Museum of Contemporary Art-Chicago
http://www.mcachicago.org/
Founded in 1945, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago features contemporary photography, video, film, sculpture, and other visual arts, both in its galleries and its extensive onsite performance series. For persons considering visiting the museum, the site contains information on current and upcoming exhibitions, which have featured artists from the sculptor Alexander Calder to Gillian Wearing, the British artist perhaps best known for her video installations. The Web site also contains "Website Insights," which is the online searchable archive of the MCA's holdings of approximately 6,000 objects. The search engine for the collection is quite flexible, allowing visitors to search by artist name, nationality, title of work, medium, and the decade in which the work was produced. For educators, the site also contains lesson plans to use with different age levels and with different pieces of art from their collection. [KMG]
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New Zealand Historic Places Trust
http://www.historic.org.nz/
The New Zealand Historic Places Trust site contains several sections that will be of great assistance to persons interested in the area of historic and cultural preservation, or for those interested in a different perspective on the practice and art of historical preservation. The research centerpiece of the site is the New Zealand Historic Places Register, which contains information on over 1,000 different sites, including the Wahi Tapu, which are places sacred to the Maori, New Zealand's indigenous people. Searching the register is quite user-friendly, as visitors can search by place name, region, current or former use, dates of original construction, and a handful of other criteria. Similar to many other historic preservation agencies, the New Zealand Historic Places Trust also has a section devoted to Heritage at Risk, which lists existing historic structures or places that are currently threatened with demolition or significant alteration. For persons interested in visiting New Zealand, there is an interactive map divided into regions where basic information about the historic sites of interest throughout the country. [KMG]
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Dot City: Dorothy Parker's New York [RealPlayer]
http://www.dorothyparkernyc.com/
Dedicated to that bon vivant of the New York 1920s literary set, the Dorothy Parker's New York is sponsored by the Dorothy Parker Society of New York. The site is essentially a visual history of Ms. Parkers life in New York during the period and her time as a member of the legendary Algonquin Round Table. Visitors are taken to her different homes, literary hangouts (where she hobnobbed with fellow writers like Robert Benchley), and their favorite speakeasies. As Ms. Parker eventually moved west to write for Hollywood, visitors can also take yet another visual tour to some of the places she lived and frequented. The highlight of this section is an audio archive featuring Ms. Parker reading some of her favorite poems, including Men and One Perfect Rose. Rounding out the site is information on the Society's activities, including a newsletter and details on the annual Parkerfest, held to celebrate the memory of Dorothy Parker. [KMG]
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The Old Farmer's Almanac
http://www.almanac.com/index.php
With the advent and proliferation of the Internet and Web access, a multitude of information has become immediately accessible to anyone with a computer and a phone line. Providing home-spun wisdom and advice has been a hallmark of The Old Farmers Almanac since 1792, and their site features quite a bit of free information that will be useful to new visitors and familiar to long-time fans of the publication. Divided into sections similar to those in the regular publication, material can be located by topic, including Weather, which includes an article on "How To Predict the Weather Using a Pig Spleen," and Food, which has hundreds of recipes divided by dish type, courses, dietary requirements, and preparation style. Additionally, the Question of the Day feature provides helpful information on such topics as "How can I get makeup out of rugs?" with previous questions and answers located in an archive. For those looking for helpful household information, the Almanac is a good place to start. [KMG]
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Jack London's Ranch Album
http://www.geocities.com/jacklondons/
Jack London once referred to himself near the end of his life as the sailor on horseback; although during his short life, he was a man of many talents, least among them novelist, socialist, and critic of his age. Drawing heavily on the pictorial biography of Jack London by the late Russ Kingman, the Ranch Album contains a cornucopia of writings by and about Jack London, interspersed with hundreds of pieces of visual material. While the main page is a bit chaotic in its layout, a helpful search engine allows visitors to navigate the site's full contents. As the name of the site suggests, there is ample visual and written material on Mr. London's beloved ranch, where he spent a great deal of his time with his family and writing his books. Along with presenting Jack London's thoughts on the writing process, an extended timeline of his life, and reflections from his family members, the site also has full-text editions of some of his works, including The Sea Wolf, White Fang, and perhaps one of his most depressing yet honest novels, John Barleycorn. All in all, this site is a must see for anyone wanting to know more about this storied and larger-than-life American author. [KMG]
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Atlanta 1906: A Race Riot [Flash]
http://www.wpba.org/atlantariot1906.html
Produced by Public Broadcasting Atlanta, in conjunction with the PBS series "The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow," this visual history of the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot is a useful education tool that offers an introduction to this traumatically violent event in the city's not-so distant past. The online exhibit and timeline is divided into six chapters and an introduction that offers some perspective into race relations and the status of the African-American community in Atlanta. The exhibit is an effective blend of both descriptive text and historical photographs that rotate through as the visitor progresses through the material. The exhibit concludes with an examination of the reforming of the Ku Klux Klan after the riot, along with a helpful timeline that highlights turning points in Atlanta's history from its founding in 1847 to the present day. [KMG]
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The Castles of Wales
http://www.castlewales.com/home.html
Jeffrey L. Thomas has created this online trove of visual and written material dedicated to providing visitors to his site with information about the castles of Wales. Himself a devotee of Welsh culture, Mr. Thomas offers a site that features background reading on castle construction, the Welsh language, medieval Welsh history, and a glossary of terms related to castles. From the main menu, users can browse a list of Welsh castles or select any of the Welsh castles from an interactive map of Wales divided into six sections. Every castle entry on the site has a historical sketch of the castle's history, often with a description of current archaeological work in progress around the site. Rounding off the site are a series of essays on different topics, including "The Castles of Wales in Art." Persons traveling to Wales or those with even a passing interest in the histories of these structures will find a great deal to enjoy here. [KMG]
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