Virtual Exhibits

An African American Album: The Black Experience in Charlotte & Mecklenburg County is a pictorial history of African Americans in that region from slavery to the mid-twentieth century.

America Votes: Presidential Campaign Memorabilia from the Duke University Special Collections Library, contains images of documents from selected presidential campaigns from John Adams to Bush/Cheney.

The American Antiquarian Society’s website includes online exhibitions (e.g. “A Woman’s Work Is Never Done”) and illustrated inventories such as the inventory of their Paul Revere collection and their European political prints collection.

The American Enterprise Exhibit at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. culminates from scholarly work done by UW-Madison Prof. Ann Smart Martin and her material culture students in Art History 601.  The class investigated the account book of colonial merchant William Ramsey (active in Alexandria, Virginia, during the mid-1700s) and contributed their research for the Merchant Era portion of the exhibition.

Angelica Singelton Van Buren 1817-1877 is an exhibition from Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina, of books once owned by Angelica Singleton Van Buren.

Anglo-American Mourning Jewelry, 17th to 19th centuries is an exhibit by the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Binary Visions: 19th Century Woven Coverlets from the Collection of Historic Huguenot Street is presented by New York State’s Hudson River Valley Heritage organization.

Chicago Public Library Digital Collections includes virtual exhibits primarily associated with the history and culture of Chicago.

Colonial Williamsburg Online Exhibits include topics of clothing, coins, mapping of colonial America, and more. Elsewhere on the website are games and interactive features.

Expositions of industrial arts began on a national level in the 18th century and expanded to international scope in the 19th century.  These exhibitions contributed to wide transmission of design ideas and industrial techniques for the manufacture of objects of decorative art and material culture.  For a variety of virtual exhibits and informative websites on these expositions, see the following:  Expomuseum, EarthStation9, 1851 Project: The Great Exhibition (Victoria & Albert Museum, London), Photographs of International Expositions (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), and The Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia 1876 (Free Library of Philadelphia).  Complete electronic facsimiles of three illustrated catalogs:  Art Journal Illustrated Catalogue: the Industry of All Nations, 1851; Illustrated Catalogue of the Universal Exhibition, published with the Art Journal [1867-1868], and Masterpieces of the Centennial International Exhibition Illustrated, 1876-78 (3 volumes), are available on the text collection portion of this site.

Haggerty Museum at Marquette University, in conjunction with the Chipstone Foundation, has mounted exhibits related to material culture, with virtual exhibits online:

• Aesthetic Afterlife
• The Freedom Project
• The Print Room

Library of Congress Exhibitions provides links to the many Library of Congress virtual exhibits.

Milwaukee Art Museum, in conjunction with the Chipstone Foundation, has mounted a number of exhibitions related to material culture, with virtual exhibits online at the Chipstone website:

• About Face: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the African-American Image
• Art in Clay: Masterworks of North Carolina Earthenware
• American Furniture Gallery
• The Body Politic: Michelle Erickson
• The Cost of Things
• Enter the Dragon: The Beginnings of English Chinoiserie 1680-1710
• Face Jugs: Art and Ritual in Nineteenth-century South Carolina
• The Finest in the Western Country: Wisconsin Decorative Arts 1820-1900
• Furniture of the American South [exhibit at Colonial Williamsburg]
• Going Out of Style: 400 Years of Changing Tastes in Furniture
• Gord Peteran: Furniture Meets Its Maker
• Green Furniture
• Hidden Dimensions
• If These Pots Could Talk: Collecting 2,000 Years of British Household Pottery
• The Incredible Elastic Chairs of Samuel Gragg
• J. Palin Thorley: Modern and Traditional Design in 20th Century Ceramics
• Loca Miracvli: Rooms of Wonder
• Paper Trail: Prints from the Chipstone Collection
• Remains
• Skin Deep: Three Masters of American Inlaid Furniture
• Tea Table Coffee Table
• Text/Context
• The Tool at Hand
• The Truth Lies Within: Furniture Fakes from the Chipstone Collection
• To Speculate Darkly: Theaster Gates and Dave the Potter
• Way of the Dragon: The Chinoiserie Style 1710-1830

Mexico: From Empire to Revolution and A Nation Emerges: 65 Years of Photography in Mexico, from the Getty Research Institute, present photographs from the mid-19th to early-20th centuries.

A Notion to Sew: the 19th Century Needlework of Hylah Hasbrouck and her Daughters at Locust Lawn is presented by New York State’s Hudson River Valley Heritage organization.

Portraits, Worcester [Mass.] Portraits in the American Antiquarian Society Collection, provides access to images of 31 local residents via portraits dating from the 18th through the 20th centuries.

The Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. provides over 80 Online Exhibits on topics of American history and material culture.