How do you tell the life of a country through its people? It is a difficult task, to be sure, and in the 1930s and 1940s the Federal Writers' Project sent hundreds of interviewers out across the country to talk to people about their lives and experiences. These interviews touch on the Great Depression, slavery, political views, the role of the federal government, local folklore, and a myriad of...

Online for less than a year, Face-to-Face is written by a team of National Portrait Gallery staff members with diverse responsibilities, from web design to curatorial. The blog is "dedicated to art, history, and the telling of American lives." There are four categories on Face-to-Face: Biography, Events, Exhibitions and News. "Biography" currently features an article series on presidential trivia,...

The Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery (NPG) has a new search interface that allows searching across over 80,000 portrait records. Four slightly overlapping search methods are provided, but the interface itself stays largely the same - portrait sitters' names can be combined with artists' names, medium, dates, and other criteria, such as the sitter or artist's distinction; whether they were...