Archive of technology, entertainment and everyday life
In Buenos Aires and Montevideo, the oversized ornamental comb fashionable in the 1820s and 1830s was more than a striking accessory: images and accounts connect it to social distinction, skilled labor and debates over women’s presence in the street.
Open storyCels, drawings, and other intermediate materials reveal production decisions hidden by the finished work. The National Film Archive of Japan’s experience shows how preserving them depends on cataloguing and access as well as collaboration with a global intellectual-property industry.
Open storyA group of 355 everyday objects at Madrid’s National Museum of Anthropology offers a way to study rooms in an early-twentieth-century bourgeois Berlin home. Photographs, inventories and archives help connect the objects, while also revealing the limits of reconstruction and the role provenance plays in the histories museums can tell.
Open storyOn August 12, 1981, IBM presented its personal computer in Manhattan. This article analyzes how an internal decision within the General Products Division led to a de facto standard that transformed the technology industry.
Open storyFounded in San José in 1994, the Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo built its identity around the relationship—and tensions—between two disciplines. Daniel Soto Morúa’s study traces the institution’s development and curatorial practices from 1994 to 2019, showing both the regional influence of its model and its structural vulnerabilities.
Open storyA preserved garment reveals materials, techniques and traces of use, but it cannot tell us how an entire society dressed. Photographs, records and conservation practices place it in context—and help show which voices a collection leaves out.
Open storyThe 1969 launch of the CB750 combined an inline-four engine, disc brakes, and an affordable price, transforming the industry and laying the foundations for the superbike category.
Open storyReleased in Japan in July 1977 alongside the Color TV-Game 15, the Color TV-Game 6 packed six Pong options into a console with no cartridges. Its 9,800-yen price and built-in controls show how Nintendo sought a place in a home market already crowded with rivals.
Open storyPersonal pages, directories, webmail, and online communities shaped a web very different from today’s. Archived captures reveal what those services offered and how they invited people to participate—provided we distinguish the date a page was preserved from the history of the service itself.
Open storyAfter joining Chanel in 1983, Lagerfeld turned familiar house codes—the tweed jacket, pearls and the suit—into material for new silhouettes. His work shows how a fashion house can make its archive current without treating it as a relic, while his legacy also includes public controversies and debate over the use of fur.
Open storyWear, materials and collecting histories help us understand toys without reducing them to rare curiosities. From pedal vehicles made by Valencia’s Sauquillo factory to a toy cradle in Madrid’s National Museum of Anthropology, these objects reveal possibilities for play as well as ideas about childhood, education and everyday life.
Open storyAntoni Marín Amatller examines how movement and duration make composition, framing and lighting dynamic—and why video is built through sequences and editing.
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