Description: It does not take long for today’s visitors to one of the Smithsonian Institution’s nineteen museums to find themselves engulfed within the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex. The flood of world’s fairs in the late nineteenth century played a central role in placing the Smithsonian en route to that unparalleled distinction. The New Orleans World’s
Description: Arrival of the Polaris A-3 missile, the first U.S. submarine-launched ballistic missile, outside the Arts and Industries Building, OPA-1172R2-9.
Description: Reminiscences of Frank A. Taylor, founding director of the National Museum of American History which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.
Description: The United States National Museum Curators’ Annual Reports will be added to the Smithsonian Transcription Center, beginning the first week of June.
Description: As the architect Victor Lundy turns 90, we look back at the redwood shade structures he designed in the mid-1960s for the terrace of the new Museum of History and Technology (today the National Museum of American History).
Description: Before you head to “Deep Time,” opening this weekend at Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, learn about how Smithsonian’s fossil collection was initially formed and exhibited.
Description: On the evening of October 1, 1847, while using a small telescope on the roof of the family home, Maria Mitchell (1818-1889) spotted a comet where one had not been before. Word of this achievement spread quickly through the scientific community. The American Journal of Science declared her “the first American entitled to the honor of the original discovery of a comet.” Some
Description: In 2019, the Smithsonian faced the repercussions of the nation’s longest-ever government shutdown, but the institution is no stranger to the dreaded furlough.
Description: The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has been located on the National Mall since 1974, but before that, Joseph and Olga Hirshhorn spent years considering which city or country the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden would call home.