Description: In addition to a rich collection of analog moving image material currently being digitized, the Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA) accessions large quantities of born-digital video from various hard drives, CDs, DVDs, and websites across the Institution. And just as digitization is a method of preserving moving image content before it degrades on an analog carrier, digital
Description: Preservation intern discusses working with oversize materials in the Archives collection, including information on the creation of custom enclosures, surface cleaning of blueprints, and humidification.
Description: From 1967 to 1991, Mary E. Massey broke barriers for women at the Smithsonian by demonstrating her skills in spaces typically reserved only for men. Though Massey arrived at the Smithsonian as an elevator operator, by her retirement, she was the building manager for the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery. In a column reserved for the Smithsonian
Description: Curator of Latino art, Dr. Taína Caragol, Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, aspires to: "My goal at the Portrait Gallery has been to make sure the contributions of Latinos to U.S. history are properly represented in the museum." #Groundbreaker
Description: In June, 2008, the Smithsonian was the 4th institution to join the Flickr Commons . One of the things I enjoy most as a visitor to the Commons is searching on a random word or phrase and seeing how that idea is represented. Six members of the Commons posted photos and tagged with ‘womensday’ in honor of the 2009 International Women's Day. I searched on ‘work’ and other related
Description: Artists are often among the researchers who comb through archives in search of inspiration and content. A few years back in 2008, an encyclopedic exhibition, Archive Fever, presented at the International Center of Photography in New York, presented works by leading contemporary artists who have made active use of archival images, documents, and methodology to explore the ways
Description: For six seasons, beginning in 1984, the television series Smithsonian World opened new windows on the research and scientists at the Smithsonian Institution.
Description: It’s an old fashioned card catalogue full of jokes! The National Museum of American History gives insight into Phyllis Diller’s “gag file”—50,000 annotated jokes featured in a new exhibition at the museum. How are institutions preserving born digital art? Here’s an article about Rhizome’s ArtBase—an archive of digital artworks [via the National Digital Information
Description: Curator Adelyn Breeskin, National Museum of American Art (now Smithsonian American Art Museum), was one of the 1st women to direct a major art museum (Baltimore Museum of Art) and was a champion of obscure artists in the contemporary art world. #Groundbreaker