Smithsonian

01/02/2023

Today in 1960, four African American college students sat down at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. They asked for service and started a movement.

The counter was "whites only" at a time when racial segregation was still legal in the U.S. When their request was refused, Ezell A. Blair, Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), Franklin E. McCain, Joseph A. McNeil and David L. Richmond stayed in their seats.

Their peaceful protest—along with the hundreds of community members who followed suit—drew national attention and helped ignite a youth-led movement to challenge inequality throughout the South. The sit-in led to the desegregation of the counter on July 25.

A portion of the lunch counter is in our National Museum of American History.

31/01/2023

How many legs can you count in the Tarantula Nebula? 🧐 Officially known as 30 Doradus, it’s a region of active star formation in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighbor galaxy of the Milky Way.

It has long been studied by astronomers who want to better understand how stars like the Sun are born and evolve.

This new image combines data from Chandra X-ray Observatory—operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory—and NASA's James Webb Space Telescope for a view that spans about 360 light-years. X-rays are shown in blue and purple, while infrared data is red, orange, green and light blue.

27/01/2023

Writer and activist Elie Wiesel dedicated his life to ensuring that the Holocaust and its victims are never forgotten.

He survived the concentration camps where his parents and younger sister were murdered, and his powerful 1960 memoir "Night" conveyed the nightmare of the camps to the world. Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

For Holocaust Remembrance Day, this sculpture is in the collection of our National Portrait Gallery USA.

Miriam Baker, 2007 cast from 2001 original. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Miriam and Arthur Baker. © 2001 Miriam Baker.

25/01/2023

Today, First Lady Jill Biden visited our National Museum of American History to present the dress and coat ensembles she wore to both the 2021 presidential inauguration day and evening celebrations to the collection. You can see them both now in the "First Ladies" exhibition.

This is Dr. Biden’s evening inaugural attire, designed by Gabriela Hearst, which includes an ivory silk wool cady dress and an ivory double-breasted cashmere coat. Their embroidery represents the federal flowers from every state and territory of the U.S. as a symbol of unity.

Marking the historic nature of the inauguration during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Biden's matching face mask for each ensemble will also be on display.

In 1912, First Lady Helen Taft was the first to donate her own inauguration dress to the museum's exhibition, and her choice set a precedent for future first ladies.

Learn more about Dr. Biden’s inaugural attire and the tradition of collecting and displaying inaugural gowns: https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/new-traditions

23/01/2023

How about a little bit of cheerfulness to start the week? Smithsonian Libraries and Archives is celebrating with through Jan. 27, and today’s theme is Special Collections.

"The Way of Cheerfulness" comes from a collection of miniatures in our Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology. It was published as part of "The Golden Thought Series" in the early 1900s and is filled with optimistic verses.

This shelfie is from a few years ago—many of these tiny volumes have since received custom enclosures for extra protection.

22/01/2023

Ring in the with this porcelain box from our Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art. It dates back to the late 16th or early 17th century in China, when Zhangzhou potters were quick (like a rabbit!) to produce lots of ceramics to supply the huge market for exports.

The box’s images were painted swiftly using cobalt oxide applied under a colorless glaze.

On the cover, you can see a rabbit looking up at the moon. Rabbits have been a popular subject in Chinese art for thousands of years, and can be symbols of longevity. According to legend, a rabbit lives in the moon, perpetually compounding an elixir of immortality.

18/01/2023

We thought you could use some midweek "Puppies in the Snow."

This 1778 woodblock print from our Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art is by Japanese artist Isoda Koryūsai, who produced around 150 designs of flowers, birds and animals in his life. 1778 was the Year of the Dog, and calendar prints like this one were given as gifts at the start of the lunar new year.

16/01/2023

In this 1964 Leonard Freed photo from the National Portrait Gallery USA, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. greets supporters in Baltimore after he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

King traveled the country in the weeks leading up to the 1964 presidential election, urging African Americans to exercise the voting rights guaranteed to them by the Civil Rights Act. He also spoke out on local ballot initiatives affecting civil rights.

12/01/2023

Have you heard we have about 1,000 samples of whale earwax in our collection?

Whale earwax has rings like a tree that transition regularly from dark to light, indicating periods of growth. For years samples were used to determine a whale's age (again, like a tree), but more recently scientists have analyzed each layer to trace pollution and stress levels throughout the animal's life.

These waxy time capsules give scientists a timeline of data to help us better understand whales and their ocean environment.

This piece of whale earwax is among hundreds of rarely seen specimens and artifacts in the "Objects of Wonder" exhibition at Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

11/01/2023

We're bundling up for this week's temperatures.

Rebecca Malliki (Inuit) created this doll family in 2003. It was commissioned by Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian from the Inullariit Society of Igloolik (Igloolik, Nunavut, Canada).

10/01/2023

Making friends with the snooze button? 💤 This is Mary Jane the baby sloth, who was born at Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute in 1964.

Zoo staff hand-reared Mary Jane, and named the two-toed sloth long before it was determined that the baby was a male. He’s seen snuggling at 9 months old in this Smithsonian Institution Archives photo.

06/01/2023

¡Feliz día de los Reyes Magos! Happy Three Kings Day! Also known as the Feast of the Epiphany, the holiday commemorates the arrival of the three kings—Balthazar, Melchior and Gaspar—to Bethlehem.

It's a festive tradition in Spain, Puerto Rico and many Latin American countries, where children leave boxes of hay and bowls of water for the kings’ horses the night before and wake up to find gifts the three kings have brought them.

This carved and painted wood artwork of "Los Reyes Magos," attributed to Hipolito Marte Martinez in the early 20th century, is in the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery collection.

05/01/2023

The Smithsonian Institution Building, known as the Castle, will close Wednesday, Feb. 1, for its first major renovation in more than 50 years.

The renovation is expected to last about five years. During construction, the Enid A. Haupt Garden behind the Castle will remain open.

The Smithsonian’s Visitor Center will expand its online services, with a virtual Visitor Center website launching in early February.

More details: https://s.si.edu/3jVCC9L

04/01/2023

Need a midweek pick-me-up? This ornate silver coffee pot from our Cooper Hewitt is here to help.

It's part of a tea and coffee service set dated 1888. The manufacturer, Dominick and Haff, competed with Tiffany & Co.

Each piece of the set takes the basic form of a cube.

03/01/2023

We hope your first week of the new year rocks.

A rock concert inspired artist Debra Baxter to create her “Devil Horns Crystal Brass Knuckles” series. This 2015 artwork, a lefty, is now in the collection of our Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery.

01/01/2023

Happy New Year! This stamp, designed by Carl Herrman and illustrated by J.C. Leyendecker, is from the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. © USPS; all rights reserved.

31/12/2022

We remember Barbara Walters. She redefined the role of women on TV news. She started at CBS as a producer and writer in the 1950s. By the 1960s she was in front of the camera at NBC. She changed the tenor of her position by not shying away from serious topics and became the Today Show’s first woman co-host in 1974. Walters moved to ABC in 1976 when the network hired her as the first woman to co-anchor the national evening news.

This photo is in the collection of our National Portrait Gallery USA.

📸: Lynn Gilbert, 1980. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.© Lynn Gilbert

30/12/2022

Time is a flat circle. Swing into the new year with this perpetual calendar designed by Enzo Mari, complete with sleek lines popular in Italian design of the 1960s, now in the collection of our Cooper Hewitt.

Speaking of time, there's still time to make a tax-deductible gift that supports knowledge before the year ends. Donate today and your support will impact every Smithsonian museum, educational program and research initiative. http://go.si.edu/FY23CYEFB1

29/12/2022

We remember Brazilian soccer icon Pelé, born Edson Arantes do Nascimento. He made such a mark on the sport that the International Olympic Committee named him the athlete of the century in 1999. In 1975, he came out of retirement in Brazil, put on this #10 New York Cosmos jersey, and brought greater attention to the sport in the US. It’s now in the collection of our National Museum of American History.

26/12/2022

Happy Kwanzaa! Today in 1966, Kwanzaa was founded as an African American cultural holiday. It is centered around seven principles:
1️⃣Umoja (Unity)
2️⃣Kujichagulia (Self-Determination)
3️⃣Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility)
4️⃣Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics)
5️⃣Nia (Purpose)
6️⃣Kuumba (Creativity)
7️⃣Imani (Faith)

This pinback button, previously owned by Jan Bailey, is in the collection of our Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

25/12/2022

Merry Christmas! This mid-20th-century Santa postcard is from the Archives Center of our National Museum of American History.

23/12/2022

"Look at that picture over there! Here’s the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty!" — William Anders, who took this famous Earthrise photo

On Christmas Eve in 1968—a tumultuous year—three NASA astronauts in orbit around the Moon addressed the nation on a live TV broadcast. Anders, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell and read from the Bible’s book of Genesis, ending with “God bless all of you, all of you on the Good Earth.”

Apollo 8 was the first mission to take humans to the Moon and back.

The Hasselblad 70mm camera used to take the Earthrise photo is currently on view in our National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, in the new exhibition “One World Connected.”

22/12/2022

It's Smithsonian on Ice!

Back in the 1980s, we had several staff skate clubs that would meet at the National Gallery of Art rink. One of the groups practiced two to three times a week and learned the 20 defined ice dancing routines required by the U.S. Figure Skating Association.

They're showing off in this photo from Smithsonian Institution Archives.

21/12/2022

Spiraling closer and closer to annihilation, exoplanet Kepler-1658b is on a collision path with its host star. The doomed world is about the size of Jupiter. In a first for astronomers, its decaying orbit was first observed using the Kepler space telescope over many years.

Death-by-star is a fate thought to await many worlds. In billions of years, colliding into the Sun could be the Earth's ultimate adios.

The lead author of the study is Shreyas Vissapragada of the Center for Astrophysics l Harvard & Smithsonian.

20/12/2022

A Very Merry Sidedoor | Smithsonian Institution

Does your family eat a special holiday pudding? Our podcast gets to the bottom of what exactly figgy pudding is, explores a Santa space surprise, and more.

What is it about a mistletoe that says “smooch?” And what the heck is figgy pudding anyway? The holidays are here again, and with them come songs, foods, and rituals so familiar we may not think to ask where they come from ... until now! In this holiday special, we track down the origins of some...

19/12/2022

Why would bus-sized marine reptiles hang out in a part of the ocean without much food? Generations of ichthyosaurs returned there to give birth in safe waters. A study by a team that includes Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History researchers suggests this behavior, seen in whales today, existed 200 million years before giant whales evolved. Explore a 3D model of the Nevada fossil bed with Smithsonian 3D Digitization: 3d.si.edu/enter-sea-dragon

18/12/2022

Happy first night of Hanukkah! This card will stay lit for all eight nights. It was designed by Ted Naos, dated 1994, and is in our Cooper Hewitt's collection. More by Naos: https://bit.ly/3HM7ovE

16/12/2022

Happy Friday from these swift fox kits! Earlier this fall, the Fort Belknap Indian Community commemorated three years of its swift fox recovery program with the release of swift foxes on Tribal lands. More than 100 of the species have now been reintroduced back to these prairie grasslands in northern Montana.

For years, researchers from Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute have been working with Indigenous communities and other partners to revitalize the ecosystem and rebuild the swift fox population for the first time since the 1800s.

Based on post-release monitoring efforts, the native species is reproducing in the wild, which is a critical measure of success for a self-sustaining population.

15/12/2022

There's no place like home for these objects, which you can see in our National Museum of American History's new exhibition “Entertainment Nation”/“Nación del espectáculo.”

It features the museum's theater, music, sports, movie and TV collections to show how entertainment has the power to captivate, inspire and transform us.

These are some of the hundreds of objects included in :

Dorothy’s ruby slippers, worn by Judy Garland in the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz"—which made the shoes red instead of the silver of the original book by L. Frank Baum

The robe Muhammad Ali wore while training for a championship fight with George Foreman in 1974

Performance costume of Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, known as the “Queen of Tejano Music"

Bill Nye’s shirt, bowtie and lab coat, worn during his 1990s science TV show

15/12/2022

Visiting the Smithsonian | Smithsonian Institution

The Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute and Smithsonian Castle will delay opening today until 10 a.m. and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is closed due to a utility failure. All other Smithsonian museums in the Washington, D.C., area will open as scheduled on December 15, 2022.

When you visit the Smithsonian, you’re entering the world’s largest museum complex. Plan your visit today.

14/12/2022

This is how much wildlife fits in a single cubic foot on a reef off the coast of the Pacific island Mo’orea.

"Life In One Cubic Foot"—organized by our Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service in collaboration with Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History—tracks the work of scientists and a photographer as they study what a cubic foot of land or water reveals about the diversity of life on the planet. The project uses a "biocube," an actual 1-foot, green-framed cube that organisms can pass through, and encourages you to become a citizen-scientist.

The exhibition is touring and currently at the International Museum of Art and Science in Texas. 📸: © David Liittschwager

13/12/2022

Smithsonian Regents Webcasts | Smithsonian Institution

Live now: the annual public forum for our Board of Regents.

Learn more about Smithsonian Regents Webcasts

08/12/2022

We've got our holiday part outfits ready.

This page is from the fourth volume of “Le costume historique” by A. Racinet, which is in Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. It was published in 1888 but spans centuries, and is still a resource to costume designers with outfits from many regions and cultures.

07/12/2022

This pigeon is wearing a sweater.

For a series of sculptures, Laurel Roth Hope crocheted suits that mimic the plumage of extinct or endangered bird species. Hand-carved common rock pigeons wear them to masquerade as other North American birds—in this case, the extinct Carolina parakeet.

Hope's pieces display the appearance of biodiversity, even if can't be reclaimed in real life.

"Biodiversity Reclamation Suit: Carolina Parakeet" (2009) is in our Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery.

06/12/2022

The Smithsonian's governing body, our Board of Regents, will webcast their annual public forum on Dec. 13 at 3 p.m. ET. Tune in to hear about future programs and Smithsonian museums. https://s.si.edu/3VTCS6O