The findingDulcinea Blog

Georgia O'Keeffe and Using the Web to Discover the Early Work of an Artist

Recently, while writing a profile of the great painter Georgia O'Keeffe, I came across a number of interesting details of her life and career. In doing research I learned that in order to have a visual timeline of her career and to keep the prices and demand for her work high, O'Keeffe kept or bought back more than half of all the 2000 or more paintings she created in her lifetime. She also appeared in art exhibitions for which she was not the artist, but the subject; her husband Alfred Stieglitz was an art gallery owner and photographer, and did a series of photographs featuring O'Keeffe (even a few nudes) during their marriage.

Although perhaps most surprising to me was that O'Keeffe did not always paint the forms for which we know her today. The stark white bones contrasting with the desert sky and the colorful over-sized insides of flowers were done in a style that O'Keeffe didn't adopt until she was nearly 40, but those paintings were so overwhelmingly popular that they have somewhat overshadowed her early work.

O'Keeffe's early work was of a more abstract nature. From about 1915 until the mid 1920s, O'Keeffe drew and painted images that expressed a view of the world in stark contrast to the almost photographic paintings of her later years. It was an early series of her charcoal on paper drawings (that were an abstract exploration of line and shape) that first caught the eye of then gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz. The Georgia O'Keeffe museum notes that O'Keeffe was ahead of her art colleagues of the time with her interest in abstract work, just as her ultra realistic more famous paintings would show the world another innovative view later on.

One of the great advances in technology over the last decade is the increased availability of online multimedia, such as images and videos. This allows users to not just read about artists, but to experience their work. At the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Web site you can look at examples of her work from different eras in her career, including her abstract period. You would be hard-pressed to encounter many of these pieces in real life.

And if you'd like to visit the work of other well-known artists online, see our article about virtually visiting museums.

Haley Lovett

Audience Development

Getting Acquainted With Blake Harrison of Flocabulary

Remember watching “Sesame Street” and learning the alphabet and some basic math skills? How about “Schoolhouse Rock” and learning the difference between an interjection and a conjunction, or how a bill becomes law? Did you forget how much fun learning could be?

Blake Harrison didn’t forget. Harrison, along with Alex Rappaport, founded Flocabulary, a teaching curriculum that uses educational hip-hop music to teach reading, vocabulary, math, science and social studies. The duo has taken their music on the road, held teaching workshops and created a current events series called The Week in Rap.

FindingEducation, a new tool that helps teachers save and share their favorite Web sites and assignments, spoke with Harrison about his inspiration for Flocabulary, how music enhances education and why teachers are seeing value in this unique approach. Read the full interview with Blake Harrison at findingEducation’s blog, Digital Teachers’ Lounge.

Museums Hold the Key to International Treasures

The Chateau de Versailles

Mollie Caselli writes for GulliverGo, a new study abroad and travel Web site.

You’ve accomplished the big hurdle of moving to a foreign country to study abroad. Good Job! What better way to learn about your new culture than by checking out its museums, eating its local cuisine or hitting up festivals? Whether it’s archaeology, film, art or sports cars, you can learn a lot about a host city by what it values most in its museums. Here are a few to check out. For any museums, remember to carry your student ID card for extra discounts!

Versailles, France: Palace of Versailles. When you need a break from the excitement of Paris, hop on the train for an hour and spend your day at the Palace of Versailles. Louis XIV turned the court of Versailles into the center of political power when he moved there from Paris in 1682. Today the estate features royal apartments of former kings and queens, a grand opera, the famed Hall of Mirrors and Louis XIV’s prized gardens. It’s a worthy day trip from Paris.

Naples, Italy: National Archaeological Museum. The National Archaeological Museum in Naples is one of the most impressive in Italy. The art, sculptures, mosaics and literature provide a glimpse into Greek and Roman antiquity. Of course, art history buffs that yearn to see those Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces in person should head north to Florence’s Uffizi Gallery,which hosts works of art by great Italian artists such as Botticelli, Giotto, Cimabue, Michelangelo and Raffaello.

Dublin, Ireland: Guinness Storehouse Take a break from the castles and galleries for a real taste of Ireland. Built in 1904, the Guinness Storehouse building housed the fermentation process of Guinness beer until 1988. Not only can you sample a pint, but at the top of the museum you’ll also catch one of the best views of Dublin.

Sweet Sites | Not Your Sunday Comic Strip

Thanks to the recession, newspapers are slimming down their funny pages just when people most need the distraction. Fortunately, more and more Web comics are springing up to take their place, and there are plenty of guides to help you find your new virtual Snoopy. Actually, with these comics, you’re more likely to find your new virtual, geeky 20-something with relationship issues. Especially if you check out our personal favorite, the popular xkcd (don’t forget to roll your mouse over each strip for an extra punch line). The following links recommend tons of comics for every sense of humor, and with the extensive archives often available online, your cartoon fix will never have to wait for Sunday again.

Mashable’s “20 of the Best Web Comics” and NPR’s “Annotated Guide for the Understandably Perplexed” are two great introductions to the overwhelming range of comics out there. Although Mashable covers the most popular strips for every taste, NPR’s Glen Weldon simply lists his favorites, encompassing comics such as "surreal crypto-neo-ur-Victorian gags" (Wondermark) to a "breathtaking chronicle of New Orleans before, during and after Katrina" (AD: After the Deluge).  Weldon also provides tips and warnings for the uninitiated: He offers advice on navigating the sites, and warns you about strips devoted to “in-jokes pertaining to matters geeky: video games, comics, sci-fi, fantasy, scantily clad kitten-women.”

Speaking of scantily clad kitten-women, those who find Garfield a bit tame might want to check out Patrick Orndorff’s “10 Great Webcomics You Should Not Share With Your Kids” on Wired.com. If his “adult/bizarre/sophomoric streak” turns you off, then look at Wired's sheepish follow-up post, "Five Webcomics You Can Share With Your Kids."

Finally, if you love illustrated humor but long for the days when Boss Tweed, not Steve Jobs, reigned, the Library of Congress has a fantastic exhibition of cartoon art. Built around the donated personal collection of cartoonist James Arthur Wood, Jr., the site includes everything from 19th-century political cartoons by Thomas Nast to 1980s comic strips.

Jill Marcellus
Writer

Sweet Sites | Interviews and Talks with People Who Should Be Celebrities

Everywhere you turn, you see or hear about Jon and Kate, Lindsay Lohan, Lindsay Lohan's spray tan product, Jennifer Garner's cute kids, and Posh & Becks' shopping outings. These people are celebrities, technically speaking, but there are many other people out there, living and deceased, who were celebrities in their time, or should have been. We've uncovered a number of sites that host interviews and talks with notable people from many walks of life. Some of these Web sites might be familiar to you, but some may appear to be diamonds in the rough!

TED is probably the most well-known site for inspiring, amusing and cool talks with innovative thinkers and leaders. Learn about emerging technologies, the fashion world, religion, medicine, and much more from the Web site of the TED Prize and annual TED Conference.

The Mike Wallace Interview is a collection of interviews by Mike Wallace of "60 Minutes" conducted between 1957 and 1960 and hosted by the University of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Center. This generous site features interviews with pioneering people like Frank Lloyd Wright, Gloria Swanson, Eleanor Roosevelt and Aldous Huxley.

Charlie Rose has recently revamped the Web site for his PBS show and now includes free and lengthy archived and recent interview segments with actors, sports stars, economists, politicians, authors and much more.

The Paris Review "Interviews" section features an archive of interview excerpts with authors dating back to the 1950s. They are in text-only format, but very worthwhile.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development

If you're really into lectures, see our previous entry, "5 Must-See Lectures."

Sweet Sites | Let's Get Visual: Find Great Images on the Web

Painter Ellsworth Kelly's "Color Panels for a Large Wall" at the National Gallery of Art, 2003. (Photo: Evan Vucci/AP)

One reason the Web has become such an intrinsic part of our lives is that it is not simply a repository of text information. Many times, when you go online to search for something, it’s not words that you’re looking for. Here are three resources that can help you find images.

You can search all the holdings at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., pictured at left, at the museum’s Web site. The collection includes both centuries-old and contemporary European and American paintings, photographs, sculptures and examples of the decorative arts.

A University of Washington database provides images of cities and buildings from various time periods. Search by country, city, style, title, architect, date of construction and other criteria.

In collaboration with various museums, Tufts University offers the Art & Archeology Browser, a database of images and descriptions of coins, vases, sculptures, archeological sites, gems, and buildings.

Amy Goldschlager
Editor

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