Saturday Sharing (My Finds Are Yours)

This week's edition ranges far and wide, from extraordinary examples of facial hair, to cartoonographs, to time capsules, holiday greeting cards, and the "Holy Jewel Home" of the "Original Rhinestone Cowboy". 

✭ With a six-year Terra Foundation for American Art digitization grant, the Smithsonian Archives of American Art undertook in July 2005 an extraordinary initiative to make available on the Web a cross-section of its most important collections, including papers of artists and arts-related figures (dealers, critics, curators) from the 18th Century to today. Holdings include photographs, diaries, sketches, writings, and rarely published materials. By the end of the project, an estimated 1.2 million digital files will be accessible publicly. The project's background and a hyperlinked, alphabetized list of of more than 100 proposed or now fully digitized collections is here. All primary source material eventually will be available at Collections Online. Image searches may be conducted here.

Smithsonian Institution Archives on FaceBook and Twitter

✭ Extraordinary examples of facial hair are the subject of this blog by oral history interviewer Jennifer Snyder. Let it be known, however, that this is not the only virtual space intent on exploring the mustache or beard in all its forms. If your taste is limited to the 19th Century, you need only go here. Or perhaps you prefer The Handlebar Club. This recent post took up the matter of Abraham Lincoln's beard (go here for a slideshow on that) and bearded literary types. There's an American Mustache Institute, too; and, please, let's not forget what's coming up in February: International Mustache Month.

✭ Over at The Paper Internet, staff have something else on their minds: paper, which they are seeking to preserve for some future unknown civilization(s) via a network of time capsules containing photos, music, technical journals, and the stuff of everyday life. Once assembled, the time capsules are buried by volunteers at specific locations. Every time capsule or "node", which consists of 2,000 - 4,000 pages, contains the locations of all other time capsules. The project is described in detail here.

✭ As this wonderful post at The Bigger Picture makes clear, cartoonographs — facts in pictures — long preceded our 21st Century attempts at communicating in graphics.

✭ The Kohler Foundation's John Michael Kohler Arts Center, in Wisconsin, is tasked with preserving, studying, and exhibiting work of vernacular artists. Its collections of "artist-environment builders", comprising close to 10,000 artworks by two dozen folk and "self taught" artists, include the home of "Original Rhinestone Cowboy" Loy Bowlin (1909-1995) of McComb, Mississippi, who decorated walls and ceilings with glitter, cut paper, magazine images, ornaments, and spangles. The "Holy Jewel Home" has to be seen to be believed. Some images of the interiors, as well as Bowlin and his clothing and accessories, are here, here, and here.

✭ If you've ever wondered what old holiday greeting cards looked like, go here. The Smithsonian's Archives of American Art has mounted a show of the cards at its Victor Building in Washington, D.C. The exhibit is on view until January 3, 2011.

Images from last year's exhibition are here. 

If you're coming to town and want to see the cards in person, go here for directions, a map, and hours.