Description: This is the first of two posts on the Archives' conservators’ work with the Smithsonian’s Haiti Cultural Recovery project, which works to rescue and safeguard objects damaged by the 2010 earthquake.
Description: When you think of the National Museum of Natural History, what comes to mind are probably inanimate things—rocks and dinosaur bones, cultural objects, and stuffed animals. But did you know that the museum has a collection of live insects? Today is the 35th anniversary of the opening of the permanent installation of the Insect Zoo, though the Zoo actually began as a temporary
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="Eraser, by Sarah McKenzie, Creative Commons: Attribution 2.0."][/caption] An interesting story surfaced about a week ago, concerning an over-eager defense lawyer anxiously seeking to expunge not only governmental, but media archives, too, of potentially damaging information or previously published articles about a number
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="344" caption="Fremont Davis (1915-1977) was a staff photographer for Science Service, Date unknown, by Unidentified photographer, Photographic print, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 90-105 - Science Service, Records, 1920s-1970."][/caption] It's always satisfying to put a big check mark next to a completed task, and this month
Description: [caption id="attachment_2376" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="blurredvision, by Flickr user Paul Denton Cocker."][/caption] According to the National Eye Institute, more than 3 million Americans are blind or have vision so poor that everyday tasks become extremely difficult. Interestingly, according to a recent article by Pam Belluck in The New York Times, a new
Description: [caption id="attachment_2262" align="aligncenter" width="186" caption="Frankenstein by MARX!, by Flickr user TCM Hitchhiker."][/caption] For all the talk about creative seeing and the art of photography, the technical parameters of picture-taking and making have, for the most part, been defined by manufacturers of camera and photographic supplies. That wasn’t always the case;
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="368" caption="The first flight on December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina with Orville Wright at the controls of the Wright Flyer, by Unidentified photographer, Photographic print, Smithsonian Institution Archives Record Unit 95 Box 25 Folder 41, Negative Number: 2002-12169."][/caption] On this day in 1903 the Wright Brothers