SCAD Visual Resources Center

The Library of Congress has recently posted a collection of Vaudeville-era (c.1897-1920) silent films on YouTube:

Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment

The motion pictures in the Variety Stage collection include animal acts, burlesque, dance, comic sketches, dramatic excerpts, dramatic sketches, physical culture acts, and tableaus. The films represented date from copyrights of 1897 to 1920; the majority are drawn from the Library’s extensive Paper Print Collection. The remaining films were produced by Hans A. Spanuth in Chicago from 1919 to 1920 for the series “Spanuth’s Original Vod-A-Vil Movies.” These motion pictures present a rare animated record of vaudeville acts from the turn of the century. Although not actually filmed on a theatrical stage, they sought to recreate the atmosphere of a theater performance by showing the types of vaudeville acts and performers that were popular at the time.

Columbia College Chicago Library is delighted to offer a new digital resource – the John Fischetti Editorial Cartoon Sketchbook Project – showcasing the work of the Pulitzer-prize winning political cartoonist and syndicated cartoonist who drew for such publications as the Chicago Sun, The New York Herald Tribune, Chicago Daily News, Chicago Sun-Times, The New York Times, and Stars and Stripes. John Fischetti (1916-1980) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for political cartooning in 1969. View the collection at: http://www.lib.colum.edu/archives/mss_fischetti/.

“It seemed logical. We had one bone left over.”

Through a generous donation from his estate, Columbia College Chicago received the majority of John Fischetti’s sketchbooks in which he worked out ideas for his cartoons. Writing about his sketchbook use in his autobiography, Fischetti said “before 1961 I used to doodle ideas on the backs of envelopes, scraps of paper and yellow copy paper… Since even half-formed ideas are invaluable, I decided to use layout pads for the gestating periods. By dating each page, it turned out to be a sort of log of historical and personal events.” These notebooks offer a detailed, graphical history of the period from 1962 to 1980. Shortly after Fischetti’s death, Mike Alexandroff, then president of Columbia College and close friend of John Fischetti, established the Fischetti Editorial Cartoon Competition in 1982 at the college in the cartoonist’s honor. Today it is a nationally recognized award for political cartooning.

Columbia College Chicago is pleased to make this rich collection publicly accessible to scholars, educators, and the public for personal research and classroom use. Funding for this grant was awarded by the Illinois State Library (ISL), a Department of the Office of Secretary of State, using funds provided by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), under the federal Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA).

The Society for Architectural Historians is pleased to announce that on November 4, 10,000 digital photographs and QTVRs from the SAHARA Editors’ Choice collection were integrated into the ARTstor Digital Library.  For institutions that subscribe to ARTstor, this will enrich the substantial architecture holdings already in the ARTstor Digital Library and provide seamless access to both collections. Highlights include Quicktime videos of the Boston Public Library, Monticello, and Henry Hobson Richardson’s Glessner House and Allegheny County Courthouse.

To browse the SAHARA collection on ARTstor double-click the SAHARA link from the “Browse ARTstor by: Collection” drop-down list; to browse the Quicktime videos enter “qtvr sahara” in the search box.

The Van Gogh Letters Project is an online database of all 902 letters from and to Van Gogh.This database, which was established by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, includes original text, hyperlinked footnotes, facsimiles, translations, notes, and corresponding artworks.

Four thousand images from the Design Council Slide Collection have been launched online today, providing a unique insight into the history of British design and its promotion by the UK government from the 1940s to the early 1990s. The Design Council was established in 1944 and is the UK’s national strategic body for design.

The images relate closely to the changing scope and policies of the Council over a period of almost fifty years, providing valuable visual evidence of the ways in which design has been evaluated and promoted throughout this period. They show a wide variety of products such as tableware, furniture, lighting, toys, domestic appliances, textiles, wallpapers, office equipment, engineering components and machinery, as well as other areas of design such as architecture, town planning, interior design, graphic design and corporate identity.

The slide collection was transferred to the Manchester Metropolitan University in 1995, and since then a series of digitisation projects have resulted in over 13,000 images (nearly two-thirds of the collection) being made available online through the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS).

‘Bond Bug’ three-wheeler car made by the Reliant Motor Co. Designed by Tom Karen of Ogle
Design and launched in 1970 © The Design Council/The Manchester Metropolitan University

Images from the George Eastman House collections have been posted on Flickr. Selections include autochromes, Southworth & Hawes daguerreotypes, and glass plate negatives by Ch. Chusseau-Flaviens.

Woman in satin dress holding mirror. c.1915.
autochrome. 10.6 x 8.1 cm. George Eastman House Collection (1980:0437:0001)

View 03: Egypt – Karnak. Great Statues., n.d., Goodyear. Brooklyn Museum Archives (S10|08 Karnak, image 9875).

The Smithsonian Institute, Powerhouse Museum (Sydney, Australia) and the Brooklyn Museum have all added photograph collections to Flickr.

The Smithsonian Institute Flickr collection includes a sample of more than 13 million images. Some come from outside sources in addition to those taken by Smithsonian staff, and represent a broad range of subjects and themes in the fields of art, history, culture, and science. Some of the collections include photos of artists, examples of early photography, photographs of scientist and inventors and events at the institute.

The Powerhouse Museum Flickr collection includes 450 images from the Tyrrell Collection which consists of 7903 glass plate negatives from the studios of Charles Kerry (1857-1928) and Henry King (1855-1923) who had two of Sydney’s principal photographic studios in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

And the Brooklyn Museum has several collections including an Egyptian lantern slide collection, Paris Exposition of 1900, and images from shows and competitions at the museum.

You can now find streaming video, photos, and clips from stage productions and dance on the web. Start by searching the play or musical title, dance company, designers, actors, and dancers on the web and in YouTube. Explore the web pages for interactive, multimedia, videos, or sights & sounds links that will take you to some goodies. And don’t forget the Tony Awards web page offers links to all their nominees web pages.

Here are some examples:

Theater

Boeing Boeing

A Catered Affair

Cry Baby
Video clips on YouTube.

Cameron Mackintosh Limited
The production company for many London musicals.

Marguerite
A new musical by the production company that created Les Miserables.

Met Opera – Macbeth Video Gallery

Robert Wilson
Click on the Archive link and register (for free) to have access to production stills.

San Francisco Opera -Digital Cinema Casts
Under their link for Look Listen and Learn, you will also find Web Video and Podcast listed. Image galleries are found the following pages after clicking on the production.

Dance

Dance Theater Workshop (New York)

David Rousseve/REALITY (New York)

Houston Ballet Blog
Which includes videos from current productions and images of costume designs.

Dance on YouTube

Alvin Ailey Dance Company – Search Results

Christie Everett

Houston Ballet

Dance Houston
Performances by Houston’s local dance companies. Check out the latest in hip hop, ballroom, contemporary, and cultural dance.

I think you get the picture, so have fun exploring.

Check out our new pages Web Resources and Online Exhibitions.

Web Resources is divided by subject matter and includes links to digital collections from Universities, Libraries, and Museums, links to virtual web tours of buildings, such as the Vatican or the Palazzo del Te, and a link to museum’s YouTube pages.

Online Exhibitions page includes links to current exhibitions in museums with multimedia content that will expire when the show is closed. The permanent exhibitions page includes exhibitions created using items from museum’s permanent collections.

The links will expand and change as new materials come available, so check them periodically. Also, if you have any suggestions of good websites, email them to vrc@scad.edu for consideration.

Enjoy exploring.

Edward S. Curtis, Totem found in the Nimikish village Yilis, on Cormorant Island, 1914, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. (SCAD Digital Image Database, http://did.scad.edu)

Curtis’s Landmark 1914 Silent Film of Pacific Northwest First Nations Culture—Restored, Re-evaluated, and Framed with a Live Orchestral Arrangement of the Original Score and a Performance by the Gwa’wina Dancers, Descendants of the Indigenous Cast.

This collaborative project approaches the film from two distinct but overlapping perspectives: As a scholarly recovery and restoration of the original melodramatic contexts and content of the film and musical score; and as an indigenous re-framing of this material given unique Kwakwaka’wakw perspectives on the original film, its specific cultural content, and its historical context of production.

Please visit: http://www.curtisfilm.rutgers.edu

The website functions as the gateway to partner institutions that are hosting public screening/performance events and related programming in June 2008 (in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Vancouver) and in November 2008 (in Chicago, Washington DC, and New York City). In addition, the site provides a thorough scholarly introduction to Curtis’s film, to the central role of the Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl) in its production, and to the new archival discoveries that have led to its current restoration. It also includes extensive media relating to the film’s production as well as contemporary Kwakwaka’wakw culture.