Smithsonian web exhibit - song material?

Subject: Smithsonian web exhibit - song material?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 25 Nov 03 - 02:27 AM

A rather brief article in the December 2003 issue of Smithsonian magazine (In the "Around the Mall" column) reports the archiving, web accessible, of an album of pictures and clippings used by artist James E. Taylor (1840 – 1901) as his reference for newspaper and magazine illustrations during the post-Civil War era. Taylor's work reflected the cliches of his era, in his specialty illustrating "frontier news" and especially "Indian news," but his rather extensive collection of photographs at least shows what was being photographed, and the kind of resources he needed as a newspaper/magazine illustrator before photos could be printed in them.

The magazine article misrepresents that Paula Fleming, a retired Smithsonian photo archivist, has "recently created a digital version of the entire album and put it on the Web." The website reports "The James E. Taylor album contains 1,109 drawings, photographs, newspaper clippings and letters on 118 album pages. This exhibit includes 748 items and a selection of album pages." Quite a bit short of "the entire album," but still quite a lot of material.

The exhibit is dominated by "posed" photos of Native Americans and NA scenes. There are quite a few "non native" portrait poses of generals and such. The impression is that the actual album includes things in a number of other categories, but the exhibit is "themed" around the bulk of the material. Quite a few pictures of chiefs and their immediate relatives (family groups) appear to accurately identify "historically important" persons seldom found elsewhere, including an attempt, at least, at recording their Indian names, although precise dating of most is missing.

The December issue of the magazine has not been posted yet, but you can look at the exhibit at The James E Taylor Album. This page (actually 4 pages you can step through) loads pretty quickly, and provides a brief biography and explanation of what the exhibit is about. There are links here to sample pages, or to the individual pictures. The individual pictures are thumbnailed in a "search result" from the SIRIS system, a Smithsonian "in-house" (re)search tool.

There is a warning on the intro page that "These images are large. A high speed internet connection is recommended" and also a recommendation that you upgrade to IE6 or Netscape7 "if your back button doesn't work in SIRIS." I'm on a rather slow pots connection, and it did seem that the site is a little slower than some; but certainly usable. The few full size images I opened (by clicking the thumbnails) were fairly large (104KB to 240KB jpg) but certainly workable, even on my slow connection.

The presentation of the individual pictures as a search result on SIRIS may be of interest. I've searched a few times at the Smithsonian site, but I don't believe I've encountered this particular format before. If you click the "About" tab on the exhibit pages, it takes you to a brief explanation of what collections can be searched, and the "Return to Search" takes you to a search input page at SIRIS: Smithsonian Institution Research Information System. I plan to investigate this a little more.

For the music connection, check out picture 688: "Portrait of Non-Native Man, from Arkansas ?, Playing Violin; Rifle Nearby." Mr Taylor apparently annotated this picture as "The Arkansas Traveller," although he left no indication of why he gave it that title.

There are certainly quite a few images that, with a little imagination or a lot of research, could provide material for a song or two. A photo of "White boy captured by Indians" is an example. It appears to me (I should say to us) that there are two "non-native" boys in the picture – but in that time, only the "white boy" was worth mentioning?

Well, that's history for you. Maybe that song's too sad to sing.

John