Today marks the release of an important new title in the tattoo history canon. These Old Blue Arms covers the work of Milwaukee legend Amund Dietzel. Dietzel tattooed for over 60 years, his legacy left through hand-painted flash and historic photographs.

The volume is the first of series on Dietzel and at 200-pages begins the tale with a bang.

Order a copy (or more) here.

A few interior shots follow.

Home Base: Memories of the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field stems from an innovative program at Brooklyn Historical Society, Exhibition Laboratory. Essentially, Ex Lab functions as an after-school museum studies course for motivated New York high-schoolers. Their work for the Brooklyn Historical Society, now on view, relays the highs and lows of the Dodger era in Brooklyn.

The students work through objects – photographs, uniforms, etc. – and oral histories to form a compelling story of a pivotal time in American baseball history.

Worth heading to Brooklyn to check out.

An important new collection of essays, Cabin, Quarter, Plantation provides a comprehensive examination of the architecture and landscape of enslavement in the American south. New scholarship finds home alongside classic writings on the built environment of slavery. As such, the book breaks new ground allowing for a thorough discussion of the topic and introducing new thought about how African building traditions established a new vernacular in the United States.

Edited by Clifton Ellis, associate professor of Architecture at Texas Tech, and Rebecca Ginsburg, associate professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois. Cabin, Quarter, Plantation is available from Yale University Press.

This fine exhibition at the Canadian Museum of Civilization just came to my attention. Profit & Ambition draws visitors into the world of the Montreal-based Northwest Company. In their quest to rule the fur trade, the company pushed towards the Pacific laying the foundation for the Canada we know today. The exhibition draws from a wonderful range of objects, including paintings and native Canadian craft. It is a story of adventure, exploration, and fierce rivalry. In short, all the things that make history exciting.

For those unable to make it to Gatineau, the Profit & Ambition website covers quite a bit of ground. There is also a fully illustrated companion catalog available.

On view through September 12, 2010.

Live from Milan, Yatzer gets the scope on Thanos Zakopoulos and Katai Meneghini’s ceraMIX collection. A literal mash up of historic ceramic styles (aesthetically… from a technical standpoint it is all porcelain). The collection marries European and Chinese porcelain producing a hybrid look for the Greek firm CTRLZAK. Fascinating is the decision to remain true to historic proportions, which forces an asymmetrical melding of EAST and WEST. Fun, rather than functional, stuff.

More images after the jump.

What can your senses – other than sight – tell you about an object? The Chipstone Foundation explores this idea in their blindfold object lab. I quite like this as an exercise, having always been interest in what thinking sound tells us. Here touch is the method, but nonetheless helpful in beginning to think about what role all senses have in our understanding of things.

From the very excellent Art Babble.

Running until May 16, 2010, Gargoyles and Shadows examines the relationship between photography and architectural practice in the 19-century. Especially important is the role of photography in documenting buildings that were demolished. A new form of historical record is then created, and with it a useful tool in the preservation of national (in this case British) national heritage.

Gargoyles and Shadows is up in the architecture room at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

The inaugural exhibition of the Wolfsonian Teaching Gallery, a space that allows Florida International University faculty to collaborate with museum staff on small exhibitions, opens on January 20, 2010.

The subject is gender and labor in the United States, expressed through a winning collection of lithographs from the Wolfsonian Collection. Organized by professor Alex Lichenstein, of FIU’s History Department, the exhibition will run through April 11, 2010. It is held at The Frost Museum in Miami, Florida.

Above: Poster, “Teamwork Builds Ships”, c. 1918. Designed by William Dodge Stevens (American, 1870–1942). Published by Emergency Fleet Corporation. Printed by Forbes Boston, Philadelphia. Commercial color lithograph. The Wolfsonian–Florida International University, Miami Beach, Florida, The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection, XX1992.180

Celina Fox once had one of the greatest titles in museum work, assistant keeper at the Museum of London. Her new book, The Arts of Industry in the Age of Englightenment, argues that mechanics and artisans used four principle methods of rationalizing there work. These are (in no particular order) drawing, model-making, societies, and publications. Combined, these activities helped to classify and celebrate the process of industry. Fox ties together the four methods, using them as themes which explain how industry was settled into everyday life.

Published by Yale University Press.

Yesterday, though the blog of Sub-Studio Design, I discovered this magnificent archive of exhibition preparation photographs from the American Museum of Natural History. Ranging from shots of staff moving the skelton of a brontasaurus (see Charles H. Coles’ 1938 photograph above) to preparing bird mounts, the material gives behind the scenes access to many elements of exhibition design.

While the images themselves are arresting, I’m posting because they also offer a rare look at life inside of a museum. Conservation and preparation are often out of the scope of interest for many museum goers. The archive is well worth exploring.

I’ve selected a few choice images. Please find these after the jump.