Description: Have a little fun with images from our collections that have been designated as open access. Anyone can now download, transform, share, and reuse millions of images as part of Smithsonian Open Access.
Description: Margaret Simmons Vining was a museum specialist and later curator of armed forces history at the National Museum of American History from 1983 until her death in 2018.In addition to curating major exhibitions and building the division’s collections, she founded and supervised the Smithsonian Archive of Women’s Military History. Together with her longtime collaborator and life
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: Closed to the public since 2004, the Arts and Industries Building remains closed for the foreseeable future. Here is a look back at what used to be there.
Description: A look at the Quadrangle complex of the Smithsonian that encompasses the Enid Haupt Garden, the National Museum of African Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.
Description: Oral history interviews sometimes reveal the central role that a mentor can play in the life of a young person, changing the road taken in that person’s life.
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: Thanks to a generous grant from the Smithsonian Women’s Committee, the Archives will digitize, catalog, and make available 7,500 historic photographs of the Smithsonian from Record Unit 95.
Description: Computer science researchers at the University of Washington and Cornell University have announced a new system of powerful graphics algorithms that will create three-dimensional renderings of buildings, neighborhoods, and potentially even entire cities. Fittingly the inventors went for the gold and named the system PhotoCity. Like its precursor, Microsoft’s Photosynth, the