Description: The multi-talented William Henry Holmes contributed to the Smithsonian as an artist, explorer, geologist, archeologist and museum director.
Description: This post originally appeared on the National Museum of Natural History's blog, Unearthed.Who would think that behind the west wall of NMNH's paleontology hall is a painting of a goddess that created a sensation when installed in 1910? Some of you who visited the museum fifty years ago may remember the captivating Diana of the Tides as she surveyed the hall.Diana was painted
Description: Late 2015, the beta version of the Smithsonian’s Learning Lab, a new digital platform providing access to digital resources across the Smithsonian alongside tools for teachers and students, launched. I was delighted to see a related social media update hinting at some of the discoveries to be had with the Learning Lab, one of which showed Saul Steinberg drawings on Smithsonian
Description: A forerunner of today’s efforts to decolonize and Indigenize American museums, Tichkematse was one of the first Native American employees at the Smithsonian Institution. His work with natural history and anthropological collections continue to inspire Native and non-Native museum professionals nearly 150 years later.
Description: [edan-image:id=siris_sic_12123,size=250,left]It is a simple answer really: We counted. From 1978 to 1983, the Smithsonian undertook a comprehensive inventory of its collections. It was the first time the Smithsonian had ever tried to count each object in its collections and it was a massive task. Over five years, staff from every museum and research center spent thousands of
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="416" caption="The Art Room in the East Wing of the Smithsonian Institution Building, created by third Secretary Samuel P. Langley. The furnishings were specially designed by Hornblower and Marshall. Encircling the room was a plaster copy of the Parthenon frieze and carbon photographs by Adolphe Braun of Old Master portraits and
Description: In this next edition of our Miscellaneous Adventures, choose your own adventures by diving into the folders yourself in the Smithsonian Transcription Center.
Description: African art scholar Sylvia H. Williams, directed the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art, 1983-1996, and was one of the few women, and the only African American woman, serving at the time as director of a major American museum. #Groundbreaker
Description: On October 5, 2021, the Smithsonian announced that Tamar Evangelestia-Dougherty will be the new director of the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, effective Nov. 6.
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.