Description: Happy Fourth of July! On Independence Day, flags are flown across the nation. The Smithsonian has many versions of the American flag in its collections, the best known being the Star Spangled Banner. But, do you know its history, and how it came to the Smithsonian? The Star Spangled Banner is a huge 15-star, 15-stripe garrison flag, 30 feet by 42 feet, made in 1813 by Mary
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="384" caption="Construction of the Pension Building, Designed by Montgomery Meigs, c. 1883, by Unknown photographer, Albumen print, National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center, Image ID: AFS 182."][/caption] One of the first collections that I encountered during my travels through the photography collections of the
Description: The American Foundation for the Blind launched the Helen Keller Archive, the world's first fully accessible digital archive comprised of more than 160,000 artifacts. [via PR Newswire]Ahead of his major retrospective at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, artist Trevor Paglen shares his views on the social and political implication of surveillance systems and artificial
Description: The Smithsonian Institution Archives will be celebrating African American History Month throughout February with a series of related posts on THE BIGGER PICTURE.
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: For the last year the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History has been preparing to celebrate its 100 year anniversary. As part of the celebration, curators and archivists have been combing the files in preparation for an exhibition of historic photographs that will describe the museum’s history. [caption id="" align="alignright" width="218" caption="Photomicrograph
Description: Eleanor McMillan, Conservator, Smithsonian’s Conservation Analytical Laboratory, 1963–94, supervised conservation projects and educational and training programs. Although she began as a generalist, McMillan became the first paper conservator in the laboratory. After retirement, she provided initial funding for the Smithsonian Center for Archives Conservation and donated her