In 1997, the New York Public Library received a very impressive map collection from the estate of the late Lawrence H. Slaughter. Four years later, the remainder of his collection was also given to the Library's Map Division. It is certainly a tremendous offering, and these maps are offered as part of the New York Public Library's Digital Gallery site. Visitors to the site can look over 1000 maps...

The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) has long had an ambitious public art program. This handy 62-page guidebook provides interested parties and tourists with a complete listing of these works. Not surprisingly, the works are arranged by elevated line and by stop. The guide starts with providing information about works on the Brown Line, which is a great place to begin. It's a real treat to start...

The American Impressionists continue to get their due in this compelling retrospective that highlights the work of Childe Hassam, a painter who lived from 1859 to 1935. Sponsored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this website complements an exhibition that is going on through September 2004, and is the first major exhibit of Hassam's work since 1972. Sponsored by the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation...

Public art has a long tradition of serving groups and individuals seeking to offer artistic protest and dissent. During the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile, hundreds of protest murals were created. Photographer Andres Romero Spethman worked alongside muralist brigades representing political parties such as the Partido Socialista and the Izquierda Cristiana. This digital archive...

Rewi Alley was a New Zealand born writer and activist who joined the Chinese Communist Party and eventually became connected with party leaders. Due to these connections, Alley acquired a number of Chinese artistic items in the 1950s and 1960s, which he subsequently donated to New Zealand's Canterbury Museum. China, Art and Cultural Diplomacy is an ongoing project, headed by University of...

The U.S. National Library of Medicine has digitized their collection of Chinese anti-malaria posters that were disseminated throughout China from the 1950s to the 1970s, when over 30 million people were afflicted with malaria. Visitors should check out the "Introduction" link to learn about the focus of the posters, most of which dealt with prevention techniques, such as eliminating mosquito...

Anne C. Goodrich went to China as a missionary in 1931, and she soon found herself fascinated by the world of the paper gods she encountered in and around Beijing. Goodrich wanted to learn more about the world of these local folk religions and she began purchasing a great deal of these materials as they became available. Many years later she would publish a three-volume study on the subject. After...

Several scholars and collectors, such as Langdon Warner and Lawrence Sickman, have presented their extensive East Asian rubbings collection to Harvard University, and these materials have remained a valuable resource for decades. Persons working in the fields of Chinese history, biography, epigraphy, calligraphy, and fine arts have come to Cambridge to consult the rubbings, and now many of them...

The artwork of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, generally of a temporary nature and taking place on the grandiose scale of landscapes and entire buildings, can be difficult to describe to the unfamiliar. Fortunately, the artists' website offers readers ample views of the famous duo's massive projects. Under the artworks tab, visitors can see numerous photographs and sketched plans of the artists' works,...

A curtain of glowing white nylon that winds across the brown earth until it disappears where the land meets the blue sky - this is what images of Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California, 1972-76, an installation artwork created by Christo and Jeanne-Claude depict. Running Fence, stretched 24 1/2 miles through Sonoma and Marin counties in California to end in the Pacific Ocean, was the...