Description: To celebrate the season, we have a series of posts looking at images of summer in the Smithsonian photo archives and collections. To start things off, Mary Savig, Archives Specialist at the Archives of American Art, describes how artists recharged in the summer months. Like eager vacationers everywhere, artists have long escaped to the beach on hot summer days. The shore
Description: The National Zoological Park was conceived by William Temple Hornaday and established by an act of Congress in 1889. The Smithsonian’s collection of living animals was originally intended to aid taxidermists’ studies, but Smithsonian Secretaries Spencer F. Baird and Samuel P. Langley helped expand the small menagerie’s purpose. Today it houses over 2,000 animals of around 400