An Edward Hopper Scrapbook

I spent quite a while this afternoon casting about looking for a site to blog. Several I looked at were just not that interesting, but this one, An Edward Hopper Scrapbook, really seemed worthwhile. It's a Smithsonian Online Exhibit, so I suppose we would expect more of it than of many sites with less backing, and I think it delivers.

The exhibit is in the form of a scrapbook. It includes memorabilia such as newspaper clippings, invitations to shows, shapshots taken of locations and travel photos, small thumbnails of paintings, and correspondence, etc. Each item in the scrapbook has a little handwritten (looking) blurb that explains it briefly. If you click on the small images, you see somewhat larger images with more data describing them, their place in different collections, who donated them in some cases. It really does appear that the scrapbook metaphor very accurately describes this Smithsonian staff effort to pull together a myriad of Hopper items to tell a coherent story of his art, his friends, different locations he visited, and shows in which he participated or was featured. It is really a good example of using the Web to extend indefinitely a virtual collection that wouldn't likely ever exist in real space. It is aimed squarely at a general public audience. No fancy art-speak; no high-art pretensions. This is down-to-earth, interesting little bits of the kinds of things people collect and use later to tell the stories of their lives. Very charming.

On the other hand, when it comes to metadata about the digitization process, there's really nothing, but then, I have yet to find a site with anything in this regard. I know that they exist as others have come across them, but I'm 0 for 10 (or whatever this makes).