The Biodiversity Heritage Library Makes 150,000 High-Res Illustrations of the Natural World Free to Download

in Archives, Art, Nature | February 11th, 2020

You may have heard of “plant blind­ness,” a con­di­tion defined about 20 years ago that has start­ed to get more press in recent years. As its name sug­gests, it refers to an inabil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy or even notice the many plant species around us in our every­day lives. Some have con­nect­ed it to a poten­tial­ly more wide­spread afflic­tion they call “nature deficit dis­or­der,” which is also just what it sounds like: a set of impair­ments brought on by insuf­fi­cient expo­sure to the nat­ur­al world. One might also draw a line from these con­cepts to our atti­tudes about cli­mate change, or to our ever-less-inter­rupt­ed immer­sion in the dig­i­tal world. But if any part of that dig­i­tal world can open our eyes to nature once again, it’s the Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library (present also on Flickr and Insta­gram.)

Pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for its vast archive of two mil­lion illus­tra­tions of the nat­ur­al world, the BHL has received more cov­er­age this year for the more than 150,000 it’s made avail­able for copy­right-free down­load. Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Hakim Bishara quotes Hen­ry David Thore­au — “We need the ton­ic of wild­ness. We can nev­er get enough of nature” — before writ­ing of how thrilled Thore­au would have been by the exis­tence of such a resource for images of nature.

These images include “ani­mal sketch­es, his­tor­i­cal dia­grams, botan­i­cal stud­ies, and sci­en­tif­ic research col­lect­ed from hun­dreds of thou­sands of jour­nals and libraries across the world,” some dat­ing to the 15th cen­tu­ry. He high­lights “Joseph Wolf’s 19th-cen­tu­ry book Zoo­log­i­cal Sketch­es, con­tain­ing about 100 lith­o­graphs depict­ing wild ani­mals in London’s Regent’s Park” and “water­col­ors depict­ing flow­ers indige­nous to the Hawai­ian islands” as well as “an 1833 DIY Taxidermist’s Man­u­al.”

As Smithsonian.com’s There­sa Machemer notes, “The prac­tice of cre­at­ing detailed illus­tra­tions of flo­ra and fau­na, whether to doc­u­ment an expe­di­tion or a med­ical prac­tice, gained pop­u­lar­i­ty well before pho­tog­ra­phy was up to the task.” Hence such ambi­tious projects as the Unit­ed States gov­ern­men­t’s com­mis­sion­ing, in 1866, of water­col­or paint­ings depict­ing every fruit known to man. But even today, “an illus­tra­tion can offer more clar­i­ty than a pho­to­graph,” as you’ll find when you zoom in on any of the BHL’s high-res­o­lu­tion illus­tra­tions. Accord­ing to the BHL, “a world­wide con­sor­tium of nat­ur­al his­to­ry, botan­i­cal, research, and nation­al libraries,” its mis­sion is to pro­vide “access to the world’s col­lec­tive knowl­edge about bio­di­ver­si­ty,” in order to help researchers “doc­u­ment Earth’s species and under­stand the com­plex­i­ties of swift­ly-chang­ing ecosys­tems in the midst of a major extinc­tion cri­sis and wide­spread cli­mate change.” But by reveal­ing how our pre­de­ces­sors saw nature, it can also help all of us see nature again. Access the illus­tra­tions here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Mil­lion Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra and Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

In 1886, the US Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sioned 7,500 Water­col­or Paint­ings of Every Known Fruit in the World: Down­load Them in High Res­o­lu­tion

Watch 50 Hours of Nature Sound­scapes from the BBC: Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Proven to Ease Stress and Pro­mote Hap­pi­ness & Awe

A Shaz­am for Nature: A New Free App Helps You Iden­ti­fy Plants, Ani­mals & Oth­er Denizens of the Nat­ur­al World

New Study: Immers­ing Your­self in Art, Music & Nature Might Reduce Inflam­ma­tion & Increase Life Expectan­cy

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Met Puts 650+ Japanese Illustrated Books Online: Marvel at Hokusai’s One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji and More

in Archives, Art, Books | February 5th, 2020

There are cer­tain Japan­ese wood­block prints many of us can pic­ture in our minds: Hoku­sai Kat­sushika’s The Great Wave off Kana­gawa, Uta­gawa Hiroshige’s Sud­den Show­er over Shin-Ōhashi bridge and Atake, Kita­gawa Uta­maro’s Three Beau­ties of the Present Day. Even when we find vast archives of such works, known as ukiyo‑e or “pic­tures of the float­ing world,” we tend to appre­ci­ate the works them­selves one piece at a time; we imag­ine them on walls, not in books. But it was in books that much of the work of ukiyo‑e mas­ters first appeared in the first place. Hoku­sai, Hiroshige, and Uta­maro, as the three are usu­al­ly called, “are best known today for their wood­block prints, but also excelled at illus­tra­tions for deluxe poet­ry antholo­gies and pop­u­lar lit­er­a­ture.”

So writes John Car­pen­ter, Cura­tor of the Depart­ment of Asian Art at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, describ­ing the “fell swoop” in which the Met acquired “a superb col­lec­tion of Japan­ese books to com­ple­ment its excel­lent hold­ings in paint­ings and prints of the Edo peri­od (1615–1868).” Once the per­son­al col­lec­tion of Arthur and Char­lotte Ver­sh­bow, these books came into the muse­um’s pos­ses­sion in 2013, and have now come avail­able to browse on and even down­load from its web site.

Car­pen­ter describes the col­lec­tion as “par­tic­u­lar­ly strong in works by ukiyo‑e artists, but includes rep­re­sen­ta­tive exam­ples of all the var­i­ous schools of Japan­ese art. Includ­ed in the col­lec­tion of some 250 titles — more than 400 vol­umes — are numer­ous mas­ter­pieces of wood­block print­ing, many of which are near­ly impos­si­ble to find in such fine con­di­tion today.”

You’ll find in the Met’s online col­lec­tion not just the vol­umes from the Ver­sh­bow col­lec­tion, but “over 650 eigh­teenth- and nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Japan­ese illus­trat­ed books” in total. Selec­tions include edi­tions of Uta­maro’s Gifts of the Ebb Tide (The Shell Book), Hiroshige’s Pic­ture Book of the Sou­venirs of Edo (the name of Tokyo in his day), and Hoku­sai’s One Hun­dred Views of Mount Fuji. You can also find books full of the work of ukiyo‑e mas­ters of whom you may not have heard, such as Kat­sukawa Shun­shō’s Mir­ror of Yoshi­wara Beau­ties, Kitao Masanobu’s A New Record Com­par­ing the Hand­writ­ing of the Cour­te­sans of the Yoshi­wara, and Uta­gawa Kunisada’s That Pur­ple Image in Mag­ic Lantern Shows. Though few of us today know Kunisada’s name, in the ear­ly to mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry his pop­u­lar rep­u­ta­tion far exceed­ed those of Hoku­sai, Hiroshige, and Uta­maro — not least because of how many could enjoy his work in books like these. Enter the col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000+ His­toric Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Smith­son­ian: From the Edo & Meji Eras (1600–1912)

Enter a Dig­i­tal Archive of 213,000+ Beau­ti­ful Japan­ese Wood­block Prints

Down­load Hun­dreds of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Wood­block Prints by Mas­ters of the Tra­di­tion

1,000+ His­toric Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Smith­son­ian: From the Edo & Meji Eras (1600–1912)

Get Free Draw­ing Lessons from Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai, Who Famous­ly Paint­ed The Great Wave of Kana­gawa: Read His How-To Book, Quick Lessons in Sim­pli­fied Draw­ings

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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36,000 Flash Games Have Been Archived and Saved Before Flash Goes Extinct: Play Them Offline

in Archives, Video Games | February 4th, 2020

Adobe has announced that the Flash Play­er will come to the offi­cial end of its life on the last day of this year, Decem­ber 31, 2020. News of the demise of an obso­lete inter­net mul­ti­me­dia plat­form pre­sum­ably both­ers few of today’s web-surfers, but those of us belong­ing to a cer­tain gen­er­a­tion feel in it the end of an era. First intro­duced by Macro­me­dia in 1996, Flash made pos­si­ble the kind of ani­ma­tion and sound we’d sel­dom seen and heard — assum­ing we could man­age to load it through our slug­gish con­nec­tions at all — on the inter­net before. By the ear­ly 2000s, Flash seemed to pow­er most every­thing fun on the inter­net, espe­cial­ly every­thing fun to the kids then in mid­dle and high school who’d grown up along­side the World Wide Web.

Though now deep into adult­hood, we all remem­ber the hours of the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry we hap­pi­ly whiled away on Flash games, rac­ing cars, solv­ing puz­zles, shoot­ing zom­bies, dodg­ing comets, fir­ing can­nons, and pilot­ing heli­copters on class­room com­put­ers. We could, in the­o­ry, find many of these games and play them still today, but that may become impos­si­ble next year when all major web browsers will dis­con­tin­ue their sup­port for Flash.

“That’s where Flash­point comes in to save a huge chunk of gam­ing his­to­ry,” writes Kotaku’s Zack Zwiezen. “Flash­point uses open-source tech to allow folks to down­load and play a large list of games and ani­ma­tions. The full list con­tains just over 36,000 games and you can sug­gest new games to be added if some­thing you love isn’t on here.”

On Flash­point’s down­load page you’ll find its full 290-giga­byte col­lec­tion of Flash games, as well as a small­er ver­sion that only down­loads games as you play them. “While Flash games might not be as impres­sive today, they are still an impor­tant part of gam­ing his­to­ry,” writes Zwiezen. “These small web games can be direct­ly linked to the lat­er rise of mobile and indie games and helped many cre­ators get their feet wet with build­ing and cre­at­ing video games.” In oth­er words, the sim­ple Flash amuse­ments of our school­days gave rise to the graph­i­cal­ly and son­i­cal­ly intense games that we play so com­pul­sive­ly today. Now we have kids who play those sorts of games too, but who among us will ini­ti­ate the next gen­er­a­tion into the ways of Crush the Cas­tle, Age of War, and Bub­ble Trou­ble?

You can find more infor­ma­tion on the flash video game archive on this FAQ page.

via Kotaku

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Inter­net Archive Makes 2,500 More Clas­sic MS-DOS Video Games Free to Play Online: Alone in the Dark, Doom, Microsoft Adven­ture, and Oth­ers

Run Vin­tage Video Games (From Pac-Man to E.T.) and Soft­ware in Your Web Brows­er, Thanks to Archive.org

1,100 Clas­sic Arcade Machines Added to the Inter­net Arcade: Play Them Free Online

Play a Col­lec­tion of Clas­sic Hand­held Video Games at the Inter­net Archive: Pac-Man, Don­key Kong, Tron and MC Ham­mer

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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14 Paris Museums Put 390,000 Works of Art Online: Download Classics by Monet, Cézanne & More

in Archives, Art, Museums | January 10th, 2020

First trips to Paris all run the same risk: that of the muse­ums con­sum­ing all of one’s time in the city. What those new to Paris need is a muse­um-going strat­e­gy, not that one size will fit all. Tai­lor­ing such a strat­e­gy to one’s own inter­ests and pur­suits requires a sense of each muse­um’s col­lec­tion, some­thing dif­fi­cult to attain remote­ly before Paris Musées opened up its online col­lec­tions por­tal.

There, a counter tracks the num­ber of art­works from the muse­ums of Paris dig­i­tized and uploaded for all the world to see, which as of this writ­ing comes in at 321,055. 150,222 images, notes a counter below, are in the pub­lic domain, and below that, anoth­er counter reveals that the archive now con­tains 621,075 pieces of dig­i­tal media in total.

Among these, writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Valenti­na Di Lis­cia, “mas­ter­pieces by renowned artists such as Rem­brandt, Gus­tave Courbet, Eugène Delacroix, and Antho­ny van Dyck, among many oth­er famil­iar and less­er-known names, can now be accessed and enjoyed dig­i­tal­ly.”

She high­lights “Paul Cézanne’s enchant­i­ng 1899 por­trait of the French art deal­er Ambroise Vol­lard,” pic­tures tak­en by “Eugène Atget, the French pho­tog­ra­ph­er known for doc­u­ment­ing and immor­tal­iz­ing old Paris,” and Gus­tave Courbet’s Les demoi­selles des bor­ds de la Seine, which became “the sub­ject of con­tro­ver­sy at the Paris Salon of 1857 for what some deemed an indeco­rous and even sen­su­al por­tray­al of work­ing class women.”

Paul Cezanne (1839–1906). “Rochers et branch­es à Bibé­mus”. Huile sur toile. Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais.

Paris Musées over­sees the four­teen City of Paris Muse­ums, includ­ing the Musée d’Art Mod­erne de la Ville de Paris and the Petit Palais as well as the Mai­son de Balzac and Mai­son de Vic­tor Hugo. That last now has a vir­tu­al exhi­bi­tion up called “Light and Shade,” which, through the illus­tra­tions of Hugo’s lit­er­ary works, reveals the “fren­zy of images that adorned 19th cen­tu­ry lit­er­a­ture,” from “the blos­som­ing of the roman­tic vignette, to the flood of pop­u­lar edi­tions, and the swan­song of those col­lec­tors’ edi­tions cel­e­brat­ing the glo­ries of the Third Repub­lic.” The “the­mat­ic dis­cov­er­ing” sec­tion of Paris Musées por­tal also fea­tures sec­tions on car­i­ca­tures of Vic­tor Hugo, on the 18th cen­tu­ry, on por­traits, and on Paris in the year 1900, when Art Nou­veau made it “the cap­i­tal of Europe.”

“Users can down­load a file that con­tains a high def­i­n­i­tion (300 DPI) image, a doc­u­ment with details about the select­ed work, and a guide of best prac­tices for using and cit­ing the sources of the image,” writes Di Lis­cia. Shown here are Claude Mon­et Soleil couchant sur la Seine à Lava­court, effet d’hiver, Célestin Nan­teuil’s La Cour des Mir­a­cles, Léon Bon­nat’s Por­trait de M. Vic­tor Hugo, Cézanne’s Rochers et branch­es à Bibé­mus, and a post­card for the Expo­si­tion uni­verselle de Paris 1889. These images are released under a CC0 (Cre­ative Com­mons Zero) license, and “works still in copy­right will be avail­able as low def­i­n­i­tion files, so users can still get a feel for the muse­ums’ col­lec­tions online.” Do bear in mind that Paris Musées does not have under its umbrel­la that most famous muse­um of all, the Lou­vre. If you’re look­ing to get a feel for that world-renowned des­ti­na­tion’s for­mi­da­ble col­lec­tion, you may just have to vis­it it — a cul­tur­al task that neces­si­tates a bat­tle plan of its own.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1.8 Mil­lion Free Works of Art from World-Class Muse­ums: A Meta List of Great Art Avail­able Online

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Makes 375,000 Images of Fine Art Avail­able Under a Cre­ative Com­mons License: Down­load, Use & Remix

Down­load 100,000 Free Art Images in High-Res­o­lu­tion from The Get­ty

The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go Puts 44,000+ Works of Art Online: View Them in High Res­o­lu­tion

Rijksmu­se­um Dig­i­tizes & Makes Free Online 361,000 Works of Art, Mas­ter­pieces by Rem­brandt Includ­ed!

A 3D Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Paris: Take a Visu­al Jour­ney from Ancient Times to 1900

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Names of 1.8 Million Emancipated Slaves Are Now Searchable in the World’s Largest Genealogical Database, Helping African Americans Find Lost Ancestors

in Archives, History, Museums | January 3rd, 2020

The suc­cess­es of the Freedman’s Bureau, ini­ti­at­ed by Abra­ham Lin­coln in 1865 and first admin­is­tered under Oliv­er Howard’s War Depart­ment, are all the more remark­able con­sid­er­ing the intense pop­u­lar and polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion to the agency. Under Lincoln’s suc­ces­sor, impeached South­ern Demo­c­rat Andrew John­son, the Bureau at times became a hos­tile enti­ty to the very peo­ple it was meant to aid and protect—the for­mer­ly enslaved, espe­cial­ly, but also poor whites dev­as­tat­ed by the war. After years of defund­ing, under­staffing, and vio­lent insur­gency the Freedman’s Bureau was offi­cial­ly dis­solved in 1872.

In those first few years after eman­ci­pa­tion, how­ev­er, the Bureau built sev­er­al hos­pi­tals and over a thou­sand rur­al schools in the South, estab­lished the His­tor­i­cal­ly Black Col­lege and Uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem, and “cre­at­ed mil­lions of records,” notes the Nation­al Muse­um of African Amer­i­can His­to­ry and Cul­ture (NMAAHC), “that con­tain the names of hun­dreds of thou­sands of for­mer­ly enslaved indi­vid­u­als and South­ern white refugees.” Those records have enabled his­to­ri­ans to recon­struct the lives of peo­ple who might oth­er­wise have dis­ap­peared from the record and helped geneal­o­gists trace fam­i­ly con­nec­tions that might have been irrev­o­ca­bly bro­ken.

As we not­ed back in 2015, those records have become part of a dig­i­ti­za­tion project named for the Bureau and spear­head­ed by the Smith­son­ian, the Nation­al Archives, the Afro-Amer­i­can His­tor­i­cal and Genealog­i­cal Soci­ety, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter Day Saints, whose Fam­il­y­Search is the largest geneal­o­gy orga­ni­za­tion in the world. “Using mod­ern, dig­i­tal and web-based tech­nol­o­gy and the pow­er of [over 25,000!] vol­un­teers,” says Hol­lis Gen­try, a genealog­i­cal spe­cial­ist at the NMAAHC, the Freedman’s Bureau Project “is unlock­ing infor­ma­tion from a trans­for­ma­tive era in the his­to­ry of African Amer­i­can fam­i­lies and the Amer­i­can nation.”

That infor­ma­tion is now avail­able to the gen­er­al pub­lic, “glob­al­ly via the web” here, as of June 20th, 2016, allow­ing “all of us to enlarge our under­stand­ing of the past.” More specif­i­cal­ly, the Freedman’s Bureau Project and Fam­il­y­Search allows African Amer­i­cans to recov­er their fam­i­ly his­to­ry in a data­base that now includes “the names of near­ly 1.8 mil­lion men, women and chil­dren” record­ed by Freedman’s Bureau work­ers and entered by Freedman’s Bureau Project vol­un­teers 150 years lat­er. This incred­i­ble data­base will give mil­lions of peo­ple descend­ed from both for­mer slaves and white Civ­il War refugees the abil­i­ty to find their ances­tors.

There’s still more work to be done. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the NMAAHC, the Smith­son­ian Tran­scrip­tion Cen­ter is cur­rent­ly rely­ing on vol­un­teers to tran­scribe all of the dig­i­tal scans pro­vid­ed by Fam­il­y­Search. “When com­plet­ed, the papers will be key­word search­able. This joint effort will help increase access to the Freedmen’s Bureau col­lec­tion and help the pub­lic learn more about the Unit­ed States in the Recon­struc­tion Era,” a crit­i­cal time in U.S. his­to­ry that is woe­ful­ly under­rep­re­sent­ed or delib­er­ate­ly white­washed in text­books and cur­ric­u­la.

“The records left by the Freed­men’s Bureau through its work between 1865 and 1872 con­sti­tute the rich­est and most exten­sive doc­u­men­tary source avail­able for inves­ti­gat­ing the African Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence in the post-Civ­il War and Recon­struc­tion eras,” writes the Nation­al Archives. Soon, all of those doc­u­ments will be pub­licly avail­able for every­one to read. For now, those with roots in the U.S. South can search the Freedman’s Bureau Project data­base to dis­cov­er more about their fam­i­ly her­itage and his­to­ry.

And while the Smithsonian’s tran­scrip­tion project is under­way, those who want to learn more can vis­it the Freedman’s Bureau Online, which has tran­scribed hun­dreds of doc­u­ments, includ­ing labor records, nar­ra­tives of “out­rages com­mit­ted on freed­men,” and mar­riage reg­is­ters.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1.5 Mil­lion Slav­ery Era Doc­u­ments Will Be Dig­i­tized, Help­ing African Amer­i­cans to Learn About Their Lost Ances­tors

Visu­al­iz­ing Slav­ery: The Map Abra­ham Lin­coln Spent Hours Study­ing Dur­ing the Civ­il War

The Civ­il War and Recon­struc­tion: A Free Course

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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A New Digitized Menu Collection Lets You Revisit the Cuisine from the “Golden Age of Railroad Dining”

in Archives, Food & Drink, History | December 4th, 2019

The com­ing of the rail­road in the U.S. of the 19th cen­tu­ry meant unprece­dent­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty for millions—a tri­umph of trans­porta­tion and com­merce that changed the coun­try for­ev­er. For many more—including mil­lions of Amer­i­can bison—it meant cat­a­stro­phe and near extinc­tion. This com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ry has pro­vid­ed a rich field of study for schol­ars of the period—who can tie the rail­road to near­ly every major his­tor­i­cal devel­op­ment, from the Civ­il War to pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns to the spread of the Sears mer­chan­dis­ing empire from coast to coast.

But as time wore on, pas­sen­ger trains became both more com­mon­place and more lux­u­ri­ous, as they com­pet­ed with air and auto trav­el in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. It is this peri­od of rail­road his­to­ry that most attract­ed Ira Sil­ver­man as a grad­u­ate stu­dent at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty in the 1960s. While enrolled at Northwestern’s Trans­porta­tion Cen­ter in Evanston, Illi­nois, Sil­ver­man and his class­mates found end­less “oppor­tu­ni­ties for research, adven­ture, and unpar­al­leled feast­ing,” writes Claire Voon at Atlas Obscu­ra.

Sil­ver­man espe­cial­ly took to the din­ing cars—and more to the point, to the menus, which he col­lect­ed by the dozens, “even­tu­al­ly amass­ing an archive of 238 menus and relat­ed pam­phlets. After a long career in tran­sit, he donat­ed the col­lec­tion to his alma mater’s Trans­porta­tion Library, which recent­ly dig­i­tized it in its entire­ty.” Silverman’s col­lec­tion rep­re­sents “35 Unit­ed States and Cana­di­an rail­roads,” points out North­west­ern, and its con­tents most­ly date from the ear­ly 60s to the 1980s—from his most active years rid­ing the rails in style, that is.

But Sil­ver­man was also able to acquire ear­li­er exam­ples, such as a 1939 menu “once perused by pas­sen­gers aboard the famed 20th Cen­tu­ry Lim­it­ed train,” Voon writes, “which trav­eled between New York City and Chica­go.” Twen­ty years after this menu’s appear­ance, Cary Grant, “play­ing an adman in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by North­west, orders a brook trout with his Gib­son” while rid­ing the same line. The Art Deco menu for the “new stream­lined” line fea­tures such del­i­ca­cies as “gen­uine Russ­ian caviar on toast and grilled French sar­dines.”

Even kids’ menus—now reli­ably dom­i­nat­ed by chick­en fin­gers, piz­za, PB&Js, and mac & cheese—offered far more sophis­ti­cat­ed din­ing than we might expect to find, with “items such as grilled lamb chops, roast beef, and sea­son­al fish” on the North Coast Lim­it­ed menu below. “The mid-20th cen­tu­ry seems to have been a gold­en age of rail­road din­ing,” remarks North­west­ern Trans­porta­tion Librar­i­an Rachel Cole. “It was nev­er some­thing that rail­roads prof­it­ed on, but they used it to com­pete against each oth­er and attract pas­sen­gers,” tak­ing pride in “selec­tions that would be rivaled in restau­rants.”

The fine din­ing-car expe­ri­ence might also include nov­el­ty items pas­sen­gers would be unlike­ly to find any­where else, such as North­west­ern Pacific’s Great Baked Pota­to, “a mon­strous spud,” Voon explains, “that could weigh any­where between two to five pounds” and came served with “an appro­pri­ate­ly sized but­ter pat.” One can see the appeal for a food and trav­el enthu­si­ast like Sil­ver­man, who had the priv­i­lege of try­ing dish­es on most of these menus for him­self.

The rest of us will have to rely on our gus­ta­to­ry imag­i­na­tions to con­jure what it might have been like to eat prime rib on the West­ern Star in the Pacif­ic North­west in the ear­ly 60s, or braised smoked pork loin on an Amtrak train in 1972. If your mem­o­ries of din­ing on a train most­ly con­sist of pulling sog­gy, microwaved “food” from steam­ing hot plas­tic bags, or munch­ing on pack­aged, processed salty snacks, expand your sense of what rail­road din­ing could be at the Ira Sil­ver­man Rail­road Menu Col­lec­tion here.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Food­ie Alert: New York Pub­lic Library Presents an Archive of 17,000 Restau­rant Menus (1851–2008)

Mark Twain Makes a List of 60 Amer­i­can Com­fort Foods He Missed While Trav­el­ing Abroad (1880)

What Pris­on­ers Ate at Alca­traz in 1946: A Vin­tage Prison Menu

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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160,000 Pages of Glorious Medieval Manuscripts Digitized: Visit the Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis

in Archives, Books, History, Libraries, Literature | December 3rd, 2019

We might think we have a gen­er­al grasp of the peri­od in Euro­pean his­to­ry immor­tal­ized in theme restau­rant form as “Medieval Times.” After all, writes Amy White at Medievalists.net, “from tat­toos to video games to Game of Thrones, medieval iconog­ra­phy has long inspired fas­ci­na­tion, imi­ta­tion and ven­er­a­tion.” The mar­ket for sword­play, armor, quests, and sor­cery has nev­er been so crowd­ed.

But whether the his­tor­i­cal peri­od we call medieval (a word derived from medi­um aevum, or “mid­dle age”) resem­bled the mod­ern inter­pre­ta­tions it inspired presents us with anoth­er ques­tion entirely—a ques­tion inde­pen­dent and pro­fes­sion­al schol­ars can now answer with free, easy ref­er­ence to “high-res­o­lu­tion images of more than 160,000 pages of Euro­pean medieval and ear­ly mod­ern codices”: rich­ly illu­mi­nat­ed (and ama­teur­ish­ly illus­trat­ed) man­u­scripts, musi­cal scores, cook­books, and much more.

The online project, called Bib­lio­the­ca Philadel­phien­sis, hous­es its dig­i­tal col­lec­tion at the Inter­net Archive and rep­re­sents “vir­tu­al­ly all of the hold­ings of PACSCL [Philadel­phia Area Con­sor­tium of Spe­cial Col­lec­tions Libraries],” a wealth of doc­u­ments from Prince­ton, Bryn Mawr, Vil­lano­va, Swarth­more, and many more col­lege and uni­ver­si­ty libraries, as well as the Amer­i­can Philo­soph­i­cal Soci­ety, Nation­al Archives at Philadel­phia, and oth­er august insti­tu­tions of high­er learn­ing and con­ser­va­tion.

Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty “con­tributed 27 man­u­scripts amount­ing to about 5,000 pages,” writes White, includ­ing “a 1462 hand­writ­ten copy of Virgil’s Aeneid with pen­ciled sketch­es in the mar­gins” (see above). There are man­u­scripts from that peri­od like the Ital­ian Trac­ta­tus de mal­efici­is (Trea­tise on evil deeds), a legal com­pendi­um from 1460 with “thir­ty-one mar­gin­al draw­ings in ink” show­ing “var­i­ous crimes (both delib­er­ate and acci­den­tal) being com­mit­ted, from sword-fights and mur­ders to hunt­ing acci­dents and a hang­ing.”

The Trac­ta­tus’ draw­ings “do not appear to be the work of a pro­fes­sion­al artist,” the notes point out, though it also con­tains pages, like the image at the top, show­ing a trained illu­mi­na­tor’s hand. The Bib­lio­the­ca Philadel­phien­sis archive includes 15th and 16th-cen­tu­ry recipes and extracts on alche­my, med­ical texts, and copi­ous Bibles and books of prayer and devo­tion. There is a 1425 edi­tion of Chaucer’s Can­ter­bury Tales in Mid­dle Eng­lish (lack­ing the pro­logue and sev­er­al tales).

These may all seem of recent vin­tage, rel­a­tive­ly speak­ing, for a medieval archive, but the col­lec­tion reach­es back to the 9th cen­tu­ry, with hun­dreds of doc­u­ments, like the 1000 AD music man­u­script above, from a far ear­li­er time. “Users can view, down­load and com­pare man­u­scripts in near­ly micro­scop­ic detail,” notes White. “It is the nation’s largest region­al online col­lec­tion of medieval man­u­scripts,” a col­lec­tion schol­ars can draw on for cen­turies to come to learn what life was real­ly like—at least for the few who could read and write—in Medieval Times.

via Medievalists.net

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Why Knights Fought Snails in Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts

800 Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Are Now Online: Browse & Down­load Them Cour­tesy of the British Library and Bib­lio­thèque Nationale de France

The Medieval Mas­ter­piece, the Book of Kells, Is Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

A Free Yale Course on Medieval His­to­ry: 700 Years in 22 Lec­tures

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Isamu Noguchi Museum Puts Online an Archive of 60,000 Photographs, Manuscripts & Digitized Drawings by the Japanese Sculptor

in Archives, Art | November 28th, 2019

No mat­ter how unfa­mil­iar you may be with the work of Isamu Noguchi, you’re like­ly to have encoun­tered it, quite pos­si­bly more than once, in the form of a Noguchi table. Designed in the 1940s for the Her­man Miller fur­ni­ture com­pa­ny (in a cat­a­log that also includ­ed the work of George Nel­son, Paul Lás­zló, and Charles Eames of the epony­mous chair), it shows off Noguchi’s dis­tinc­tive aes­thet­ic as well as many of his most acclaimed sculp­tures, set designs, and pub­lic spaces. That aes­thet­ic could only have arisen from a sin­gu­lar artis­tic life like Noguchi’s, which began in Los Ange­les where he was born to an Amer­i­can moth­er and a Japan­ese father, and soon start­ed cross­ing back and forth across both the Pacif­ic and the Atlantic: a child­hood spent around Japan, school­ing and appren­tice­ship back in the U.S., a Guggen­heim Fel­low­ship in Paris, peri­ods of study in Chi­na and Japan — and all that before age 30.

Now, thanks to the Noguchi Muse­um, we can take a clos­er look at not just the Noguchi table but all the fruits of Noguchi’s long work­ing life, which began in the 1910s and con­tin­ued until his death in the 1980s. (He exe­cut­ed his first notable work, the design of the gar­den for his moth­er’s house in Chi­gasa­ki, at just eight years old.)

The insti­tu­tion that bears his name recent­ly dig­i­tized and made avail­able 60,000 archival pho­tographs, man­u­scripts, and dig­i­tized draw­ings, and also launched a dig­i­tal cat­a­logue raison­né designed to be updat­ed with dis­cov­er­ies still to come about Noguchi’s life and work. “The com­ple­tion of a mul­ti­year project, the archive now fea­tures 28,000 pho­tographs doc­u­ment­ing the artist’s works, exhi­bi­tions, var­i­ous stu­dios, per­son­al pho­tographs, and influ­en­tial friends and col­leagues,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Alis­sa Guz­man. “The wealth of imagery is over­whelm­ing and also sur­pris­ing, bring­ing atten­tion to works we might not often asso­ciate with Noguchi.”

Indeed, as the pro­jec­t’s man­ag­ing edi­tor Alex Ross tells Guz­man, the research process revealed “sev­er­al sig­nif­i­cant art­works which were assumed to have been lost or destroyed,” as well as “pre­vi­ous­ly unat­trib­uted pieces that the archive is now able to con­firm as works by Noguchi.” The dif­fi­cul­ty of con­firm­ing the authen­tic­i­ty of cer­tain works speaks to the pro­tean qual­i­ty of Noguchi’s art that goes hand-in-hand with its dis­tinc­tive­ness, a bal­ance struck by few major artists of any era. And though quite a few of Noguchi’s cre­ations (and not just the table) have been described as time­less, no oth­er body of work reflects quite so clear­ly the inter­min­gling of East and West – a West that includ­ed the Old World as well as the New — that, hav­ing begun on eco­nom­ic and social lev­els, reached the aes­thet­ic one in the cen­tu­ry through which Noguchi lived. Explore his cat­a­logue raison­né, and you may find that, no mat­ter what part of the world you’re from, you have more expe­ri­ence with Noguchi’s work than you thought.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

The Get­ty Dig­i­tal Archive Expands to 135,000 Free Images: Down­load High Res­o­lu­tion Scans of Paint­ings, Sculp­tures, Pho­tographs & Much Much More

Down­load 2,500 Beau­ti­ful Wood­block Prints and Draw­ings by Japan­ese Mas­ters (1600–1915)

Down­load Vin­cent van Gogh’s Col­lec­tion of 500 Japan­ese Prints, Which Inspired Him to Cre­ate “the Art of the Future”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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