Every Four Years: On The Campaign Trail
As election season descends, The Newseum takes a look back at 100 years of campaign journalism. Viewers can pan across an interactive Shockwave timeline featuring audio clips from fictional journalists addressing the technological changes in the campaigning process: Roosevelt plays to the cameras, Nixon loses to television, and Ross Perot buys up the airwaves. The message? Politicians have to sell themselves to the media to survive. The results are often alarming.
Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga
The Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History exhibition traces the journeys of Eric the Red and Leif the Lucky around the turn of the first millennium. These mariners sailed from their Scandinavian homeland to Iceland and then established colonies in Greenland that remained populated for centuries. They pushed on to Baffin Island, down the coast of Labrador to Vinland the Good, and on to the rugged coast of Newfoundland, Canada. We used Quicktime VR to explore a Viking ship in 3D, and watched a movie of ships setting forth, seagulls squawking, sails filled. The site includes a photo tour of Viking travels and artifacts such as ivory chess pieces, silver drinking horns, caskets carved with runes, and frayed woolen garments.
The National Gallery of Art presents a three-part look -- the artist, the painting, the process -- at one of the leading figures in American Abstract Expressionism. Learn about Pollock's early studies with Thomas Hart Benton, explore his most famous work "Lavender Mist," and view films of the artist at work. As his 1956 obituary in Time magazine reads, "Died. Jackson Pollock, 44, bearded shock trooper of modern painting, who spread his canvases on the floor, dribbled paint, sand and broken glass on them, smeared and scratched them, named them with numbers...; at the wheel of his convertible in a side road crack-up near East Hampton, N.Y."
A special feature from One World Journeys' team of photographers and journalists in association with the Washington Post, this expedition to "the soul of the Caucasus" vividly explores the history, culture, and environment of the remote, mountainous republic of Georgia. Bordered by the Black Sea, Turkey, and troubled Russian autonomous regions to the north, Georgia is an isolated crossroad with rich and distinctive traditions. Exquisite colored maps, daily multimedia dispatches from the April journey, and lavish photo and video galleries of ancient forests will stir your imagination as well as your wanderlust.
The husband and wife engineering team of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth pioneered the sciences of motion study and work efficiency. They also raised twelve kids in the process. The Gilbreth Network, a consortium of engineers, academics, and management specialists, hosts a bustling forum dedicated to this ridiculously accomplished couple. Frank introduced the idea of photography to study the effectiveness of assembly line workers. Lillian designed appliances and work spaces for the handicapped. Together they revolutionized the field of work efficiency. Find out how.
Like so many good things from Holland, this "treasure-house of the Netherlands" is accessible in a host of languages. We took the virtual tour of works from 1250 major exhibits and lingered to learn about Rembrandt's groundbreaking 1642 painting, "The Night Watch and Vermeer's Kitchen Maid," which is listed in a 1696 auction catalog as "maid pouring out milk, exceptionally good." Then we jumped a few centuries forward to a moody Man Ray photograph and a few centuries back to a Dürer etching of Adam and Eve. The site navigation is as intricate and educational as a real-world museum, with many corridors and a few well-placed surprises. It's a great destination for students, connoisseurs, and armchair travelers.
Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure
The itinerant ex-Python Palin follows Papa's footsteps through Michigan, Italy, Paris, Spain, Africa, and Key West in this nifty PBS companion site. Roll your mouse over the photos of Hemingway in his various incarnations to learn more: World War I ambulance driver, struggling writer in Paris, conquering hero in Africa. Palin knows his subject well, "I don't think Ernest Hemingway and I would ever have got along. I don't have the requisite amount of competitive energy. I don't really care about catching more fish or shooting more ducks or having more wives than anyone else." But they certainly share a taste for travel.
Reading a dispatch dated May 3, we learn that Indiana journalist Tom Bissett is resting at 11,300 feet en route to Everest Base Camp at 17,600 feet, to report on what is becoming a particularly lethal climbing season on the world's tallest mountain. Halfway around the world from Fort Wayne, 29,035 foot Mt. Everest straddles the Nepal-Tibet border. So far this spring, four trekkers have died from acute mountain sickness, which they might have prevented by allowing their bodies to adjust to the reduced oxygen. The detailed account of this carefully planned expedition includes equipment lists, maps, and itineraries.