Picture Postcards

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The National Anthropological Archives holds a plethora of picture postcards in its collection. These postcards depict scenes from the Americas as well as around the world. One region well-represented in early postcards at the National Anthropological Archives is Hawaii.

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Did you know that it was not until May 19, 1898, following public outcry, that the US Congress passed the Private Mailing Card Act finally allowing privately published and printed picture postcards to be mailed at the same rate as the one-cent, pre-stamped government printed postal cards? Picture postcards were first popularized in the United States as souvenirs sold at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, however at that time to actually send a picture postcard still cost the full-letter postage rate of two cents.

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Since 1872 the United States Postal Service held a monopoly on the printing of postal cards. One side of the pre-stamped governmental postal card was only to be used for the address, while the reverse side was for writing or drawing. The Private Mailing Card Act, however, prompted the beginning of the mass production of picture postcards. Initially, these privately created postcards were asked to adhere to the same standards as government postcards. Over time, however, restrictions eased allowing postcards to become a highly successful means of sending short messages. Particularly important for the development of picture postcards, in 1907, for the first time, senders were permitted to write messages on the address side of postcards, which allowed for the entire front of the post cards to be used for design. The postcards were divided so that the address could be written on the right side and a message written on the left side. The left side typically included a description of the image on the front of the postcard.

Click here for a Chronology of the Picture Postcard from the Smithsonian Archives.

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After the turn of the century and until World War I postcards were ubiquitous in towns and cities across America – sold, mailed and collected in albums. Sometimes stereotyped in the images they presented, postcards portrayed people and places in America, as well as life in other countries and cultures. In 1908 it is estimated that nearly 700 million postcards were mailed, when the entire U.S. population was only 89 million. More and more postcard companies entered the market – anticipating economic benefit. With the development of new printing technologies, the widespread use of photography, and improvements in U.S. postal delivery, postcards became an inexpensive and easy way for Americans to send short messages to one another. They also became a primary means to distribute photographic images to the masses.

Click here or more on the Golden Age of Picture Postcards.

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Click here for additional Smithsonian postcards of Hawaii.

Posted by Whitney Hopkins, Volunteer

National Anthropological Archives

Happy Birthday, George Gustav Heye!

George Gustav Heye, the founder and first director of the Museum of the American Indian, was born on September 16, 1874. The collection he built - over 225,000 objects made by indigenous people from every major cultural area of the Western Hemisphere - forms the heart of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI).

Heye began collecting Native American material culture in 1897 when he bought a hide shirt from a Navajo woman in Arizona, near a railroad construction site where he was working. By 1906 his collection numbered over 10,000 objects. Heye was not satisfied with passively buying objects from galleries and dealers. He sponsored field researchers, including Mark Raymond Harrington and George Hubbard Pepper, and frequently traveled and collected objects himself. He developed a sense of connoisseurship and sought out the highest quality examples he could find. In 1916, Heye founded the Museum of the American Indian where, as this video clip shows, he worked daily, hand-numbering and cataloging each new accession himself.

It is fascinating to reflect on how much has changed since George Gustav Heye founded the Museum of the American Indian. In his time, many viewed it as imperative to collect evidence of Native Americans’ traditions because they were “a dying people.” As we well know, Native Americans and their traditions are very much alive today, and the daily programming at NMAI is evidence of how they have thrived and grown in the past hundred years. Heye envisioned the audience for his collection to be white, scholarly researchers. Today, the museum’s collection is heavily used by Native communities, tradition bearers, scholarly researchers, and the public at large.

And to say the least, the care and handling of museum collections has changed a lot! For instance, we don't smoke cigars in the object processing room any more. (For more information about how we take care of our collections, please check out our Conservation Department.)

For more information about the George Gustav Heye and the Museum of the American Indian, please take a look at the history page on the NMAI website.

Michael Pahn, National Museum of the American Indian Archives Center, nmaiarchives@si.edu

Danger: Nitrate in the Archives

 Courtesy of Marguerite Roby.

Check out sister blog THE BIGGER PICTURE's new blog entry: Learn. Educate. Imagine.and learn more on the danger of nitrate negatives in the Archives.

Rachael Cristine Woody
Archivist
Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives
woodyr@si.edu

CATALOGING COURTROOM IMAGERY

Sometimes the smallest collections can be the biggest cataloging challenges.  In 2008 the Archives Center acquired a small collection of just 38 pastel drawings, but deciding what topics should be covered in the SIRIS catalog entry and researching all of the added entries took hours.  The Marilyn Church Courtroom Drawings, 1975-2004, provide glimpses of some of the most dramatic moments in trials, hearings and lawsuits of some of New York City’s most infamous crimes and cases in the late 20th century. The notoriety of the cases represented by this collection meant that they were very heavily covered in the media, but because of the prohibition against cameras in courtrooms in most courts in America, the only visual coverage of a court case was provided by courtroom artists whose drawings were later reproduced in the news media.
 The Scope and Content note in the SIRIS entry for this collection contains probably the longest run-on sentence in any SIRIS record in the system: 366 words!  Though this collection is divided into several topical series, such as “Medical Ethics” and “Political Violence,” listing every case and a few words describing what they were about seemed the best way to write it because all of the items in this collection are the same type of document, and all are of equal importance.

The cases represented in this collection strike at the heart of topics that arouse passionate debate everywhere, but nowhere more so than in New York City, where most of the incidents or alleged crimes occurred. The 1990 rape trial in what came to be known as the “Central Park Jogger” case is a good example, in which racial tensions in the city were heightened and the evidence, or lack of evidence, debated endlessly.  Others relate to terrorism and organized crime, issues that provoke fear in most people, but especially those living in populous urban areas.  The trial of John Hinckley, Jr. for attempted assassination of President Reagan in 1981, aroused debate about the definition of insanity and how to balance protection of the public from the mentally ill with maintaining mentally ill people’s civil liberties.  Some cases relate to extremely contentious ethical matters, such as surrogate motherhood, euthanasia, and in-vitro fertilization, subjects that will probably always be controversial.  The 1980 case of Senator Harrison A. Williams, who, among numerous others, was caught accepting bribes from FBI agents posing as sheikhs, spurred debate about the rightness of such sting operations. Because of the controversial nature of these topics, it seemed important to add subject headings for each. In all, 24 new subject headings were added, along with 22 new entries for names.

For some court cases, index terms used were names of plaintiffs, such as Brooke Shields (who in 1981 sued a photographer over nude photographs taken of her as a child) or Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (who sued photographer Ron Galella for harassing her).  Others have entries for defendants, such as Sid Vicious, or David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz (in both cases, tried for murder). Others, such as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing trial, and the “ABSCAM” case, were so infamous that they already had Library of Congress subject headings.  Other cases had multiple defendants, such as the “Landmarks Terror Trial”, and the added entry “Terrorism – United States” was used.  The subject term “Trial” had been used in SIRIS only a couple of times before. This entry uses the term 12 times, with subheadings including “Malpractice,” “Assassination,” and “Bribery.”

When the Archives Center acquired this collection, it represented a new direction in collecting. Previously we had little on American judicial history.  This collection, which has excellent potential for exhibit use, is a first step in that direction.  But more than a collection about our justice system, it is also illustrative of many aspects of life in twentieth century America: race relations, the perils of celebrity, the dangers of urban living, politics, the military, the right to bear arms, freedom of speech, the media, terrorism, and many other topics which occupied Americans during those years and still do.  So don’t be surprised if you come across some unexpected names in SIRIS, like Martha Stewart, Tupac Shakur, Michael Milken and General William Westmoreland. They, and others, are all illustrated in this collection.

Cathy Keen, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

A Hop, Skip and a Jump

Although Labor Day no longer signals the beginning of the academic school year for everyone (as many parents and reluctant students know all too well!), those of us at the at the Human Studies Film Archives who are nostalgic for longer summers would like to share this light-hearted clip from the diverse collection of films at the Human Studies Film Archives.

96.6.52 ROPE SKIPPING (1965) from the Martin Moyer Film Collection

Martin Moyer was an independent documentary filmmaker from Seattle, WA who produced more than 60 films for the educational market on subjects as diverse as geology and environmental science, Native American culture, mathematics and, like this film, physical education.

Moyer was one of the many makers of educational, travelogue and industrial training films in the 1950’s that helped to transform 16mm motion picture film from the primarily amateur format that it was before WWII into a fully professional “non-theatrical” format for use in schools, workplaces, libraries and civic auditoriums. Along with its uses in television production (most notably for news filming) the dedication and persistence of filmmakers such as Moyer to make a livelihood from 16mm film production pushed the film and equipment manufacturers to introduce more technically sophisticated 16mm film stocks, cameras and projectors. The more scholarly research filming that took place in the field of Visual Anthropology in the 1970s-80s directly benefited from the many innovations in 16mm film production due to these popular uses of the medium developed in the 1950s-60s. In a certain sense, the films of Martin Moyer can be viewed as part of the film pre-history of the large body of 16mm motion picture film documentation created by the Smithsonian Institution under the program established in 1974 as the National Anthropological Film Center.

The Human Studies Film Archives would like to wish a great fall semester to students of all ages returning to the classroom this month.

Mark White, Human Studies Film Archives

Back to School

United States National Museum Entomological Workers, 1925

Students heading back to school this month do not just have to worry about lunches, homework, teachers and friends.  In a few weeks, they will be rounded up for class pictures.  Kids will think about what to wear and how to style their hair for the image that will adorn their living rooms for the next year.  Some are good, some are bad, but there are always the memorable ones.

International Exchange Services Staff, Class of 1891

Anthropology Staff, Class of 1931

Like proud parents, the SI Archives has collected departmental pictures over the years to remember Smithsonian staff.  And though we may not place them in a frame, we try to upload them to the Collections Search Center for all to enjoy.  Here are some of my favorite "class pictures" found in the Archives.

Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory Staff, Class of 1941

Landscaping Staff, Class of 1973

Images courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution Archives

Courtney Esposito, Institutional History Division, Smithsonian Institution Archives

Silly Summer at the Freer|Sackler Archives

Today, I thought I’d draw your attention to some of the silly things that you can find in the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives. Some people may think of archives as dry and boring, full of boring, old, irrelevant papers, and not much else. But this is quite far from the truth! If you spend enough time in the archives, not only do you slowly grow pale and wan, but you also find a number of amusing items. Read on for some laughs. 

Myron S. Falk Jr, ca. 1932

The above photographs are from the Pauline B. and Myron S. Falk Jr. papers.  Myron S. Falk Jr. graduated from Massachusetts Tech and began work in 1932 with the New Photomaton Corporation of Eastman Kodak Company as a sales manager of photo booth machines.  This particular folder of his life contains sketched advertisements, correspondence relaying his marketing and management ideas, and my favorite – his test pictures from the Photomaton machine.  I have attached just one of several contact sheets that have his image in various poses ranging from stoic to absurd.  Take a look and have a giggle as you remember your first job. Below I’ve included some pop-culture references that immediately came to my mind; please feel free to send your own observations to me as I would be happy to receive them.

“It’s the photo booth man from the movie Amelie!”


“Check out Myron’s fierce Tyra Banks look.”


“Now you hate the camera!”


“Was Myron considering one of these for his Facebook profile pic?”

C.L. Freer at his villa on Capri, ca. 1900 - 1903

While we remember Charles Lang Freer as our museum’s austere founder, he managed to balance his work with some play. This photo shows Freer at his villa on Capri. Joining a cult? Doing yoga? Performance art? Simply hamming it up for the camera? We may never know. 



Try not to envy Freer too much for the fact that not only did he own a villa on Capri, but he also had enough leisure time to dress up, create and put on a laurel wreath, and then photograph himself while doing so.


Who do you think Freer sent this to?


This photograph is part of the Charles Lang Freer papers, Series 12 Photographs, currently being digitized to be made available online soon!

And last but not least, art was not Freer’s only hobby -- he was also quite the skilled animal trainer! Oh, the things you learn in an archives. Please note the drawing caption: "I found myself in the unique position of caddy." For some odd reason, I have a feeling that that wasn't the least of Freer's worries!

Have a fantastic rest of your summer!

--Rachael Cristine Woody and Beatrice Kelly, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives