The Bigger Picture: Visual Archives and the Smithsonian
The Winter Wonderland set we uploaded to the Flickr Commons is inspiring digital art, crafts, and now, free word association. It is always a wonderful surprise when someone “riffs” on an image (see this inspired history free image association in the Flickr Commons fan group). A little while ago, I stumbled on a secret message attached to this microscopic image of a snowflake captured by Wilson A. “Snowflake” Bentley:
Flickr member, “Miquelet,” posted a passage from French writer, Maxence Fermine’s, novel, Neige (Snow).
"La neige est un poème. Un poème qui tombe des nuages en flocons blancs et légers. " (Translation: "Snow is a poem; a poem that falls from clouds in light, white flakes.")
It is a wistful, beautiful image to think of as the white flakes are showing up around the world. Cheers to riffs!
Where exactly did Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer come from? The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History reports.
- Okay, so we’ve had strange items come into the Archives (like a Frisbee), but nothing like this. The National Archives talks about a dried Civil War era mole skin in their collections (and no, we’re not talking about the fancy notebook kind).
- The best holiday flicks in The Internet Archives’ collections.
- How museum treasures were guarded before the advent of metal detectors, lasers, and the like [via @MFABoston].
- Just how do museums amass their valuable collections in the first place? The Detroit Institute of Arts reports (they’ve had a few good ones up on ArtBabble recently):