Results tagged “Library of Congress” from Real Clear Arts

You have to have mixed feelings about web exhibits: seeing art face-to-face is essential. So when a photo editor at Newsweek.com recently alerted me to just-posted exhibition of vintage photographs from turn-of-the-century Russia on its site, I was a tad skeptical that it was worthy of comment. 

( Like all print properties struggling to make their way in the web world, Newsweek is trying new things, and posting arts and photo galleries on its site is one. Good for Newsweek.com.) 

When I looked at the site, I changed my mind.

The photos belong to the Library of Congress, which also has an online exhibit about them. The photographs were taken by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944), photographer to the last czar, who fled Russia, with his crates of glass plates. The LOC purchased them from his family in 1948. Prokudin-Gorskii took three consecutive photos of his subjects using three color filters and combined them into beautiful color images -- they look as if they were taken yesterday.

The two web exhibits do different things and will appeal to different audiences. Newsweek's slide show is more polished: editors chose some of the best images and added some context. It's more likely to appeal to the general public. The LOC's is more scholarly. You may want so spend some time at both.

Photo Credits: Peasant women offer berries to visitors to their izba, a traditional wooden house, near the small town of Kirillov, 1909 (top); Monastery of St. Nil' on Stolobnyi Island in Lake Seliger in Tver' Province, northwest of Moscow, 1910 (bottom), Courtesy Library of Congress.

The White House, it seems, is about to replace James H. Billington as Librarian of Congress. Billington (left), a distinguished scholar appointed by President Reagan in 1987, turned 80 in June. He'll mark his 22nd anniversary in the job on Sept. 14, and an announcement may come around that time. At least that's what some knowledgeable people in Washington suggest.

The front-runner at the moment appears to be Carla D. Hayden, head of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore's public library, since 1993. Raised in Chicago, she earned a PhD at the University of Chicago; was, early on, a children's librarian; and eventually became Chief Librarian of the Chicago Public Library. She's seen here on a July visit to a branch library for the Pratt's Preschool Storytime! program.

The White House declined to comment; and, I caution, this may change and there may be another contender whose name hasn't surfaced.  

But whoever gets the nod, Billington will be a tough act to follow. He's a Russian expert and the author of at least five books. A Rhodes scholar with a PhD from Oxford, he taught history at Harvard and Princeton, then directed the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

At the Library, Billington made his mark with programs like the World Digital Library, an international library connected to more than 30 national libraries and supported partly by UNESCO. He also founded Open World, a cultural exchange program approved by Congress in 1999 that has brought more than 14,000 Eurasian "current and future leaders" to the U.S. to get a first-hand experience with "American democracy, civil society and community life." Here's a link to Billington's bio on the LOC website.

The Library of Congress is the oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world. If you haven't taken a look lately, you may be surprised at what available online, let alone at the site. There's plenty of there for arts-lovers, particularly in performing arts.

The National Archives has been in the news in recent days for releasing another raft of Nixon materials -- some 30,000 pages of documents and 154 hours of tapes were opened to the public on June 23. But they've been well-covered in the national press, and I'm not writing about them here.

Rather, as the National Archives celebrates its 75th Anniversary -- and the picture here illustrates the condition of some War Department records, held during the 1930s in a White House garage, before their creation -- I simply want to call your attention to a 21st Century development there. On June 19, the Archives formally launched its own YouTube channel. On it, the Archives plans to showcase some popular archived films, including those on the space race, World War II, America in the 1930s, and clips of "favorite things" in Presidential libraries.

Here's the YouTube link.

If you are at all into American history, the NA website itself is full of things to see -- documents, photos, records of all sorts.

It's hard to tell how many museums and performing arts groups have YouTube channels. The Indianapolis Museum of Art does, as do the Metropolitan Museum (link) and the Columbus Museum of Art (link). There must be others. But when I made random checks, I found plenty of others, including the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, the Dallas Performing Arts Center, without them (some had posted clips, however).

If the National Archives and the Library of Congress, which also has its own YouTube channel, have moved in this direction, can arts organizations afford not to? Just asking.

UPDATE, 6/30, 11:30: The Indianapolis Museum of Art reminds me that it launched ArtBabble.org in April, as a destination for videos about art, with Art21, the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the New York Public Library as partners. A wonderful development, and nothing to ignore. Moreover, IMA says, it will be naming more partners later this year. I was focusing on YouTube, however, because of its mass appeal. Maybe arts groups, like IMA itself, need both channels.

Photo Credit: National Archives