Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="424" caption="U.S. National Museum, May 3, 1917, seen from the National Mall, by Unknown photographer, Photographic print, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 45, Box 79, Folder: 10, Neg. SIA2009-2203."][/caption] As part of my work as the historian for the history of the Smithsonian, I’ve been working for the past year on
Description: It does not take long for today’s visitors to one of the Smithsonian Institution’s nineteen museums to find themselves engulfed within the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex. The flood of world’s fairs in the late nineteenth century played a central role in placing the Smithsonian en route to that unparalleled distinction. The New Orleans World’s