Description: Several weeks ago a brown box full of photographs arrived at “The Smithsonian.” Now being that “The Smithsonian” is actually made up of many museums and research centers, this brown box was circulated through several offices before I finally got the call to see if it was something that I wanted. Usually the Smithsonian would rather not receive unsolicited donations. Though,
Description: When the names of certain cities are mentioned, photographic images of them pop into your head almost immediately. Washington = buildings on or near the mall. New York = skyscrapers of one sort or another. Paris = the Eiffel Tower. Tokyo = the Ginza shopping and entertainment district. With that thought in mind—and considering the multiple roles photography plays in shaping,
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="420" caption="The Great Pyramid and the Great Sphinx, from "Egypt, Sinai and Jerusalem" Portfolio, 1858, Francis Frith"][/caption] The first examples of travel photography are almost simultaneous with the invention of photography itself. In 1841, following an extensive trip through the Middle East, wine merchant and early photographer,
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="324" caption="Stereo Images (Precipitating Snow) obtained using a Low Temperature Scanning Electron Microscope (LT-SEM) that is located in the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in the Electron Microscopy Unit, Beltsville Maryland, Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture."][/caption] We have old-school photos of snow at the
Description: Anna R. Cohn, Director, Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES), 1988–2014, toured groundbreaking exhibitions across the United States. She joined the Smithsonian in 1983 as director of the international exhibition “The Precious Legacy” and later organized “Generations” for the S. Dillon Ripley Center’s International Gallery. #Groundbreaker
Description: Vicarious research is one of the great joys of the reference desk at the Smithsonian Institution Archives. From our front-row (well, only-row) seat outside the reading room, we catch tantalizing glimpses of our patrons’ manifold research topics.The reference team fields around 6,000 queries per year. Ask us what people have been researching recently, and you’ll get into some
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="350" caption="Perfect, by Bruce Berrien, Creative Commons: Attribution 2.0."][/caption] At the turn of the 21st century, as federal organizations and private corporations were competing against each other in the race to decode the human genome, a number of exhibitions that explored areas where genetic science and visual imagery
Description: A look at Spencer F. Baird's tenure at the Smithsonian establishing a network of collectors to launch the Smithsonian's first official museum.
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