"It was no accident that arts funding was once again brought to national attention with the exhibit Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture. Since the 80s, the enemies of the NEA have not been those with differences of opinion about what art should be supported or how. Instead they oppose any support at all for art of any kind."
Hide/Seek, Culture Wars and the History of the NEA (NSFW, art)
posted by The Whelk
on Nov 1, 2011 -
115 comments
From May 12, 1939 to June 30, 1949, a fleet of
Stinson Reliants were used for a unique form of mail pick-up and delivery:
skyhooking. Similar in notion to the
mail-on-the-fly and
mail cranes used along rail lines,
the Reliants would fly low, deposit one load of mail and pick up the next, without stopping, providing mail service to rural communities. The Smithsonian National Postal Museum has
a 39 minute documentary presentation on YouTube, but it's a guy talking over powerpoint slides, which is pretty dry. Instead,
here is a modern news report with interviews of a skyhook pilot and old newsreel footage.
posted by filthy light thief
on Oct 19, 2011 -
24 comments
Hidden Tunnels, Bugs, and Bigamy: A Strange and True D.C. Story: "Reports indicated that the tunnels were long and extensive – that they may have reached as far as Rock Creek Park. Some electric lighting was discovered inside. For days, wild theories abounded – was it a Confederate soldier hideout? A stop on the Underground Railroad? A liquor depot for bootleggers? A counterfeiter’s lair? Or maybe a secret laboratory for 'Dr. Otto von Golph’s' experiments?
None of the above."
[more inside]
posted by codacorolla
on Jul 8, 2011 -
41 comments
Who invented the cloacascope? Who could pinpoint minute structural characteristics of charred bird feathers and identify the bird species or family based on the feathers? Who was the oldest of 15 children and worked for more than 50 years at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History?
Roxie (large image).
Roxie C. Laybourne, feather
detective,
pioneer of
forensic ornithology.
[more inside]
posted by cashman
on Mar 14, 2011 -
13 comments
I'm 100% sure that if it hadn't been for Mrs. Hill in fourth grade and a few others, I would have absolutely ended up in jail. A timeless and fascinating 1995 interview with
Steve Jobs.
posted by erikvan
on Oct 15, 2009 -
22 comments
Saturday, September 26th, the Smithsonian museum family and their affiliates will be hosting a free admission event, if you go to
their MUSEUM DAY site and print out the admission coupon. One coupon = 1+ admission.
[more inside]
posted by FunkyHelix
on Aug 20, 2009 -
20 comments
Rocks from Heaven “…A party of the inhabitants of the town of Casas Grandes, as a matter of curious speculation, commenced excavating in the old ruins there. One more fortunate than the others drifted into a large room, in the middle of which there appeared to be a kind of tomb made of adobe-brick. Curiosity led this bold knight of the crowbar to renew his excavations, he found a large mass of meteoric iron in the middle of the tomb, carefully and curiously wrapped with a kind of coarse linen.”
[more inside]
posted by various
on Apr 5, 2009 -
21 comments
Circuits are flipping on in the
nation's attic. A couple of weeks ago,
31 "digerati" -- like
Clay Shirky,
Chris Anderson, and
George Oates --
dropped in to the Smithsonian Institution for the invitation-only conference
"Smithsonian 2.0: A Gathering to Re-imagine the Smithsonian in the Digital Age".
Dan Cohen of the
Center for History and New Media provides
a great summary (and continues to pose provocative questions) on his own blog. Those whose invitations were somehow lost in the mail can play fly-on-the-wall by
watching the keynotes, paging through the
Flickr pool of envymaking glimpses of their behind-the-scenes lab and collections tours, reading the
blog (where Bruce Wyman of the Denver Art Museum lays out
a succinct road map for museums using social media), and poking around in the SI's
website gallery. Want to cheer on the USA's favorite 163-year-old
"Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge" without taking the trip to DC? Thanks to their recent efforts, you can now follow the SI on
Twitter, listen to its
podcasts, watch its
YouTube channel, visit the
Latino Virtual Museum in Second Life, or use the
FaceBook gifts page to send your best friends their very own pair of Dorothy's
ruby slippers,
Hope diamond,
Negro Leagues baseball, or
coelocanth.
posted by Miko
on Feb 27, 2009 -
13 comments
The Folkways Collection is a downloadable, 24-part podcast series that "explores the remarkable collection of music, spoken word, and sound recordings that make up Folkways Records (now at the Smithsonian as Smithsonian Folkways Recordings)."
posted by Miko
on Feb 16, 2009 -
27 comments
The United States Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 —
Authorized and funded by the U.S. government,
six ships sailed with 346 men (including
officers,
crew,
scientists, and
artists) on a four-year scientific and surveying mission, logging
87,000 miles around the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. Two ships and 28 men were lost, and the Expedition's
contentious commander
Charles Wilkes was court-martialled for his erratic behavior, and was
sued by former officers and crew members. During the Civil War in 1861, he
boarded a British ship, seized two Confederate agents, and nearly provoked military retaliation by England (he was court-martialled once again in
1864 for insubordination.) Wilkes' 1845
Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition and the Ex. Ex.'s journals were
published by Congress, and some 40 tons of Expedition specimens and
artifacts became the
foundation of the
Smithsonian Institution's collections.
[Nathaniel Philbrick (video lecture) chronicles this almost-forgotten voyage in his 2003 book Sea of Glory (NYT review).]
posted by cenoxo
on Oct 25, 2008 -
21 comments
Explore the playful side of invention and the inventive side of play in
Invention at Play. Learn how play connects to the creative impulse of both historic and contemporary inventors.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Jun 1, 2008 -
1 comment
The Luce Foundation Center in the recently renovated and reopened National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, is more like a smörgåsbord-cum-antique store, packed in an overflowing archive rather than a more traditional museum layout. The collection is comprised of varying American art styles and genres in intimate display cases, with little in the way of context or reference. (Though the same site in this link is available on computers scattered throughout the gallery for further detail.)
posted by Dave Faris
on Jan 12, 2007 -
12 comments
The Smithsonian's Sackler gallery opened a unique and wide-ranging
new exhibit yesterday featuring fragments of Bibles from before the year 1000.
"
Most of the manuscripts have never been seen outside the countries where they are stored. [Some Smithsonian-owned documents in the exhibition] have never been exhibited and two have not been shown since 1978." Fragments of the
Codex Sinaiticus are included in the exhibit.
Along with the
archaeological interest, these fragments can pose theological and historical challenges for Christians. Some, like UNC's Bart Ehrman, have
lost their faith as a result of studying early Bibles; some, like Luke Timothy Johnson of Emory, believing that Christianity is about a
common cultural and spiritual experience, are unmoved by the "
corruptions" and
differences in the New Testament over time; other Christians try to
refute (MeFi link) claims that the text has changed.
posted by ibmcginty
on Oct 22, 2006 -
36 comments
World Famous publicly founded
Smithsonian Institution recently
sold a
right-of-first-refusal on their collections to
Showtime Networks, allegedly because the Smithsonian badly needed cash for urgent works (previous Mefi
thread). Some poster on other blogs notes that if the
WIPO Broadcasting Treaty (links to second draft)
will be implemented that could grant Showtime a broadcast right over the documentaries produced with Smithsonian materials ;
this right would be similar yet separated from copyright , but with additional and increasingly chilling
effects [partially via
BoingBoing]
posted by elpapacito
on Apr 4, 2006 -
15 comments
Wade in the Water In 2004,
Smithsonian Folklife Festival featured the maritime cultures of the Mid-Atlantic region, from Long Island to North Carolina. Now, this site gives a home on the web to the cultural documentation gathered for the festival --
music,
recipes,
stories and oral history,
an interactive map,
the occupational folklore and natural history of regional fisheries,
photos, video, and more. The material, ably compiled by folklorists and educators, creates a lasting and very accessible archive of festival highlights as well as an excellent overview of the distinct coastal culture of the Mid-Atlantic. Don't miss the great menhaden net-hauling chantey
Help Me to Raise 'Em (links to mp3).
posted by Miko
on Mar 27, 2006 -
7 comments
