While optical microscopy allows the structure and dynamics of solvent-containing materials to be visualized down to the diffraction limit of light, about 300 nm, a comparable microscopy method for imaging at smaller length scales is lacking. The obvious choice, electron microscopy, imposes high vacuum, making the method incompatible with specimens containing volatile components. To bypass this vacuum, considerable attention has been directed to liquid cells for transmission electron microscopy. Here, another approach is outlined, one that exploits the nonvolatility of ionic liquids and the lower energy electrons of scanning electron microscopy. Structure and dynamics (captured as movies) of growing crystals, polymer gels, and ligand-coating nanoparticles are thereby obtained at high resolution (about 3-5 nm) and reasonable frame rates (about 2 fps) under conditions that stabilize specimens over minutes to hours without beam damage. A particular focus has been dispersed nanoparticle-decorated liquid interfaces, where nanoparticle interactions and packing have been probed as functions of areal fraction, particle shape and composition, and ligand identity.