| Early American Paintings The Worcester Museum of Art in Massachusetts presents this sleek collection of landscapes, still lifes, and portraits. The paintings date from the late 17th century until around 1830 (when the U.S. population was 12.9 million), and the interface is as engaging as the art -- scroll horizontally through the timeline for historical context, or click on a painting to view a close-up, artist biography, and related works. And for some good clean fun, check out the names of the rich, pasty portrait subjects: Cornelius Waldo, Major General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Sarah Savage, and John Freake. |
| A Memorial to the Bell System You don't have to be a "bellhead" to appreciate this personal and informative homage to a former monopoly, but it helps. David Massey's compilation of essays, articles, and images about the Bell System (and the companion Tribute to the Telephone site) includes details of AT&T's break up, a list of Ma Bell's rambunctious RBOC offspring, a far-reaching history of the Bell logo, and a touching collection of ads. If you've never thought of AT&T as the milk-and-honey mother of telecom, or if you're too young to remember the days when all telephones were phone company property, dial on to Netheads versus Bellheads for a different kind of history lesson. |
| William Gedney: Photographs and Writings The special collections library at Duke University presents this stark exhibit of black-and-white photographs from William Gedney. "These photographs -- taken primarily in New York, San Francisco, Kentucky, and India -- are remarkable in their sympathetic and quietly sensual view of the world. They illuminate the rare, lyrical vision of a photographer who, while living a highly reclusive personal life, was able to record the lives of others with remarkable sensitivity and poignancy." Browse over 4,000 photographs, including a prone hippie playing a wood flute, John Cage looking pensive, a dirt-covered Kentucky five-year-old having a quiet smoke, and cavorting Indian street kids. |
| Ghost Sites Like gazing into the night sky, this site lets you view the remains of once shining stars that have since expired. This "E-Failure Museum" features screenshots of over 120 defunct e-commerce sites dating from October of 1996 to December of 2000. Site owner Steve Baldwin was inspired by a "cruel vision of the World Wide Web. It wasn't a friendly place -- an innocent place of community, commerce, and chat. It was a great and utterly pitiless electronic ocean that swallowed up sites, careers, and venture capital like a ravenous killer whale." Alas, apbnews.com. We hardly knew ye, eve.com. Perhaps it was for the best, tshirtguy.com. |
| William Morris Society The William Morris Society has kept house on the Web for some time, but just this year moved to its very own domain. Hurrah! Dedicated to the work of William Morris (1834-96), British craftsman, designer, writer, typographer, and socialist, this is an exemplary archive, a resource for students, scholars, connoisseurs, and those simply curious about Morris and his circle. A founding father of the Victorian-era arts and crafts movement, Morris' work and thinking influenced decorative arts and design well into the 20th century. View examples of his lavish, exuberant wallpaper, textiles, tapestries, furniture, ceramic tiles, stained glass, typography, and book design. |
| The Hidden Forest Lichen and slime from the southern hemisphere seem an unlikely subject for such a lush and lovely gallery of photographs. There's plenty to learn here about the structure, classification, life cycles, and habitat of the small green plants and colorful fungi that carpet New Zealand's forest floor. Take a walk in the woods with amateur photographer and all-around fun guy Clive Shirley, and discover the beauty of bryophytes, those non-vascular mosses and miscellaneous worts that neither flower nor reproduce by seed. Seen any fruiting liverworts lately? Take a closer look at what's underfoot. |
| Sidewalk Typo It's such a slight thing, a typo, but it's the sort of misplaced minutiae that catches an editor's eye -- a wrong letter, an inverted integer. Not surprising then that this photographic "evidence of human frailty ... permanently embossed in San Francisco's sidewalks" caught our attention. These gritty photos have color and texture that belie the nitpicky theme of this short, sweet image essay. |
| hi! monkey Meet the monkey. An Austin native, the monkey is diminutive (just under six inches tall), affable (he has loads of friends), and itinerant (he's fond of the open road). Our cheerful simian's hobbies include bookmaking, cooking, and Tibetan Buddhism. He's also not really a monkey. He's a stuffed animal -- the kind you might find buried in the back of a six-year-old's closet. But thanks to a little imagination and some creative digital camerawork, this charming little critter is giving Paddington the Bear a run for his money. |
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