Whatever one’s feelings may be about Henry Ford, his legacy to the American public is tremendous, and his love of American history is well-documented. Part of this legacy may be found at the Henry Ford Museum complex, which contains a number of operational units, such as Greenfield Village and the Benson Ford Research Center. For those who might be unable to make the pilgrimage to Michigan, the...

In September 1934, a photographic exhibition came to Rockefeller Plaza, and it was sponsored by the National Alliance of Art and Industry (NAAI) and the Photographic Illustrators, Inc. The show featured 250 different works by the most accomplished commercial and artistic photographers of the period. One year later, 125 prints from the NAAI exhibition came to reside at the Harvard Business School....

Possessed with a remarkable voice and a flair for fashion, Celia Cruz was an artist who brought the music of her native Cuba to millions of people around the world for six decades until her death in 2003. Recently, the National Museum of American History created this well-done online exhibit to complement an in situ exhibit that is in place until the end of 2005. The site offers three primary...

Phyllis Diller didn't start her career as a stand-up comic until she was 37, but since then she has provided six decades of saucy entertainment. She has served as the inspiration for female comics including Joan Rivers, Whoopi Goldberg, and Lily Tomlin, and she continues to inspire others as well. This look into Diller's comedic talent and legacy was created by the staff members at the Albert H....

Editorial cartoonist Stuart McDonald brought his worldview to the Sunday edition of the Grand Forms Herald from 1961 to 1967. The original cartoons measured 11x14 inches, and they are kept as part of the Stuart McDonald Papers at the Chester Fritz Library at the University of North Dakota Library. In an introduction to a compilation of McDonald's cartoons published in 1963, Scott Long (an old...

The Treatment is a weekly KCRW radio show (broadcasted out of Santa Monica, California) hosted by Elvis Mitchell. In each thirty-minute episode, Mitchell engages in a long form interview with an individual working in entertainment, art, or pop culture. Mitchell interviews a wide variety of authors, actors, artists, and film directors (among others), giving this show a broad appeal. Recent guests...

Wal-Mart fights to keep the smiley face http://money.cnn.com/2006/07/05/news/companies/walmart.smileyworld/ The Straight Dope: Who invented the Smiley Face? http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_031.html Worcester Historical Museum: Smiley Face http://www.worcesterhistory.org/ex_smiley.html Adflip.com http://www.adflip.com/ United States Patent and Trademark Office Home Page...

Artist Alex Ross is known for his reinventions of classic superheroes as works of fine art painted in gouache paint. This website from the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh presents a dozen of Ross's paintings, and each work is zoomable and comes with commentary from the artist. Visitors can hear Ross discuss the difference between realistic and reality in his painting Superman #1, 1998, which was...

Sometime in the 1970s, Andy Warhol began making "time capsules", brown cardboard boxes into which he would drop all kinds of objects from his daily life: letters, clippings from magazines and newspapers, gifts, photographs, business records, and his own and other artists' work. By the time of his death in 1987, Warhol had filled over 600 boxes that were all moved to the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh...

Andy Warhol was a man of many talents, though the world may know him best for his iconic Pop Art works such as his stylized soup cans and images of Marilyn Monroe. This particular web project from the Warhol museum in Pittsburgh affords interested parties a look into his Time Capsule 21. This compelling work is one of over 600 cardboard boxes that he filled over the course of his life. The...