1,000+ Haunting & Beautiful Photos of Native American Peoples, Shot by the Ethnographer Edward S. Curtis (Circa 1905)

in History, Photography | May 17th, 2016

From the fig­ure­heads of ships to cig­ar store stat­ues to the car­i­ca­ture mas­cots of var­i­ous sports teams…. Unfor­tu­nate or den­i­grat­ing images of Native Amer­i­can peo­ples have per­sist­ed in pop­u­lar cul­ture, folk sym­bols of what Elis­a­beth W. Rus­sell refers to in her his­to­ry of the cig­ar store Indi­an as “The Van­ish­ing Amer­i­can.” The phrase comes from the title of a Zane Grey nov­el, which then became a 1925 silent film deal­ing, wrote the New York Times that year, “with the pass­ing of the Amer­i­can Indi­an.” Although both the nov­el and film attempt to protest the treat­ment of Native peo­ple by the U.S. gov­ern­ment, both under­write a com­mon, trou­bling assumption—that Native Amer­i­cans, like the Buf­fa­lo and the wild Mus­tang, were a threat­ened (and threat­en­ing) sep­a­rate species, whose “van­ish­ing” from the picaresque West (as they had “van­ished” from the East) was a lam­en­ta­ble, but per­haps unavoid­able, side effect of the march of Euro-Amer­i­can progress.

Each sym­bol­ic memo­ri­al­iz­ing of Native Amer­i­cans in U.S. iconog­ra­phy, how­ev­er solemn or offen­sive­ly car­toon­ish, ges­tures toward some mea­ger recog­ni­tion of a trag­ic loss, while eras­ing the cir­cum­stances that occa­sioned it. Of course Native Amer­i­cans didn’t van­ish, but were slow­ly killed or hound­ed into pover­ty and dis­pos­ses­sion, and out of sight of white America—their dress, reli­gions, and cul­tures made to dis­ap­pear through forced assim­i­la­tion, only to reap­pear in roman­ti­cized images of trag­i­cal­ly con­quered, but admirably war­like, prim­i­tives.

Those images pro­lif­er­at­ed dur­ing the mid-to-late 19^th cen­tu­ry, the peri­od of intense West­ern set­tle­ment and expan­sion and the so-called Indi­an Wars. “It is a giv­en today,” writes his­to­ri­an Bri­an Dip­ple, “that the idea of the Amer­i­can Indi­an has been his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant. It shaped the atti­tudes of those in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry who shaped Indi­an pol­i­cy. Indi­an policy—be it removal of the East­ern tribes in the 1830s, reser­va­tion iso­la­tion­ism begin­ning in the 1850s, or allot­ment of reser­va­tion lands and assim­i­la­tion in the 1880s—cannot be under­stood with­out an aware­ness of the ideas behind it. Lit­er­a­ture and the visu­al arts pro­vide reveal­ing guides to nine­teenth cen­tu­ry assump­tions about the Indi­an.”

Native his­to­ri­an Vine Delo­ria describes the cul­tur­al sit­u­a­tion with more inci­sive wit in his “Indi­an Man­i­festo,” Custer Died for Your Sins: “The Amer­i­can pub­lic feels most com­fort­able with the myth­i­cal Indi­ans of stereo­type-land who were always THERE. These Indi­ans are fierce, they wear feath­ers and grunt. Most of us don’t fit this ide­al­ized fig­ure since we grunt only when overeat­ing, which is sel­dom.” By the ear­ly 20^th cen­tu­ry, “myth­i­cal Indi­ans” had become firm­ly embed­ded in pop­u­lar cul­ture, thanks to art and enter­tain­ment like the pre­sum­ably seri­ous attempts of Zane Grey and Fred­er­ic Rem­ing­ton, and J.M. Barrie’s deeply unse­ri­ous Peter Pan. It is in this cul­tur­al atmos­phere that pho­tog­ra­ph­er Edward Sher­iff Cur­tis’ huge, 20-vol­ume ethno­graph­ic project, The North Amer­i­can Indi­an emerged.

Begin­ning in 1904, and with the even­tu­al back­ing of J.P. Mor­gan, writes Mash­able, Cur­tis “spent more than 20 years criss­cross­ing North Amer­i­ca, cre­at­ing over 40,000 images of more than 80 dif­fer­ent tribes. He made thou­sands of wax cylin­der record­ings of native songs and lan­guage, and wrote down oral his­to­ries, leg­ends and biogra­phies.” You can view and down­load more than 1,000 of these pho­tographs at the Library of Con­gress. Cur­tis thought of his work as doc­u­ment­ing “what he saw as a van­ish­ing way of life.” Moti­vat­ed by assump­tions about Native peo­ple as semi-myth­ic rem­nants from the past, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er “some­times med­dled with the doc­u­men­tary authen­tic­i­ty of his images. He posed his sub­jects in roman­ti­cized set­tings stripped of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion, more rep­re­sen­ta­tive of an imag­ined pre-Colom­bian exis­tence than the sub­jects’ actu­al lives in the present.”

The pho­tographs are beau­ti­ful, their sub­jects enno­bled by the dra­mat­ic light­ing and styl­ized pos­es, and the breadth and scope of the entire project is noth­ing less than breath­tak­ing. It set the stage for the sig­nif­i­cant work of lat­er pho­tog­ra­phers and ethno­g­ra­phers like Walk­er Evans, Dorothea Lange, and the Lomax­es. Cur­tis has even been cred­it­ed with pro­duc­ing the first doc­u­men­tary film. The images, his­to­ries, tra­di­tions, and biogra­phies Cur­tis pre­served con­sti­tute an invalu­able his­tor­i­cal record. That said, we should bear in mind that The North Amer­i­can Indi­an comes to us framed by Cur­tis’ assump­tions about Native Amer­i­can cul­tures, formed by a cli­mate in which myth vied with, and usu­al­ly sup­plant­ed, fact. What do we see in these staged images, and what do we not see?

One of Cur­tis’ enthu­si­as­tic ear­ly back­ers, Theodore Roosevelt—who authored the intro­duc­tion to Vol­ume One—was, “like many of Cur­tis’ even­tu­al sup­port­ers,” writes Valerie Daniels, “more inter­est­ed in obtain­ing a record of van­ish­ing Native Amer­i­can cul­tures as a tes­ta­ment to the supe­ri­or­i­ty of his own civ­i­liza­tion than out of any con­cern over their sit­u­a­tion or recog­ni­tion of his own role in the process.” Though Cur­tis did not nec­es­sar­i­ly share these views, and lat­er became “rad­i­cal in his admo­ni­tion of gov­ern­ment poli­cies toward Native Amer­i­cans,” he also had to please his financiers and his audi­ence, most of whom would have felt the way Roo­sevelt did. We should bear this cul­tur­al con­text in mind as we take in Cur­tis’ work, and ask how it shaped the cre­ation and recep­tion of this tru­ly impres­sive record of both Amer­i­can his­to­ry and Amer­i­can myth. Enter the archive of images here.

via Mash­able

Relat­ed Con­tent:

226 Ansel Adams Pho­tographs of Great Amer­i­can Nation­al Parks Are Now Online

200 Ansel Adams Pho­tographs Expose the Rig­ors of Life in Japan­ese Intern­ment Camps Dur­ing WW II

Hand-Col­ored 1860s Pho­tographs Reveal the Last Days of Samu­rai Japan

New Rosa Parks Archive is Now Online: Fea­tures 7,500 Man­u­scripts & 2,500 Pho­tographs, Cour­tesy of the Library of Con­gress

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

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Experimental Band, Xiu Xiu: A Free Stream of Their New Album

in Music, Television | May 17th, 2016

Last year, Col­in Mar­shall high­light­ed for you the music of Xiu Xiu, the exper­i­men­tal post-punk band, which has trav­eled the world, play­ing their own inter­pre­ta­tion of the music Ange­lo Badala­men­ti wrote for David Lynch’s ear­ly 1990s series, Twin Peaks. Our orig­i­nal post fea­tured some of those live per­for­mances, and now comes a stu­dio record­ing of those Twin Peaks inter­pre­ta­tions.

We’d be remiss if we did­n’t tell you that you can stream the new album–called Plays the Music of Twin Peaks– free online. Just click play above. Find a list of indi­vid­ual tracks below. And, if you like what you hear, con­sid­er pur­chas­ing your own copy of the album from the usu­al ven­dors. Enjoy.

1. Lau­ra Palmer’s Theme (0:00)
2. Into The Night (5:03)
3. Audrey’s Dance (10:15)
4. Packard’s Vibra­tion (14:41)
5. Night­sea Wind (18:31)
6. Blue Frank/Pink Room (25:37)
7. Sycamore Tree (31:28)
8. Harold’s Theme (38:16)
9. Dance of the Dream Man (42:12)
10. Falling (47:22)
11. Love Theme Farewell (54:20)
12. Josie’s Past (1:00:44)

via Wel­come to Twin Peaks

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Exper­i­men­tal Post-Punk Band Xiu Xiu Plays the Music from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Title Sequence, Recre­at­ed in an Adorable Paper Ani­ma­tion

Play the Twin Peaks Video Game: Retro Fun for David Lynch Fans

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

Hear Robert Frost Read His Most Famous Poems: “The Road Not Taken,” “Mending Wall,” “Nothing Gold Can Stay” & More

in Audio Books, Poetry | May 17th, 2016

Robert Frost has the dubi­ous hon­or of being known the world over as the poet of a seize-the-day cliché. His poem “The Road Not Tak­en” (read by Frost above) appears on cof­fee mugs, autum­nal moti­va­tion­al posters, upbeat email sig­na­tures, and in adver­tise­ments and tele­vi­sion shows, all meant to inspire con­fi­dent deci­sion-mak­ing in uncer­tain times: unin­ten­tion­al­ly iron­ic, pop­ulist appeals to diverge from the herd.

If this is Frost’s lega­cy in the wider cul­ture, it’s a fate most poets wouldn’t wish on their bit­ter­est rival. The typ­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tion of this poem is an unfor­tu­nate mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Frost’s work in gen­er­al. Indeed, “The Road Not Tak­en” may be “the most mis­read poem in Amer­i­ca,” as David Orr argues at The Paris Review.

Frost’s poet­ry does not often inspire con­fi­dence or moti­va­tion, but rather doubt, uncom­fort­able reflec­tion, fear, and some­times a kind of dread­ful awe. Like Faulkn­er was in his day, Frost was, and still is, mis­tak­en for a quaint, col­or­ful region­al­ist. But rather than a poet of New Eng­land folk sim­plic­i­ty, he is a poet of New Eng­land skep­ti­cism and a kind of hard-head­ed sub­lime. Any­one who reads “The Road Not Tak­en” close­ly, for exam­ple, will note the speaker’s ambigu­ous tone in the final stan­za, and final three lines—oft-quoted as a tri­umphant dénoue­ment.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Some­where ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less trav­eled by,
And that has made all the dif­fer­ence.

The trav­el­er does not tell us what “dif­fer­ence” the choice will have made, nor why he should tell of this cross­roads “ages and ages hence… with a sigh.” Implied in these lines, how­ev­er, is at least the sug­ges­tion of unavoid­able future regret, and a reck­on­ing with irrev­o­ca­ble fate. The ear­li­er line, “Oh, I kept the first for anoth­er day!” sounds more like an excla­ma­tion of rue than the cel­e­bra­tion of a choice well-made.

And as Orr points out, the speak­er’s ini­tial encounter presents him with two paths that “equal­ly lay / in leaves.”; the two roads are equal­ly travelled—or untrav­elled as the case may be—and the trav­eller choos­es one arbi­trar­i­ly. In these final lines, he announces his inten­tion to tell a dif­fer­ent, per­haps self-con­grat­u­la­to­ry sto­ry about his deci­sion. “The poem isn’t a salute to can-do indi­vid­u­al­ism,” Orr writes, “it’s a com­men­tary on the self-decep­tion we prac­tice when con­struct­ing the sto­ry of our own lives.”

One can hear even dark­er notes in anoth­er famous poem, “Mend­ing Wall,” in which a name­less, unfeel­ing “Some­thing” goes about its work of dis­man­tling the speaker’s best efforts, and all human work gen­er­al­ly. It’s a theme in much of Frost’s poet­ry that can, if ful­ly appre­ci­at­ed, inspire a dread as potent as that in the most baroque and florid of H.P. Lovecraft’s weird tales. Frost devel­oped his theme of cos­mic indif­fer­ence ear­ly, in “Stars,” from his first pub­lished col­lec­tion, A Boy’s Will. He intro­duces the poem in the table of con­tents with this suc­cinct descrip­tion: “There is no over­sight in human affairs,” a mat­ter-of-fact state­ment that scarce­ly pre­pares us for the unnerv­ing images to fol­low:

How count­less­ly they con­gre­gate
O’er our tumul­tuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
When win­try winds do blow!—

As if with keen­ness for our fate,
Our fal­ter­ing few steps on
To white rest, and a place of rest
Invis­i­ble at dawn,—

And yet with nei­ther love nor hate,
Those stars like some snow-white
Minerva’s snow-white mar­ble eyes
With­out the gift of sight.

In three short, dev­as­tat­ing stan­zas, Frost under­cuts ancient, com­fort­ing pre­ten­tions about the stars’ (or gods’) sen­tient benev­o­lence, with images and dic­tion that recall Thomas Hardy’s bleak lament “In Tene­bris” and antic­i­pate Wal­lace Stevens’ imper­son­al and chill­ing “The Snow Man.” The snow and ice in Frost’s poems are not part of the pret­ty scenery, but metonymic fig­ures of obliv­ion.

In short, the kind­ly old Robert Frost we think we know from the triv­ial mis­read­ing of “The Road Not Tak­en” is not the poet Robert Frost at all. Frost is a prick­ly, chal­leng­ing, even some­what devi­ous char­ac­ter whose pleas­ing­ly musi­cal lines and quaint, pas­toral images lure read­ers into poems that har­bor much less cheer­ful atti­tudes than they expect to find, and much more com­plex and mature ideas. The young Frost once described him­self as “not unde­sign­ing,” and in his lat­er, 1939 essay “The Fig­ure a Poem Makes,” he famous­ly declared that a poem “begins in delight and ends in wis­dom.”

In the two Spo­ti­fy playlists above (down­load Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware here), you can hear Frost read some of his most famous poems, includ­ing “The Road Not Tak­en,” “Mend­ing Wall,” “Noth­ing Gold Can Stay,” “After Apple Pick­ing,” “Death of a Hired Man,” and sev­er­al more. Not rep­re­sent­ed here, unfor­tu­nate­ly, are poems from the won­der­ful debut A Boy’s Will, but you can read that full col­lec­tion online here, and you should. Get to know the real Frost, if you haven’t already, and you’ll appre­ci­ate all the more why he’s one of the most cel­e­brat­ed poets in the Amer­i­can canon.

The read­ings above will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Robert Frost Read ‘The Gift Out­right,’ the Poem He Recit­ed from Mem­o­ry at JFK’s Inau­gu­ra­tion

Robert Frost Recites ‘Stop­ping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’

Library of Con­gress Launch­es New Online Poet­ry Archive, Fea­tur­ing 75 Years of Clas­sic Poet­ry Read­ings

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

Thomas Edison’s Silent Film of the “Fartiste” Who Delighted Crowds at Le Moulin Rouge (1900)

in Comedy, Film, History, Theatre | May 16th, 2016

In 1900, Thomas Edi­son trav­eled to Paris to doc­u­ment the many won­ders of the Expo­si­tion Uni­verselle, and the city itself. Among the sights cap­tured with his kine­to­scope cam­eras were the Expo’s mov­ing side­walks, the Champs-Élysées, and the pre­vi­ous Expo­si­tion Uni­verselle’s crown jew­el, the Eif­fel Tow­er, now eleven years old.

It wasn’t all so high-mind­ed. Edi­son and his kine­to­scope also caught a per­for­mance by for­mer Moulin Rouge star, Joseph Pujol, aka Le Pétomane, above. This ele­gant­ly attired gen­tle­men achieved fame and for­tune with a series of impres­sions, car­ried out by a rather eccen­tric ori­fice. He was not so much artiste as fartiste, a title he wore with pride.

Pujol claimed to have dis­cov­ered his unusu­al tal­ent as a child, and soon set about achiev­ing dif­fer­ent effects by using his abdom­i­nal mus­cles to expel not gas, but odor­less air. By vary­ing the pres­sure, he was able to play sim­ple tunes. By the time he turned 30, his act had expand­ed to include imper­son­ations of celebri­ties, musi­cal instru­ments, birds, a thun­der­storm and such stock char­ac­ters as a ner­vous bride. His grand finale includ­ed such feats as blow­ing out can­dles, smok­ing cig­a­rettes and play­ing an oca­ri­na (below), all with the aid of a rub­ber hose insert­ed into his anus via a mod­est trouser slit.

What a tragedy that Edison’s short film is silent! No live piano accom­pa­ni­ment could do jus­tice to this mag­i­cal artis­tic fruit, and if there were oth­er record­ings of Pujol, they’ve been lost to his­to­ry.

He lives on in the imag­i­na­tions of artists who fol­lowed him.

Actor Ugo Tog­nazzi, below, assumed the title role in a 1983 Ital­ian lan­guage fea­ture.

Direc­tor Mel Brooks inject­ed a bit of sub­tle­ty into Blaz­ing Sad­dles’  beans-around-the-camp­fire humor when he appeared as a char­ac­ter named Gov­er­nor William J. LeP­etomane.

Sad­ly, Pujol was left on the cut­ting room floor of direc­tor Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge, but all is not lost. Report­ed­ly, John­ny Depp has indi­cat­ed inter­est in bring­ing this his­toric fig­ure back to life. (Gen­tle­men, start your screen­plays…)

Then there is the half hour biopic, below, direct­ed by Mon­ty Python alum Ian McNaughton and star­ring Leonard Rossiter as Pujol. Pre­pare to hear the open­ing ses­sion of the Con­gress of Vien­na, a toad, and a four-part har­mo­ny.

via Messy Nessy Chic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Thomas Edison’s Creepy Talk­ing Dolls: An Inven­tion That Scared Kids & Flopped on the Mar­ket

Thomas Edison’s Box­ing Cats (1894), or Where the LOL­Cats All Began

Thomas Edi­son Recites “Mary Had a Lit­tle Lamb” in Ear­ly Voice Record­ing

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Sheryl Sandberg Talks About What Death Has Taught Her About Life: UC Berkeley Commencement Address, 2016

in Life | May 16th, 2016

A lit­tle more than a year ago, Sheryl Sand­berg’s 47-year-old hus­band, Dave Gold­berg, died unex­pect­ed­ly. The ulti­mate cause, heart dis­ease. Sand­berg has since endured many dark days. And now, for the first time, she’s talk­ing pub­licly about the whole expe­ri­ence, and par­tic­u­lar­ly about what death has taught her about life.

Sand­berg picked the appro­pri­ate venue to speak out–the com­mence­ment cer­e­monies at UC-Berke­ley this past week­end. Grad­u­a­tion speech­es tra­di­tion­al­ly ask accom­plished fig­ures to give life advice to young grad­u­ates, and, painful as it might have been, that’s what Sand­berg offered. One day or anoth­er, you’ll expe­ri­ence howl­ing loss­es of your own, and what can get you through these experiences–Sandberg wants you to know–is resilience. She remarked:

And when the chal­lenges come, I hope you remem­ber that anchored deep with­in you is the abil­i­ty to learn and grow. You are not born with a fixed amount of resilience. Like a mus­cle, you can build it up, draw on it when you need it. In that process you will fig­ure out who you real­ly are—and you just might become the very best ver­sion of your­self.

Class of 2016, as you leave Berke­ley, build resilience.

Build resilience in your­selves. When tragedy or dis­ap­point­ment strikes, know that you have the abil­i­ty to get through absolute­ly any­thing. I promise you do. As the say­ing goes, we are more vul­ner­a­ble than we ever thought, but we are stronger than we ever imag­ined.

To increase your resilience, Sand­berg would have you read the 1990 book, Learned Opti­mism: How to Change Your Life and Mind, where Mar­tin Selig­man, the father of Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy, out­lines tech­niques for look­ing at life events in the health­i­est pos­si­ble way. (That’s what Sand­berg is get­ting at when she talks about per­ma­nence, per­va­sive­ness and per­son­al­iza­tion.) You can read a com­plete tran­script of Sand­berg’s speech here.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es, a sub­set of 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Cre­ativ­i­ty, Not Mon­ey, is the Key to Hap­pi­ness: Dis­cov­er Psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s The­o­ry of “Flow”

Alan Rick­man Recites “If Death Is Not the End,” a Mov­ing Poem by Robyn Hitch­cock

Visit 2+ Million Free Works of Art from 20 World-Class Museums Free Online

in Art | May 13th, 2016

Since the first stir­rings of the inter­net, artists and cura­tors have puz­zled over what the flu­id­i­ty of online space would do to the expe­ri­ence of view­ing works of art. At a con­fer­ence on the sub­ject in 2001, Susan Haz­an of the Israel Muse­um won­dered whether there is “space for enchant­ment in a tech­no­log­i­cal world?” She referred to Wal­ter Benjamin’s rumi­na­tions on the “poten­tial­ly lib­er­at­ing phe­nom­e­non” of tech­no­log­i­cal­ly repro­duced art, yet also not­ed that “what was for­feit­ed in this process were the ‘aura’ and the author­i­ty of the object con­tain­ing with­in it the val­ues of cul­tur­al her­itage and tra­di­tion.” Eval­u­at­ing a num­ber of online gal­leries of the time, Haz­an found that “the speed with which we are able to access remote muse­ums and pull them up side by side on the screen is alarm­ing­ly imme­di­ate.” Per­haps the “accel­er­at­ed mobil­i­ty” of the inter­net, she wor­ried, “caus­es objects to become dis­pos­able and to decline in sig­nif­i­cance.”

Fif­teen years after her essay, the num­ber of muse­ums that have made their col­lec­tions avail­able online whole, or in part, has grown expo­nen­tial­ly and shows no signs of slow­ing. We may not need to fear los­ing muse­ums and libraries—important spaces that Michel Fou­cault called “het­ero­topias,” where lin­ear, mun­dane time is inter­rupt­ed. These spaces will like­ly always exist. Yet increas­ing­ly we need nev­er vis­it them in per­son to view most of their con­tents. Stu­dents and aca­d­e­mics can con­duct near­ly all of their research through the inter­net, nev­er hav­ing to trav­el to the Bodleian, the Bei­necke, or the British Library. And lovers of art must no longer shell out for plane tick­ets and hotels to see the pre­cious con­tents of the Get­ty, the Guggen­heim, or the Rijksmu­se­um. For all that may be lost, online gal­leries have long been “mak­ing works of art wide­ly avail­able, intro­duc­ing new forms of per­cep­tion in film and pho­tog­ra­phy and allow­ing art to move from pri­vate to pub­lic, from the elite to the mass­es.”

Even more so than when Haz­an wrote those words, the online world offers pos­si­bil­i­ties for “the emer­gence of new cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na, the vir­tu­al aura.” Over the years we have fea­tured dozens of data­bas­es, archives, and online gal­leries through which you might vir­tu­al­ly expe­ri­ence art the world over, an expe­ri­ence once sole­ly reserved for only the very wealthy. And as artists and cura­tors adapt to a dig­i­tal envi­ron­ment, they find new ways to make vir­tu­al gal­leries enchant­i­ng. The vast col­lec­tions in the vir­tu­al gal­leries list­ed below await your vis­it, with close to 2,000,000 paint­ings, sculp­tures, pho­tographs, books, and more. See the Roset­ta Stone at the British Muse­um (top), cour­tesy of the Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute. See Van Gogh’s many self-por­traits and vivid, swirling land­scapes at The Van Gogh Muse­um. Vis­it the Asian art col­lec­tion at the Smith­so­ni­an’s Freer and Sack­ler Gal­leries. Or see Vass­i­ly Kandin­sky’s daz­zling abstract com­po­si­tions at the Guggen­heim.

And below the list of gal­leries, find links to online col­lec­tions of sev­er­al hun­dred art books to read online or down­load. Con­tin­ue to watch this space: We’ll add to both of these lists as more and more col­lec­tions come online.

Art Images from Muse­ums & Libraries

• Art Insti­tute of Chica­go (44,000 images)
• Google Art Project (250,000)
• Har­vard Bauhaus Col­lec­tion (30,000)
• L.A. Coun­ty Muse­um (20,000)
• New York Pub­lic Library-His­toric Maps (20,000)
• Nor­way Nation­al Muse­um (30,000)
• Paris Art Muse­ums (300,000)
• SFMo­MA Rauschen­berg Col­lec­tion 
• Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty’s Can­tor Art Cen­ter (45,000)
• Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty’s French Rev­o­lu­tion Col­lec­tion (14,000)
• Taipei’s Nation­al Palace Muse­um (70,000)
• The British Library (100,000)
• The British Muse­um (4,200)
• The Cleve­land Muse­um of Art (30,000)
• The Isamu Noguchi Muse­um (60,000)
• The Get­ty (100,000)
• The Guggen­heim (1,600)
• The Met (400,000)
• The Mor­gan Library & Museum’s Online Col­lec­tion (10,000)
• The Mor­gan Library Rem­brandt Sketch­es (300)
• The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art/MoMA  (65,000)
• The Muse­um of New Zealand (30,000)
• The Nation­al Gallery (35,000)
• The New York Pub­lic Library: Pho­tos, Maps, Let­ters (180,000)
• The Rijksmu­se­um (210,00)
• The Smith­son­ian (40,000)
• The Tate (70,000)
• The Whit­ney (21,000)
• The Van Gogh Muse­um (3500)
• Yale Cen­ter for British Art
• Yale’s Great Depres­sion Pho­to Col­lec­tion (170,000)
• Ver­meer (36)

Art Books

• The Get­ty (250 books)
• The Guggen­heim (98)
• The Met (448)
• Get­ty Research Por­tal (100,000)

Relat­ed Con­tents:

Down­load 448 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

Free: The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and the Guggen­heim Offer 474 Free Art Books Online

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

Ursula K. Le Guin Names the Books She Likes and Wants You to Read

in Books, Literature | May 13th, 2016

Image by Gor­thi­an, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

I’m sure I speak for many when I say that Ursu­la K. Le Guin’s nov­els and sto­ries changed what I thought sci­ence fic­tion could be and do. Raised on H.G. Wells, Isaac Asi­mov, Robert Hein­lein, and oth­er most­ly-white-male-cen­tered clas­sic sci-fi, I found Le Guin’s lit­er­ary thought exper­i­ments star­tling and refresh­ing. Now it seems like almost a mat­ter of course that sci­ence fic­tion and fan­ta­sy nar­ra­tives come from a diver­si­ty of peo­ples and per­spec­tives. But Le Guin remains the first to wake me from a dog­mat­ic slum­ber about the poten­tial of spec­u­la­tive fic­tion to imag­ine not only future tech­nolo­gies, but also expan­sive future iden­ti­ties.

Nov­els like The Left Hand of Dark­ness, The Dis­pos­sessed, and The Lathe of Heav­en reflect Le Guin’s very broad range of inter­ests in pol­i­tics and the human­i­ties and social sci­ences. She began her career as an aca­d­e­m­ic study­ing Renais­sance French and Ital­ian lit­er­a­ture, and her fic­tion syn­the­sizes years of care­ful read­ing in anthro­pol­o­gy, psy­chol­o­gy, soci­ol­o­gy, his­to­ry, and East­ern and West­ern phi­los­o­phy. Like­wise, though she has been much influ­enced by tra­di­tion­al hard sci­ence fic­tion, Le Guin’s lit­er­ary loves are wide and deep. All that’s to say she’s as admirable and inter­est­ing a read­er as she is a writer. When she prais­es a book, I pay atten­tion. Thanks to her genial, loqua­cious online pres­ence for many years, her fans have had ample oppor­tu­ni­ty to find out what she’s read­ing and why.

Le Guin recent­ly made a few lists of books she likes, and made sure to pref­ace each one with a dis­claimer: “This list is not ‘my favorite books.’ It’s just a list of books I’ve read or re-read, recent­ly, that I liked and want­ed to tell peo­ple about.” She leaps from genre to genre, writ­ing mini-reviews of each book and link­ing each one to Powell’s, the inde­pen­dent book­store in her beloved city of Port­land, Ore­gon. Below, we’ve excerpt­ed some of Le Guin’s “Books I’ve Liked” from each list, along with her com­men­tary. Click on each date head­ing to see her com­plete lists of rec­om­men­da­tions.

Decem­ber 2006

See­ing, by José Sara­m­a­go. A sequel to his amaz­ing nov­el Blind­ness. Sara­m­a­go is not easy to read. He punc­tu­ates most­ly with com­mas, doesn’t pararaph often, doesn’t set off con­ver­sa­tion in quotes —; man­ner­isms I wouldn’t endure in a less­er writer; but Sara­m­a­go is worth it. More than worth it. Tran­scen­dent­ly worth it. Blind­ness scared me to death when I start­ed it, but it ris­es won­der­ful­ly out of dark­ness into the light. See­ing goes the oth­er way and is a very fright­en­ing book.

Chang­ing Ones, by Will Roscoe. An exam­i­na­tion of how gen­der has been con­struct­ed in Native Amer­i­can soci­eties. Respon­si­bly researched, very well writ­ten, gen­er­ous in spir­it, nev­er over­sim­pli­fy­ing a com­plex sub­ject, this is a won­der­ful­ly enlight­en­ing book.

Age of Bronze: The Sto­ry of the Tro­jan War. I: A Thou­sand Ships, and II: Sac­ri­fice by Eric Shanow­er. A graph­ic nov­el —; the first two vol­umes of a pro­ject­ed series. The draw­ing is excel­lent, the lan­guage live­ly, and the research awe­some. Shanow­er goes back to the very ori­gins of the war to fol­low the ear­ly careers of the var­i­ous heroes —; Agamem­non and Menelaus, Achilles, Odysseus, Hec­tor, Paris, Aeneas, and their fam­i­lies, par­ents, wives, lovers, chil­dren… Thus, by the end of Book Two, the actu­al siege of Troy, which the Ili­ad tells one part of, is yet to begin. I see a loom­ing prob­lem: the bat­tles (of which there have been a good many already) are visu­al­ly all alike, and there’s end­less­ly more to come —; bat­tle scenes in Homer are bru­tal­ly monot­o­nous and inter­minable (as war is). But these two vol­umes are visu­al­ly and nar­ra­tive­ly var­ied, and give a fas­ci­nat­ing back­ground­ing and inter­pre­ta­tion to the great sto­ries.

June 2007

The Yid­dish Police­men’s Union, by Michael Chabon. Of course if you haven’t read Kava­lier and Clay yet, go read it at once, what on earth have you been wait­ing for? Then read this. It is even a lit­tle cra­zier, maybe. Crazy like a genius.

Suf­fer the Lit­tle Chil­dren, by Don­na Leon. The 16th of Leon’s Venet­ian mys­tery nov­els is one of the finest. I reviewed this book for the Man­ches­ter Guardian

Some young adult books I like — I had to read a lot of them this spring, and these stood out:

The High­er Pow­er of Lucky by Susan Patron. This one has already won the New­bery Award and gone to Kid­dilit Book­sellers Heav­en for­ev­er, so it does­n’t need my endorse­ment… but it’s a love­ly, fun­ny, sweet book, set in a tru­ly god­for­sak­en desert town in Cal­i­for­nia.

Weed­flower by Cyn­thia Kado­ha­ta. A nov­el that goes with its young hero­ine to one of the prison camps where our gov­ern­ment sent all our cit­i­zens of Japan­ese ances­try in 1942 after Pearl Har­bor. It’s a beau­ti­ful book, under­stat­ed and strong and ten­der. If you read it you won’t for­get it.

Sep­tem­ber 2007

Charles Mann, 1491. A bril­liant sur­vey of what we know about the human pop­u­la­tions of the Amer­i­c­as before the arrival of the Euro­peans, and a brief, often scathing his­to­ry of how we’ve han­dled our knowl­edge. The author is not an arche­ol­o­gist or anthro­pol­o­gist, but he has done his home­work, and is a fine reporter and sum­ma­riz­er, writ­ing with clar­i­ty and flair, easy to read but nev­er talk­ing down. Dis­cussing intense­ly con­tro­ver­sial sub­jects such as dates of set­tle­ment and pop­u­la­tion sizes, he lets you know where he stands, but presents both sides fair­ly. A fas­ci­nat­ing, mind-expand­ing book.

Michael Pol­lan, The Omni­vore’s Dilem­ma. I have nev­er eat­en an Ida­ho pota­to since I read Pol­lan’s arti­cle about what pota­to fields are “treat­ed” with, in his ear­li­er book The Botany of Desire. This one is scary in a dif­fer­ent way. It prob­a­bly won’t stop you from eat­ing any­thing, indeed it is a real cel­e­bra­tion of (real) food; but the first sec­tion is as fine a descrip­tion of the blind, incal­cu­la­ble pow­er of Growth Cap­i­tal­ism as I ever read. (Did you know that cat­tle can’t digest corn, and have to be chem­i­cal­ly poi­soned in order to pro­duce “corn­fed beef”? So, there being lots and lots of grass, why feed them corn? Read the book!) There are some depress­ing bits in the sec­tion on “organ­ic” food, too, but the last sec­tion, where he hunts and gath­ers his din­ner, is fun­ny and often touch­ing.

Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich, Nick­el and Dimed. Ehren­re­ich tries to get by on min­i­mum wage, in three dif­fer­ent towns, work­ing as a wait­ress, a house clean­er, in a Wal-Mart… Yes, it came out eight years ago, and yes, it’s just as true now, if not truer. (I just read in my home­town paper that 47% of work­ing peo­ple in Port­land have to rely on food stamps. Not “wel­fare queens” — peo­ple with jobs, work­ing peo­ple.) She writes her sto­ry with tremen­dous verve and exact­ness. It reads like a nov­el, and leaves you all shook up.

August 2008

[Le Guin devot­ed this list to “Some Graph­ic Nov­els,” and wrote about her dif­fi­cul­ty find­ing good “grown-up stuff.” Though most of it was not to her taste (“gross-out vio­lence, or hor­ror, or twee, or sex­ist, or oth­er­wise not down my alley”), she kept “hop­ing, because the form seems to me such a huge­ly promis­ing and adven­tur­ous one.” Below are two graph­ic nov­els she did like. Anoth­er, Age of Bronze, she men­tioned above in her 2006 list.]

Mar­jane Satrapi’s Perse­po­lis I and II, and her oth­er books. (The movie of Perse­po­lis was charm­ing but it real­ly didn’t add much to the book.) I admire her draw­ing, which is decep­tive­ly sim­ple but very sub­tly designed, using the pure con­trast-pow­er of black-and-white. The draw­ings and the text com­bine so seam­less­ly that I’m not aware of look­ing back and forth between them, I’m just tak­ing it all in at once — Which I think is pret­ty much my ide­al for a graph­ic nar­ra­tive?

Joann Sfar’s The Rabbi’s Cat I and II. Three con­nect­ed sto­ries in each vol­ume. The first two sto­ries in the first vol­ume are pure delight. They are fun­ny and wise and show you a world you almost cer­tain­ly nev­er knew exist­ed. The rab­bi is a dear, the rabbi’s daugh­ter is a dear, and the rabbi’s cat is all cat, all through, all the way down. (I won­dered why Sfar drew him so strange­ly, until I looked at the pho­to­graph of Sfar’s cat on the cov­er.) The sec­ond vol­ume isn’t quite as great, but the first sto­ry in it is awful­ly fun­ny and well drawn, with the most irre­sistible lion, and it’s all enjoy­able. Sfar’s imag­i­na­tion and col­or are won­der­ful. His pub­lish­er should be pil­lo­ried in Times Square for print­ing the art in Vol II so small that you lit­er­al­ly need a mag­ni­fy­ing glass to read some of the con­ti­nu­ity. — I gath­er that Sfar and Satrapi are friends. Are we on the way to hav­ing a great school of graph­ic nov­els by For­eign­ers Liv­ing in Paris?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ursu­la Le Guin Gives Insight­ful Writ­ing Advice in Her Free Online Work­shop

Hear Ursu­la K. Le Guin’s Pio­neer­ing Sci-Fi Nov­el, The Left Hand of Dark­ness, as a BBC Radio Play

Hear Ursu­la K. Le Guin’s Sto­ry, “The End” Dra­ma­tized: A Rare Audio Treat

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

Watch the First Sherlock Holmes Movie (1900), the Arrival of the Most Popular Character in Cinema

in Film, Literature | May 13th, 2016

Accord­ing to Guin­ness World Records, the human lit­er­ary char­ac­ter who pops up most often on screens big and small is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s best known cre­ation, Sher­lock Holmes. (Ham­let is a dis­tant sec­ond.)

The list of actors who’ve had a go include Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, Robert Downey, Jr., Ian McK­ellen, Michael Caine, and Basil Rath­bone.

John Cleese spoofed him on Com­e­dy Play­house.

John Giel­gud’s cel­e­brat­ed voice brought Holmes to life oppo­site Ralph Richardson’s Dr. Wat­son in a 1954 radio series.

The fic­tion­al detec­tive time warped onto Fan­ta­sy Island and the holodeck of the Star­ship Enter­prise, in the respec­tive form of Peter Law­ford and Brett “Data” Spin­er.

Although Holmes main­tained that “the fair sex was (Watson’s) depart­ment,” the Sovi­et Union’s My Ten­der­ly Loved Detec­tive fea­tured actress Yeka­te­ri­na Vasi­lye­va as a female Sher­lock named Shirley.

But no one has solved the mys­tery of 1900’s Sher­lock Holmes Baf­fled, above, the very first filmed enter­tain­ment to fea­ture the char­ac­ter. The direc­tor and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er was Arthur W. Mar­vin, who went on to serve as cam­era­man for D. W. Grif­fith’s ear­ly silent films. The iden­ti­ty of his star­ring actor has unfor­tu­nate­ly been lost to the ages.

The film itself was believed lost, too, until Michael Point­er, a his­to­ri­an spe­cial­iz­ing in Sher­lock Holme­siana, unearthed a paper copy in a Library of Con­gress archive. A series of indi­vid­ual cards, it was intend­ed to be viewed by Muto­scope, a sin­gle view­er, crank-oper­at­ed peep show device, com­mon in turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry arcades.

No doubt audi­ences who paid a pen­ny to watch this fair­ly plot­less 30-sec­ond adven­ture were more impressed by the spe­cial effects than the anony­mous actor play­ing the icon­ic detec­tive.

To see how this mys­tery man’s per­for­mance mea­sures up against oth­er cin­e­mat­ic Sher­locks, check out these Holmes films found on the web. And find oth­er great films in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More:

• • The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes  – Free – The film is adapt­ed from the 1899 play “Sher­lock Holmes” by William Gillette, and stars Basil Rath­bone, Nigel Bruce, Ida Lupino, George Zuc­co and Alan Mar­shal. (1939)
• • Dressed to Kill – Free – The last of 14 films star­ring Basil Rath­bone as Sher­lock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Doc­tor Wat­son. (1941)
• • Sher­lock Holmes and the Secret Weapon – Free – Sher­lock Holmes res­cues an inven­tor of a new bomb site before the Nazis can get him. (1943)
• • The Woman in Green – Free – Sher­lock Holmes inves­ti­gates when young women around Lon­don turn up mur­dered, each with a fin­ger sev­ered off. Scot­land Yard sus­pects a mad­man, but Holmes believes the killings to be part of a dia­bol­i­cal plot. Stars Basil Rath­bone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Wat­son. (1945)
• • Ter­ror by Night – Free – Sher­lock Holmes film, the thir­teenth to star Basil Rath­bone and Nigel Bruce and was direct­ed by Roy William Neill. The sto­ry revolves around the theft of a famous dia­mond aboard a train. (1946)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read the Lost Sher­lock Holmes Sto­ry That Was Just Dis­cov­ered in an Attic in Scot­land

Hear The New Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes, the Vin­tage Radio Dra­ma Star­ring John Giel­gud, Orson Welles & Ralph Richard­son

Arthur Conan Doyle Names His 19 Favorite Sher­lock Holmes Sto­ries

Down­load the Com­plete Sher­lock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Mas­ter­piece

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Free: Stream Bob Dylan’s Brand New Album Fallen Angels for a Limited Time

in Music | May 13th, 2016

Come gath­er ’round peo­ple, wher­ev­er you roam. Bob Dylan is get­ting ready to release his 37th stu­dio album. And before you can buy it on Ama­zon, iTunes, and the oth­er usu­al places, you can stream it free online for a lim­it­ed time, thanks to NPR. Fall­en Angels–much like Shad­ows in the Night from 2015–features Dylan singing clas­sic Amer­i­can songs, which gen­er­al­ly have one thing in com­mon: They were all (save one, “Sky­lark”) sung by Frank Sina­tra back in the day. And now Dylan takes a turn with them in 2016. Enjoy giv­ing them an ear­ly lis­ten.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist PoemThe Waste Land

Hear A Young Bob Dylan Sing 11 Songs and Tell Tall Tales on a 1962 Radio Show

Bob Dylan & The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987: Hear 74 Tracks

Two Leg­ends Togeth­er: A Young Bob Dylan Talks and Plays on The Studs Terkel Pro­gram, 1963

Hear the Greatest Hits of Isao Tomita (RIP), the Father of Japanese Electronic Music

in Music | May 13th, 2016

Dur­ing his child­hood in the Japan of the 1930s, Isao Tomi­ta would have bare­ly had the chance to hear West­ern music. But when the Sec­ond World War came to an end, the intro­duc­tion of local U.S. Army broad­casts must have felt like the open­ing of a son­ic flood­gate: “I thought I was lis­ten­ing to music from out­er space,” remem­bered the man that child grew up to become a respect­ed com­pos­er as well as a pio­neer of elec­tron­ic music known for his cut­ting-edge, inter­galac­ti­cal­ly-mind­ed inter­pre­ta­tions of the work of such West­ern pre­de­ces­sors as Claude Debussy, Igor Stravin­sky, and Gus­tav Holst.

That telling quote comes from Tomi­ta’s New York Times obit­u­ary of this past Wednes­day, which describes some of the com­poser’s strug­gles to not just mas­ter but press into a new kind of artis­tic ser­vice the prac­ti­cal­ly exper­i­men­tal ana­log syn­the­siz­ers with which he made his best-known albums, like 1974’s Snowflakes Are Danc­ing and The Plan­ets. Just get­ting his first Moog syn­the­siz­er past Japan­ese cus­toms proved a strug­gle (“I told them that it was an instru­ment, and they didn’t believe me”), let alone fig­ur­ing out how to use the new device “to even gen­er­ate some­thing that’s not just noise.”

Tomi­ta had lit­tle in the way of prece­dent besides Wendy Car­los’ Switched-On Bach, which had come out in 1968 (and whose cov­er Tomi­ta had held up before those cus­toms inspec­tors, try­ing in vain to pro­vide evi­dence of his strange import­ed machine’s nature). He fol­lowed suit in 1972 with his own first album Elec­tric Samu­rai: Switched on Rock, on which he elec­tron­i­cal­ly cov­ered songs like “Let It Be,” “Jail House Rock,” and “Bridge Over Trou­bled Water.” Then came his Gram­my-nom­i­nat­ed best­selling Debussy trib­ute Snowflakes Are Danc­ing, which showed the lis­ten­ing world what he could do: specif­i­cal­ly, rein­ter­pret­ing the clas­si­cal canon with sounds few had ever heard before.

You can dis­cov­er some of his music by lis­ten­ing to albums avail­able on Spo­ti­fy, one Tomi­ta’s 1978 album Kos­mos and the oth­er a great­est-hits col­lec­tion. (Find both above. If you don’t have Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, you can down­load it here.) Or peruse an even wider-rang­ing Youtube playlist. We have, of course, now had around half a cen­tu­ry to get used to elec­tron­ic music, and the gear has made enor­mous evo­lu­tion­ary leaps since Tomi­ta first sat down amid his unwieldy “thick­et” of fil­ters, oscil­la­tors, gen­er­a­tors, ampli­fiers, con­trollers, mod­u­la­tors, recorders, mix­ers, echo units, and phasers. But his music still retains its fas­ci­na­tion, espe­cial­ly now in our dig­i­tal world where its ana­log sounds seem to come from the past, the future, and out­er space all at once.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Moog Syn­the­siz­er Changed the Sound of Music

Meet the Dr. Who Com­pos­er Who Almost Turned The Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day” Into Ear­ly Elec­tron­i­ca

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938- 2014)

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001)

Dis­cov­er­ing Elec­tron­ic Music: 1983 Doc­u­men­tary Offers a Fun & Edu­ca­tion­al Intro­duc­tion to Elec­tron­ic Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.