Description: In paper conservation, it’s not just about the paper. Here I’ll explain the process in using acrylic paint and adhesive to repair the leather bindings of field books.
Description: [caption id="attachment_827" align="aligncenter" width="242" caption="Spacecraft Hubble: Hubble in Flight, 2007, NASA"][/caption] Throughout May and June, we are inviting people throughout the Smithsonian to talk about photography and astronomy. Welcome Joseph Caputo, intern at the Smithsonian Magazine. In April 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was dropped off 353 miles above
Description: It was July 1880 in Washington, DC and Smithsonian Secretary, Spencer Baird, had fled the city with his family for cool ocean breezes and to study the fishing grounds off the New England coast at Woods Hole on Cape Cod. For those left behind minding the Smithsonian Castle, it was probably hot, humid, and hellish in town and they were in need of relief. Luckily, the proprietors
Description: [edan-image:id=siris_sic_14715,size=250,left] By now you have probably heard of Robert Kennicott, either because of his involvement with the Megatherium Club, or because of the article and blog post on his death that was published last year. I, however, tend to associate him with the Western Union Telegraph Expedition, a collecting mission to Alaska that proved to be his last.
Description: What was the Saint Augustine Monster? According to Wikipedia, it was a globster—“an unidentified organic mass that washes up on the shoreline of an ocean or other body of water.” This great-grandaddy of globsters kept cryptozoologists speculating and scientists testing for a century—and a piece of it lives at the Smithsonian. The St. Augustine monster was discovered by two
Description: Formal portrait photographs of scientists tend to preserve the stiffness of the moment, rather than capture the sitter’s personality. Perhaps that is the reason that candid photographs of celebrities like Albert Einstein stick in public memory.A 1931 photograph of three Nobel laureate physicists illustrates why we tend to remember the informal photos of scientists more than
Description: For Social Media Day, we’re recapping how a Facebook follower solved an archival mystery by giving a name to our most popular “unidentified male model.”