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: Link Love: a weekly post with links to interesting videos and stories about archival issues, technology and culture, and Washington D.C. and American history.
Description: [caption id="" align="alignleft" width="181" caption="Edmonia Lewis, National Portrait Gallery"][/caption] In Kodak and the Lens of Nostalgia (2000), Nancy Martha West describes how the company—marketing the first box cameras in the 1890s—aggressively targeted female consumers, hoping they’d “see photography not only as a necessary component of domestic life but as an integral
Description: Barry Hampton played an important role in Division of Reptiles and Amphibians in the Natural History Museum for decades, but recognition was slow to come.
Description: In December 1978, Gloria Steinem met with the Smithsonian Institution Women’s Council (SIWC) to advise the group on carrying out the work of change at the Smithsonian and to broaden members’ understanding of the women’s movement. As described by attendees, the conversation was “dynamite…great…wonderful.” One member expressed her surprise at finding Steinem so agreeable;
Description: The 2018 public domain graduates, including Aleister Crowley, René Magritte, Alice B. Toklas, Pierre Bonnard, and Winston Churchill! [via Public Domain Review]The history of dealing with lack of light in Scandanavia, and Happy Solstice! [via Mosaic Science]Aww, baby pictures of the internet from 1973! [via Open Culture]Close-ups of Jupiter from NASA look like impressionist
Description: Elvira Clain-Stefanelli worked with the Smithsonian National Museum of American History’s National Numismatics Collection between 1957 and 2000. Although she initially arrived at the Smithsonian as an assistant to her husband, chief curator Vladmir Clain-Stefanelli, she eventually became the department’s first executive director in 1984. In 1973, both Elvira and Vladmir
Description: Reconstructing a former slave house in our National Museum of African American History and Culture. [via Atlantic]Cheating was common at the Olympics in ancient Greece. [via Smithsonian Magazine]Citizen science at its best: the app, iNaturalist, is actually helping scientists discover new species! [via NPR]Book-lovers rejoice! You may live longer. [via Guardian]Download 1000's
Description: Henry David Hubbard (1870-1943), a physicist at the U.S. National Bureau of Standards, designed the first edition of the "Periodic Chart of the Atoms" in 1924. The chart is still in use today, continually updated to reflect new elements.