Description: Link Love: a weekly blog feature with links to interesting videos and stories regarding archival issues, the Smithsonian, Washington D.C & American history.
Description: John Waters’s 1998 movie Pecker is the coming-of-age story about a young man who can’t stop himself from taking pictures. “Man, everything always looks good through here!” Pecker exclaims, squinting through his viewfinder and throughout most of the film, it does. Photography is all about looking, and when it was time to invite someone to address the subject of voyeurism for
Description: Each week, the Archives features a woman who has been a groundbreaker at the Smithsonian, past or present, in a series titled Wonderful Women Wednesday.
Description: A salamander, the axolotl, found in Mexico that once numbered in the 6000s/square kilometer is now down to 35. [via Scientific American]As we know, the Biodiversity Heritage Library has a lot of gorgeous images of natural specimen, in fact over 2 million of them, and it includes some from the Archives! [via Open Culture]Beatles fans, John Lennon's stolen diary was recovered by
Description: 435 high resolution book plates of gorgeous illustrations from Audubon's The Birds of America are now available for free download! [via Hyperallergic]And after you're done with the plates, check out peacock feathers under a high magnification lens, by artist Waldo Nell. [via Wired]University students are working to save the remaining copies of a black-owned newspaper, The
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="293" caption="Completed SA-2 missile site showing characteristic Star of David pattern, National Security Archive, The George Washington University"][/caption] Strangely beautiful surveillance photographs shot from an American U-2 spy plane triggered a terrifying nuclear standoff, The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. In a new click!
Description: On December 19, 1977 the Trees of Christmas exhibition opened at the National Museum of History and Technology (now the National Museum of American History). This was the first exhibition of the Office of Horticulture (now Smithsonian Gardens) and featured trees with handcrafted ornaments representing a variety of countries and cultural traditions.
Description: Sometimes the research process reveals more than an answer to a single question. This is the story of the Smithsonian bison that inspired the “Buffalo Bill.”