Description: While teleworking for the last year, the Archives has been busy capturing web content that documents the Smithsonian’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Description: [caption id="" align="alignright" width="254" caption="Untitled (In the Movie House Watching "Haunting of Hill House"), ca. 1950, Weegee, Gelatin silver print on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum Museum purchase, 1988.45."][/caption] Weegee on news photography: “I will walk many times with friends down the street and they'll say, ‘Hey, Weegee. Here's a drunk or two drunks
Description: Savage Beauty, the posthumous and retrospective exhibition of women’s fashions designed by Alexander McQueen (1969–2010) at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art closed early in August. The record breaking event—an official attendance count of 661,509 visitors made it the eighth biggest show in the museum’s history—featured approximately one hundred ensembles drawn, primarily,
Description: The Smithsonian Astrophysical Obervatory’s Senior Astrophysicist, Dr. Christine Jones Forman, is attempting to measure how large scale structures in the Universe grow from early times to the present through the Chandra Xray Oberservatory. She is the Smithsonian’s Director of the Consortium for Unlocking the Mysteries of the Universe. #Groundbreaker
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Marey Wheel Photographs of Unidentified Model, with Eadweard Muybridge Notations, by Thomas Eakins, 1884, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden."][/caption] Please be aware that some of the photographs included in links within this post may contain graphic and emotionally disturbing material. Which are more powerful,
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="350" caption="Window Necklace, by Hoong Wei Long, Creative Commons: Attribution 2.0."][/caption] For those who continue to believe that bigger is better—that you’re better off, for example, the more megapixels your digital camera delivers—a recent article by Jordan Ellenberg in WIRED magazine suggests the opposite may be true.
Description: I cannot, I feel, have any regrets about my accomplishments. What comes from art will just come. I don’t feel any need to strive. - John N. Robinson One of my favorite parts of working in an archive is the opportunity to immerse myself in other people’s worlds, to learn more about their stories and experiences. One such person I encountered recently was John N. Robinson, a
Description: Photos in the Science Service collection documenting Herbert Hoover's historic acceptance of the Presidential nomination with live radio coverage.
Description: It’s December, which of course means the beginning of the holiday season. Festive décor starts to appear in store windows (or, let’s be honest, these days it starts going up in late October . . .). [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="330" caption="East Baltimore Documentary Survey Project, ca. 1975, Elinor Cahn, Gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum,