History and History Museums


Old Sturbridge Village

Check out "Learning Lab" for great resources including very interesting papers and articles
written by the staff of Old Sturbridge Village. You could say I'm prejudiced because I am the
artist-in-residence for the village, but I didn't write any of the articles. Come visit soon. You
will not meet friendlier or more knowledgeable historic interpreters anywhere!

Colonial Williamsburg

Interesting learning resources under "Explore and Learn" and free podcasts too.

New York Historical Society

Right next door to the American Museum of Natural History in NYC (yeah, the one with the
dinosaurs) but have you been there? Save part of your feet and make sure to visit. Public
programs are informative, interesting and reasonably priced.

American Museum of Natural History
www.amnh.org/exhibitions/dioramas/virtualtours.php
www.amnh.org/exhibitions/dioramas/videos.php
www.amnh.org/exhibitions/dioramas/artists/

Speaking of the American Museum of Natural History, don't miss the world famous habitat
dioramas and bring your sketchbook. This is one of the most artist friendly museums out
there and the dioramas are accurately lit for both time of day and location. First link is for
virtual tours of the dioramas if you can't make it for a visit anytime soon. Second link leads to
videos about the dioramas with interesting inside information. Third link is about the
incredible artists who created the dioramas.

The Thomas Jefferson Hour

Free weekly podcast from historian Clay Jenkinson and host David Swenson. Riveting,
thought provoking and often connects issues from the past to their couterparts today.

American Experience

I had completely given up on TV ever since they cancelled Little House on the Prairie but
American Experience keeps me riveted and inspired week after week. Online resources are
extensive. Check out the free podcasts.

History Detectives

Another great history show.


Art and Art Museums


Metropolitan Museum of Art

My home town art museum (well, when I go into "the city" anyway). Look for the link to My
Met Gallery where you can create your own personalized albums of your favorite art.

Philadelphia Museum of Art
Museum of Fine Arts Boston

You can also collect art and place it in your own private gallery at the Philadelphia Museum
of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston too. I just love this. All your favorite paintings any
time you want to see them.

Essential Vermeer

If I could only take one website to a desert island…

Fogg Art Museum

What a treasure! Always tempted to beg them to stay open beyond closing time. Bring your
sketchbook. Benches are in nice proximity to the art. Comfy sketching.

Portrait Artist Forum

The website for portrait painters. If you can't find the answer to your question here…panic.



Links That Don't Fit in Above Categories
... but I Want to Include Anyway


Copyright

Don't rip off your friends (or enemies). Here are the rules.

Sketchcrawl

Hey, get off the computer and join the next world wide sketchcrawl!

Hop Stop

How to get from Here to There, via public transportation, for major US cities.





Art is never finished, only abandoned.
DaVinci

The youth should first learn perspective then the proportion of objects. Then he may copy
from some good master to accustom himself to fine forms. Then from nature, to confirm by
practice the rules he has learnt. Then see for a time the works of various masters. Then get
the habit of putting his art into practice and work.
DaVinci

The artist is the person who makes life more interesting or beautiful, more understandable or
mysterious, or probably, in the best sense, more wonderful.
-George Bellows

The faculty of creating is never given to us all by itself. It always goes hand in hand with the
gift of observation. And the true creator may be recognized by his ability to find about him,
in the commonest and humblest thing, items worthy of note.
Igor Stravinsky

Art happens-no hovel is safe from it, no prince may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence
cannot bring it about.
James McNeil Whistler

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.
DaVinci

First of all move me, surprise me, rend my heart; make me tremble, weep, shudder; outrage
me; delight my eyes.
Denis Kiderot

An artist's working life is marked by intensive application and intense discipline.
John F. Kennedy

We have become a society where the artist is regarded as a self-indulgent superfluity and the
person who juggles stocks and shares is an essential part of the economy. We've gone wrong
somewhere.
Pam Brown

It would be a mistake to ascribe this creative power to an inborn talent. In art, the genuine
creator is not just a gifted being, but a person who has succeeded in arranging for their
appointed end, a complex of activities, of which the work is the outcome. The artist begins
with a vision-a creative operation requiring an effort. Creativity takes courage.
Henri Matisse

What a society deems important is enshrined in its art.
H. Broudy

…armed with a paint-box, one cannot be bored, one cannot be left at a loose end, one cannot
'have several days on one's hands'. Good Gracious! What there is to admire and how little
time there is to see it in! For the first time ones begins to envy Methuselah."
Winston S. Churchill

I hope with all my heart that there will be painting in heaven.
Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot (his dying words)