Description: A brief look at the history and attitudes towards women and Latin Americans at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute amplifies the significance of Dr. Oris I. Sanjur’s formal appointment as acting director in 2020.
Description: On what better day than Election Day to follow up on that tidbit I dropped a couple weeks ago regarding a consultation about then-candidate Barack Obama’s dry-erase boards, a recent acquisition by the National Museum of African American History and Culture? These artifacts, along with archival material and other realia (in archives terms: a man-made three-dimensional object)
Description: As a postdoctoral fellow at the National Museum of American History, I’ve spent months in the Smithsonian Institution Archives researching a book tentatively titled, Not Naturally a Grass Country: Environment, Plant Genetics, and the Quest for Agricultural Modernization in the Humid World. It’s largely a story about global attempts to replace one form of agriculture—the
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="229" caption="Mary Alice McWhinnie (1922-1980) was a professor of biology at DePaul University and a world-renowned authority on krill when she began working on research ships off-shore in 1962, when this photograph was taken, by Unidentified photographer, Black and white photographic print, Smithsonian Institution Archives, cc. 90-105