Following the death of the Folger’s first director, Joseph Quincy Adams, in 1946, the trustees made ambitious plans to turn their still relatively new institution into a modern research center. In 1948, they appointed as director Louis B. Wright, who had just directed a similar transformation at the Henry E. Huntington Library in California. Under Wright, the Folger produced a better catalog, added general reference works, new underground storage, and office space, and installed central air-conditioning—a key improvement, given Washington’s hot summers. New publications for the general public included a popular newsletter, illustrated Folger Booklets on Tudor and Stuart Civilization, and the Folger's General Reader's Shakespeare—paperback editions of Shakespeare's works with accessible notes and illustrations from the Folger collection. Wright also continued Adams’s acquisitions program; by his retirement in 1968, the Folger had secured an additional 22,000 European books and some 19,000 English ones.
In 1969, the Amherst board of trustees once again appointed a new director with fresh ideas—O. B. Hardison Jr., a professor of English literature from the University of North Carolina. After Hardison’s arrival, the Folger's Elizabethan Theatre, previously used mainly for lectures and tours, was transformed into a functioning playhouse for the newly formed Folger Theatre Group. The Folger recruited its first volunteer docents, making possible a new tradition of free walk-in tours for the public. Other initiatives included modern poetry readings, a new colloquium with universities called the Folger Institute, and a resident early-music ensemble, the Folger Consort. The journal Shakespeare Quarterly was also transferred to the library from the independent Shakespeare Association of America. In 1979, the Folger closed for a major renovation program, including the addition of the New Reading Room; at the same time, it mounted its first large-scale traveling exhibition, "Shakespeare: The Globe and the World."
In late 1983, O. B. Hardison stepped down to teach at Georgetown University, and the board appointed Werner Gundersheimer, professor of Italian Renaissance history at the University of Pennsylvania, to take the helm. Gundersheimer began by addressing some serious financial challenges caused in part by the recessionary inflation of the 1970s. The Folger Theatre Group was reincorporated as The Shakespeare Theatre at the Folger, an independent entity with support from the library; the Shakespeare Theatre moved to its own downtown location some years later. In addition to fund-raising and major capital campaigns, Gundersheimer strengthened the core functions of cataloging and acquisitions, added scholarly fellowships, and placed a new emphasis on exhibitions as both scholarly endeavors and public outreach. The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, which had arrived at the Folger in 1983, and new Folger Poetry Board readings marked a growing involvement with contemporary writers. In the mid-1990s came a new theater initiative, the award-winning Folger Theatre. During his tenure, Gundersheimer also encouraged a major expansion of the Folger’s educational programs for students and teachers. In the year 2000, the expanded education and public programs staff moved into a newly renovated building across from the original library. As the digital revolution reached the Folger, the library also undertook and completed the massive task of putting its catalog online, under the name Hamnet.
Upon Gundersheimer’s retirement in 2002, the Folger trustees appointed Gail Kern Paster, professor of English of George Washington University, and editor of the leading journal of Shakespeare studies, Shakespeare Quarterly, as director. Initiatives under Paster have included a major construction project to reinforce the Folger’s underground vaults, the installation of the Folger’s first new outdoor Shakespearean sculptures since 1932, a set of eight works by Greg Wyatt, and Folger seminars for undergraduate students. She has also overseen and encouraged a host of projects making use of new technology, including a digital photography laboratory and major new conservation facility, online education resources such as Discover Shakespeare and Shakespeare for Kids, an interactive touchscreen display of the First Folio, audio tours for exhibitions, audio and video podcasts, and major academic projects such as the Shakespeare Quartos Archive and online cataloging of the Folger's 56,000 manuscripts. Paster has worked to raise the Folger’s public profile with a revamped and expanded website, publication of the Folger Magazine , award-winning films about the library and its history, and a three-part public radio documentary, Shakespeare in American Life, narrated by Sam Waterston.
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