Description: With Chinese New Year upon us, the beautiful stationery these letters are written on gives a glimpse into life for academic expatriates in southern China in the 1920s.
Description: In mid-19th century America, some believed that world-class discoveries came exclusively from Europe. But early Smithsonian leaders had a sense of urgency to disseminate an authoritative body of knowledge, pursue further discoveries, and provide a deeper understanding to the public at a time when American society was changing.
Description: This blog post was edited in October 2021 for clarification. While surveying and collecting specimens in the Aleutian Islands in 1871-1872 for the United States Coast Survey, later renamed the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, naturalist William Healey Dall befriended George Tsaroff (1858-1880), an Unangan (Aleut) teen from Unalaska Island who had been hired as local
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="425" caption="Image of the shoreline of Haiti, caption reads, "Hayti. Port au Prince from S.S. Panama at dock," The image was taken by Albert Spear Hitchcock, botanist with the United States Department of Agriculture and honorary curator of the Smithsonian's United States National Herbarium while on the Biological Survey of the Panama
Description: Framing the West is a new exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. It features 120 of the extraordinary photographs Timothy O’Sullivan made for the King and Wheeler Surveys, two of the most important geological surveys of the western United States. The exhibition demonstrates not only the ability of the camera to capture the details of place, but the talent of
Description: 100 years ago in August of 1914, the Panama Canal opened to commercial shipping. Smithsonian scientists knew the canal would create major environmental changes and have spent the last 100 years documenting them.
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.