A recent article in Salon (originally published in Imprint) includes high-resolution images of 1920s Chicago Transit Posters. The article compares these posters to advertising for the London Underground.
Category: American
The Museum of the City of New York just added 35,000 new images to its online collections portal.
Highlights from these new collections include photographs taken by Stanley Kubrick when he was a staff photographer for LOOK Magazine in the late 1940’s; Thomas Nast‘s political cartoons from the late 1800’s; 19th century Currier & Ives lithographs colorfully and quaintly depicting American life; maps showing the city’s growth from the 17th century onward; and historic postcards from every borough in the city.
Low-resolution images may be downloaded for free and used in non-commercial scholarly research and classroom study. High resolution images are available for use in publications and on websites with a licensing fee.
Over 77,000 images from the Museum and Online Archive of California are available in LUNA Commons:
Selected works from the permanent collections of eight California museums: Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive; Japanese American National Museum; Oakland Museum of California; Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley; Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, University of California, Los Angeles; Fowler Museum of Cultural History, University of California, Los Angeles; California Museum of Photography, University of California, Riverside.
LUNA Commons collections are contributed by partnering institutions from around the world. Please contact the VRC if you have any questions or would like a LUNA tutorial!
Newberry Digital Exhibitions showcases cataloged, digitized materials that have been featured in past Newberry exhibitions. It recreates these exhibitions in digital form so that the information continues to be accessible even though the works have left the physical gallery space.
The newest digitized exhibitions include Illuminated Manuscripts and Printed Books: French Renaissance Gems of the Newberry Library and French Canadians in the Midwest.
The New York Public Library has released the first in a series of free iPad applications which will highlight various aspects of the library’s collections and services. The series is called Biblion: The Boundless Library and the first app showcases the library’s 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair holdings. As the Apple iTunes description of Biblion: World’s Fair states:
In this free app you will hold documents, images, films, audio, and essays directly from the collections right in your hands.
Via INFOdocket.
During the month of April an installation by Chicago architect Alex Lehnerer and his Department of Urban Speculation will be the featured UBS 12×12 exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art. This work, called Roadside Attractions,
looks at such ubiquitous and abundantly available urban elements, or “attractions” that are perpendicular to the road: doors, roofs, windows, lobbies, stairs, or walls. The exhibition examines how these can become protagonists, which, if exaggerated, over-extended, or misused, can form the urban between structure and situation.
The architect’s Department of Urban Speculation, founded in 2009,
was set up to create a link between Lehnerer’s work as practicing architect and urban designer and his academic role in the same fields.
Alex Lehnerer will give a free Artist Talk in conjunction with the exhibition on Tuesday, April 12th at 6pm. The “First Friday,” April 1st, marks the unofficial opening of the show. UBS 12 x 12 is a program at the MCA designed to feature new work by new artists. An archive of past exhibitions is available here.
PhilaPlace is an interactive Web site, created by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, that connects stories to places across time in Philadelphia’s neighborhoods. PhilaPlace weaves stories shared by ordinary people of all backgrounds with historical records to present an interpretive picture of the rich history, culture, and architecture of our neighborhoods, past and present. The PhilaPlace Web site uses a multimedia format – including text, pictures, audio and video clips, and podcasts – and allows visitors to map their own stories in place and time.
PhilaPlace creates a dynamic virtual view of a city, browse-able via maps, topics, and collection groupings. For example, clicking on the map view and then selecting “Verbal and Artistic Expression” from the left menu will bring up artistic sites throughout the city, plotted on a map. Click on each point of interest for more information including images.
The exhibition For All the World to See examines the influence of visual culture and images like that of Emmett Till in shaping and transforming the struggle for racial equality by showing… realities of segregation and racial violence, inspiring activists, and fostering African American pride and the Black Power movement.
This traveling exhibit will be open at the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago until May 16, 2011. A comprehensive online exhibition is also available.
Via the National Endowment for the Humanities.
History Coming Home at the Chicago Tourism Center Gallery…
reveals public policies, oral histories, and artifacts from public housing in cities from Chicago to Boston and New Orleans to Sacramento. The core of this exhibition at the Chicago Tourism Center Gallery consists of a 1950s-style public housing apartment that visitors can walk through. Inside the 20 ft X 20 ft installation, a living room, kitchen, and bedroom filled with artifacts from public housing residents and a video capture various aspects of the public housing experience.
Alison Cuddy, host of WBEZ’s Eight Forty-Eight, recently toured History Coming Home with National Public Housing Museum Executive Director Keith Magee. You can listen to it here.
The exhibit includes photographs from the Chicago Housing Authority archives and the Chicago History Museum. It previews the opening of the National Public Housing Museum, a permanent home for the history of public housing in America, set to open in 2012. History Coming Home will be open until April 15, 2011 at the Chicago Tourism Center Gallery, 72 E. Randolph. Tours are available M-F, 11am-3pm and by appointment.
Via the City of Chicago’s Official Tourism Site.
The new Wright Guide, developed by Azara Apps and adapted from William Allin Storrer’s The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, offers descriptions and a photograph of each of the built works by Frank Lloyd Wright. Building descriptions link to other nearby architecture as well as to directions from the user’s current location. Buildings may be searched through the index or by browsing location or date. Users can even keep track of which buildings they’ve visited in the application.
The app is $9.99 and compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad with iOS 3.0 or later. It is available from the iTunes store.
Via Deep Focus.