Description: Smokey Bear, the character, was created by the Forest Service in August 1944 as the lead symbol in its Wildfire Prevention Campaign. However, there was also a real, living Smokey Bear, himself the victim of a forest fire as a young cub. Smokey was born in 1950 in the Lincoln National Forest in New Mexico, where he was found badly burned. Despite the odds for survival, he was
Description: [edan-image:id=siris_sic_8804,size=350,right]Louise Daniel Hutchinson set out on the path of her life’s work from a young age, growing up among DC’s African American intellectual elite in a family that imbued her with a passion for justice and a love of community. Those connections and commitments accompanied her throughout a long and influential career at the Smithsonian.
Description: The George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will have a prominent home on Chicago's gorgeous lakefront. The museum will house Lucas's private art and memorabilia collections, which includes Star Wars and Indiana Jones ephemera, Norman Rockwell paintings, and movie posters. [via Wired] Who knew? Actors who got their start in government films! A weekly feature of archive & museum
Description: [caption id="" align="alignright" width="147" caption="Walt Whitman, 1875, by Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Chalk on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Robert Tyler Davis Memorial Fund, 1980.73."][/caption] Fascinating interview with poet Robert Roper, who dug into the National Archives to examine the moving letters poet Walt Whitman wrote to family