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: It is with sadness that I report that Mitch Toda is stepping down as the blog coordinator. Since 2011, Mitch Toda has been the man behind-the-scenes making sure everything runs smoothly. As a staff archivist, he works daily with the records he takes in from Smithsonian museums and offices such as the new National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Office of
Description: This Memorial Day, try to put together puzzles from images in our collections that have been designated as open access. Anyone can now download, transform, share, and reuse millions of images as part of Smithsonian Open Access.
Description: In 1975 The George Eastman House in Rochester, NY opened a small exhibition titled “New Topographics: Photographs Of A Man Altered Landscape,” that changed the way we think about photography and the art of landscape. While it launched a new photographic style and conceptual framework for a traditional artistic genre, it also re-affirmed photography’s powerful ability to
Description: The George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will have a prominent home on Chicago's gorgeous lakefront. The museum will house Lucas's private art and memorabilia collections, which includes Star Wars and Indiana Jones ephemera, Norman Rockwell paintings, and movie posters. [via Wired] Who knew? Actors who got their start in government films! A weekly feature of archive & museum
Description: How photos from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Gardens help preserve the memory of gardens (such as the Middlegate Japanese Gardens pictured above) that are now gone. The Museum of the Future has a great roundup of videos and blogs about museums, technology, and media. An update on earthquake damage at the Smithsonian, and hear Smithsonian Secretary (and earthquake
Description: In a world drowning in images, where we swipe past photos of friends, relatives, and selves in mere seconds, a set of remarkable portraits taken in the 1910s and 1920s by Julian Papin Scott (1877-1961) deserve more considered attention. Sometimes, his subjects appear immersed in work, surrounded by microscopes, beakers, or stacks of books, as if unaware of the photographer.