Description: [edan-image:id=siris_sic_12311,size=250,right]Walking into the rotunda of the National Museum of Natural History one immediately comes face to face with the Fénykövi Elephant (also affectionately known as Henry). Taken at a glance, the African elephant is impressive and imposing, standing over guests to a tune of 13 feet and 2 inches when measured at the shoulder. The Fénykövi
Description: Grab your popcorn! To mark the Smithsonian’s 175th anniversary this year, the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives will host monthly virtual programs featuring films from the collections of the Smithsonian Institution Archives. Register today.
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="320" caption="Glass lantern slide of Roscrana in Glencoe, Illinois, 1930. The garden includes white tulips, blue forget-me-nots and allee of trees. Unidentified Photographer. Archives of American Gardens, Smithsonian Institution. "][/caption] In the 1960s, during the process of planning a kitchen remodel at its headquarters in New York
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Photograph of airmail planes at Elko, Nevada, by unknown photographer, c. 1920, Smithsonian National Postal Museum."][/caption] Just last week, we uploaded some new photos of early US airmail from the National Postal Museum to the “People and the Post” set on the Flickr Commons. I was immediately drawn in by the portraits
Description: How has the Smithsonian been portrayed in popular culture – fiction writing, movies and television, over the last 160 years and has its popular imaged changed?
Description: A couple of years ago, in the process of curating Now is Then, an exhibition for the Newark Museum, I spent some time researching and thinking about the content, meaning and sequential lives of snapshots. Since their introduction in the late 19th century, inestimable numbers of those small, but powerful pictures have been made, looked at and saved—at least for a while.
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Silver Fox Rabbit at the Kid's Farm, 2008, by Meghan Murphy, National Zoological Park. "][/caption] Five years in the making, the Kid's Farm at the National Zoological Park opened in June 2004.
Description: John Waters’s 1998 movie Pecker is the coming-of-age story about a young man who can’t stop himself from taking pictures. “Man, everything always looks good through here!” Pecker exclaims, squinting through his viewfinder and throughout most of the film, it does. Photography is all about looking, and when it was time to invite someone to address the subject of voyeurism for