Description: [caption id="" align="alignright" width="214" caption="Neighborhood Map (Hopkins, 1887), Hand-colored neighborhood map, Office of the Surveyor Map Collection, Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs."][/caption] Looks a lot cooler than it sounds: the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs will post more than a century’s worth of beautiful maps to Flickr [via Effie
Description: For Preservation Week, our team answered our burning, often ignorant questions about their biggest challenges, what they consider when treating objects, and beyond.
Description: [caption id="attachment_680" align="alignleft" width="159" caption="Flickr member, Penny L. Richards"][/caption] I work with people across the Smithsonian to add photos to the Smithsonian Flickr Commons photostream. Occasionally, something stands out in the daily summary of comments and tags I receive. Sometimes, it’s an exchange between Flickr members sparked by a single
Description: Traditionally, when families gather for end-of-the-year holiday events, reminiscences are shared, new photos and videos get made, and/or old snapshots, home movies, and memories resurface. And while most family narratives are revisited in intimate settings, around kitchen tables or in living rooms, a handful may reach broader audiences, through one set of circumstances or
Description: Thanks to a generous grant from the Smithsonian Women’s Committee, the Archives will digitize, catalog, and make available 7,500 historic photographs of the Smithsonian from Record Unit 95.
Description: The 1846 legislation that established the Smithsonian Institution provided for a Secretary, appointed by the Board of Regents, who would run the day-to-day affairs of the Institution. When David Skorton became Secretary last year, he was the thirteenth person to take on that responsibility. In our last blog, we discussed the first six and now we’ll look at seven through
Description: Our National Museum of African American History & Culture is getting a forever stamp October 13th! [via WUSA 9]Save the date: the Freer Sackler reopens October 14th and the are celebrating with a festival, IlluminAsia featuring projections on the building. [via DCist] Need your baby animal fix? The National Zoo has three baby critically-endangered dama gazelles, the latest
Description: A few days ago, I went to an IMAX 3D showing of Avatar to see for myself if the movie is a “game-changer,” as many have suggested. And, it is, but in a way no one seems to be focusing on—the way it acknowledges and exploits photography’s power to shape both everyday and alternate realities. What struck me, as soon as the movie started, was how sophisticated the film’s
Description: Despite another year of telework and limited physical access to our collections, the Smithsonian Institution Archives has continued to serve our researchers and share more of our collections with the public.