Description: [view:sia_slideshow==71908]By the late 1960s, curators at the National Museum of History and Technology (NMHT), now the National Museum of American History, were focusing on how to present aspects of the American experience to visitors of the museum in different ways. Instead of using "sterile techniques which have too frequently given visitors the false impression that all
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="425" caption="In El Valle, Cocle, Panama, on 31 March 1951, Sixth Smithsonian Secretary Alexander Wetmore and taxidermist Watson M. Perrygo at his left are outside a building sitting at a table preparing bird specimens for study at the Natural History Museum, March 31, 1951, by Unidentified photographer, Photographic print, Smithsonian
Description: Here at the Smithsonian we love to observe. So of course on August 23, 2011, at 1:51 PM, when a 5.8 magnitude earthquake shook the Washington, DC region and many of us with it, we immediately started to observe what happened and how we could document it. As the Institution's historians, inevitably we needed to know, had this happened before and what were the effects? After
Description: Dr. Leonard Carmichael led the Smithsonian Institution through many changes during his tenure as the seventh Secretary of the Smithsonian. He presided over new museums and facility openings, special acquisitions, and exciting exhibitions. Because Carmichael was hired from outside of the Smithsonian, he brought a new perspective, his academic background, and skills to thrust
Description: There is a remarkable figure in the Smithsonian’s history that doesn’t get much of the spotlight; Thomas W. Smillie. He served as the Smithsonian’s first official photographer from 1870 until his death in 1917, and additionally became the Smithsonian’s first photography curator in 1896. Smillie amassed a collection of photographic equipment starting with the purchase of the
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="393" caption="From left to right: Baldomiro Moreno, Herbert Clark, John Hushing, C. L. Pierce, Karl Curtis and Watson M. Perrygo stand in front of a building belonging to the La Jagua Hunting Club near Chico, Panama, 1949, by Alexander Wetmore, Photographic print, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 9516, Box 2: Watson M.
Description: Sometimes the research process reveals more than an answer to a single question. This is the story of the Smithsonian bison that inspired the “Buffalo Bill.”