Only in America, one might say, would artistic self-expression be so successfully mass produced, commodified, and regimented. Nevertheless, in a brave attempt at recuperation, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History offers this new Website on the popular 1950s' hobby of painting by number from the perspective of "the artists and entrepreneurs who created the popular paint kits, the cultural critics who reviled them, and the hobbyists who happily completed them and hung them in their homes." Taking a decidedly cultural studies approach, the Website stresses the pleasures derived from the activity as well as the modifications to the kits made by many participants. It also places the phenomenon in the context of the culture of the 1950s, particularly its expansion of leisure time. There are plenty of images here of the creation of the numbers kits as well as representations of the finished product. A bibliography and a bulletin board for posting reminiscences about painting by number are also provided. The authors claim the hobby, which pretty much died out in the 1960s, had the "peculiarly American virtue" of inviting people "who never held a brush before to enter a world of art and creativity." The editors invite our readers to be the judge of that.