and priceless audio from Armstrong’s own private reel-to-reel tapes. In the coming weeks, the site will add virtual tours of the home (a national landmark), livestream panel discussions, and more.
“For 25 years, Queens College has proudly preserved the Louis Armstrong Research Collections and has opened their doors to anyone with an interest in this monumental artist,” says Jeff Rosenstock, Queens College’s assistant vice president for governmental affairs and LAHM’s acting cirector. “Today we celebrate the precious time Satchmo spent at home in Corona, Queens, as we spend time at home ourselves. We hope that we can all draw inspiration from Armstrong’s love for his neighborhood, his community, and New York, his adopted city.”
Check out the virtual exhibition here.
This year indeed marks the 25th anniversary of the LAHM’s opening of the iconic jazz musician’s archives to the public. The Louis Armstrong House Research Collections constitutes the world’s largest archives for a single jazz musician. The core of the collections is the Louis Armstrong Collection made up of the artifacts and materials found in the Armstrong House after the passing of Louis and Lucille and donated by the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation to Queens College/CUNY in 1987. The Armstrong Collection includes 1,600 recordings, 650 home recorded reel-to-reel tapes in hand-decorated boxes, 86 scrapbooks, 5,000 photographs, 270 sets of band parts, 12 linear feet of papers, letters and manuscripts, five trumpets, 14 mouthpieces, 120 awards and plaques, and much more.
The Research Collections have been open to the public since 1994 and were accessible by appointment only at Queens College, where the Archives are housed. As of 2018, the Collections have been entirely digitized and accessible online from anywhere across the globe thanks to a grant from Robert F. Smith’s Fund II Foundation. The Digital Collections continues to be updated as new acquisitions are arranged, preserved, cataloged and digitized. The site can be viewed here.
