Description: A photograph of Charles Greeley Abbot belonging to the Smithsonian Archives was in need of conservation. The photograph is stable, but the board to which the photograph is mounted is broken into three pieces. The board was stabilized and placed into a new housing constructed with rare earth magnets to impose a slight pressure on the object. The new housing holds the object
Description: On Thursday, October 22nd, four of our archivists/conservators were available on the Smithsonian's Facebook page to answer questions about preserving your own archival collections. The four archivists at the Q&A have specialties in the preservation and organization of audio/visual material, photos, and digital records (email, digital video, etc.) This is our fifth year hosting
Description: When curators at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History looked at seven radiometers in storage, they learned the instruments had been at the Smithsonian for nearly one hundred fifty years.
Description: “Are you arty or hearty?” As family legend has it, this hilarious question was asked of one of our family’s old friends upon his arrival at Jesus College, Oxford University in 1932 as a Rhodes Scholar. Well, as the story goes, it turns out that he was hearty and intellectually gifted (physics). And, the same can be said of lots of Smithsonian employees.
Description: Dr. Massumeh Farhad, Chief Curator and Curator of Islamic Art, Freer and Sackler Galleries, has created numerous exhibitions on the arts of the Islamic world, and twice received the Smithsonian Secretary's prestigious research prize. #Groundbreaker
Description: Dr. Karen Y. Lemmey is the Smithsonian American Art Museum's curator of sculpture, the largest collection of American sculpture in the world, and won a 2017 Secretary's Research Prize.
Description: Though small in stature, Elvira Clain-Stefanelli was a force to be reckoned with at the Smithsonian, where she earned the role of the first executive director of the National Museum of American History’s National Numismatic Collection.