Description: In celebration of over a century of volunteer contributions at the Smithsonian, explore the work of some stellar volunteers from our collection.
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="424" caption="U.S. National Museum, May 3, 1917, seen from the National Mall, by Unknown photographer, Photographic print, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 45, Box 79, Folder: 10, Neg. SIA2009-2203."][/caption] As part of my work as the historian for the history of the Smithsonian, I’ve been working for the past year on
Description: To celebrate Black History Month, we’re sharing two recently-digitized video clips featuring exhibitions from the Anacostia Community Museum in the 1980s.
Description: Rube Goldberg, the subject of a 1970 exhibition at the National Museum of American History, produced thousands of drawings and comic strips, as well as, films, photographs, and over-the-top machines. A true celebrity in his time, Goldberg set standards in political cartooning and contributed to the development of thousands of extravagant and entertaining contraptions that have
Description: Historian Lonnie Bunch is the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Smithsonian’s 19th museum. Growing up with a love of history and a sense that African Americans deserved “a voice,” his education and early career gave him the research, museum, and management experience that allowed him to successfully develop an idea into a
Description: If you are a regular reader, or someone who works for a museum, library, or archive, you intimately understand the difficulty in managing big collections. If you’re not in this world, you do understand how hard it is to manage family photographs, a collection of email love letters, or the folder tucked in the bottom of your closet with old college papers. When you multiply